Children, with one of their teachers, at the Waunakee child care center operated by Heather Murray. (Photo courtesy of Heather Murray)
I have owned and operated a child care center for the past 19 years. Not only do I make sure staff and the bills are paid, I clean toilets, clean windows and change diapers. I have devoted my life to educating and caring for young children. I didn’t go into this profession to line my pockets with money. But everyone in my field deserves a living wage and to know they are supported in their community. My goal is to create a safe and nurturing learning environment for the children who enter my center. My belief is that their parents have decided to partner with us to make sure their children are getting the best possible environment to learn and grow.
Creating this high-quality environment for children has become increasingly hard over the years for child care providers in Wisconsin. Parents can’t pay more and providers need to keep qualified staff and pay them a liveable wage. For my center, wages for employees went up by $4 an hour recently to keep up with the other businesses in my community.
I started advocating and organizing around child care and early education right before the latest state budget cycle. I found there were some pretty big hurdles to jump over to get our legislators to listen to child care providers.
I’ve heard legislators tell providers “all you want is money.” I’ve heard them say “these women just need to learn how to run their business.” My favorite observation is: “We don’t need child care. Women should just stay home and take care of their children.” It wasn’t easy to get anyone at the Capitol to take providers seriously. In the last state budget child care received no funding. Wisconsin was one of six states that did not put any state money into child care or early education. Gov. Evers did find a way to support providers with direct payments using federal money, which helped keep many providers’ doors open throughout the state.
Meanwhile, advocates and early educators kept coming to hearings, talking about what we do on a daily basis and how that is important to our communities and the state.
Providers across Wisconsin held Community Conversations and Day Without Childcare events. Many elected officials from both sides of the aisle received tours of centers. Providers also sent letters to the editor and talked with every type of news outlet that would listen. I am so proud of all the providers who stepped up and continued to push this message that what we do is important and we deserve support. As a result, ideas at the Capitol started to shift.
I spoke to legislators from both sides of the aisle. I heard legislators starting to talk about the “child care crisis” and realize that it wasn’t happening just because we didn’t know how to run our businesses. They started to say out loud that parents shouldn’t have to pay 25% of their income for child care. Legislators who previously wouldn’t have said they supported child care investment said they would try and get something done.
In the end, the new state budget wasn’t ideal but it did do two things: Direct payments will continue to go to providers for the next year and early education is finally funded with state dollars in the Wisconsin budget.
Does this budget solve everything? No. Does it provide the $330 million Evers sought in direct payments to providers? No. Did Wisconsin for the first time put state money into early education? Yes — including $110 million in direct payments to providers Does it deregulate child care, increasing the number of infants and toddlers one staff person can care for and allowing 16-year-olds to count as full-time assistants? Yes.
Child care center operator Heather Murray and some of the children in her care look out over the neighorhood outside Murray’s center in Waunakee. (Photo courtesy of Heather Murray)
I absolutely do not think deregulation is the answer to the child care crisis. I believe it is harmful to children. I will not be participating in the deregulated infant/toddler program outlined in this budget. I know I cannot get staff in my center to continue work when I ask them to take care of three more toddlers on their own. A single teacher in this proposed program would take care of seven toddlers ages 18 months and up. Right now that same teacher is expected to care for four toddlers that age. Even though some states have this ratio, the National Association for the Education of Young Children clearly states best practice is 1:4 for this age group.
I would also not hire a 16-year-old as an assistant teacher to add to my staff. I don’t believe 16-year-olds are ready to handle large groups of small children and provide the quality time and interaction they need; 16-year-olds are still children themselves. And since they are in school themselves, they are not that much help with the labor shortages centers experience all day long.
I’m grateful that Gov. Evers made child care a priority, and that our state finally joined the majority of other states in providing some support for this essential resource in the state budget.
Advocating for policy changes is a constant back and forth. Much of the time you don’t get what you want. This means that we must go back in two years, to make Wisconsin’s child care support better and more durable. Child care advocates have created a strong network and we are not done advocating for the change needed for providers to keep their doors open and for educators to earn a living wage. I believe child care is infrastructure and a public good. Together with other child care providers, I will continue to advocate and educate our leaders about how a well supported child care system is essential to our community and our economy.
Heather Murray (seated at the lower right, in the dark gray shirt) along with some of the children from her child care center, joined state legislators in the Wisconsin Capitol to show their support for a child care investment in the state budget. (Photo courtesy of Heather Murray)
Federal payments for Head Start this year were significantly behind schedule compared with 2024 and that violated the Impoundment Control Act, according to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. (Photo by SDI Productions via Getty Images)
The Health and Human Services Department illegally withheld payments from Head Start for the first months of President Donald Trump’s term, a government watchdog reported Wednesday.
HHS payments for Head Start this year were significantly behind schedule compared with 2024. That violated the Impoundment Control Act, a law governing the president’s duty to spend congressionally appropriated funds, according to a report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.
The law, sometimes called the ICA, allows the president to withhold appropriated funds in some circumstances. But the publicly available data did not show those conditions were met and HHS did not mount any defense prior to the report’s publication, according to the GAO.
“Because that evidence indicates that HHS withheld appropriated funds from expenditure, and because the burden to justify such withholdings rests with HHS and the executive branch, we conclude that HHS violated the ICA by withholding funds,” the report said.
Before the report’s publication, HHS did not provide the GAO with information requested by the watchdog or a legal analysis, according to the report, which was signed by GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez.
However, an HHS spokesperson told States Newsroom in a Wednesday email that it would respond to the GAO and disputed the report’s conclusion.
“HHS did not impound Head Start funds and disputes the conclusion of the GAO report,” the spokesperson wrote. “GAO should anticipate a forthcoming response from HHS to incorporate into an updated report.”
How Head Start works
Head Start is a federal grant program to fund pre-kindergarten services for low-income families. The federal government provides up to 80% of a local program’s eligible costs, the report said. As of last year, 1,600 organizations received Head Start funding for education, nutritional, health and social services.
Organizations receiving Head Start funding generally win grant approvals for five years at a time. Programs in good standing are automatically renewed, according to the report.
Mere days after Trump took office in January, dozens of Head Start grant recipients found they were unable to access funds they’d expected from HHS, according to a Jan. 28 statement from the National Head Start Association, a coalition of grantees.
GAO’s analysis showed the department disbursed about one-third less grant funding in the first three months of the Trump administration than it had over the same period in 2024. The difference amounted to $825 million less for Head Start grants over those months.
The law does allow for HHS to stop funding for grantees before the end of the five-year period under certain circumstances, such as for failing to meet performance standards or becoming under-enrolled.
In those cases, though, HHS must warn the programs of potential cuts in grants, provide a detailed plan the organization can implement to avoid grant cancellation and give the grantee a fair hearing as well as the ability to apply for refunding — all before funding can be cut off, according to the GAO report.
There is no indication HHS took any of those steps before abruptly cutting funds in January, according to the report.
‘The president is not a king’
Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, blasted President Donald Trump and his HHS in a lengthy statement that asserted Congress’ power over spending decisions and admonished the administration for harming an important program for working families.
“Trump has signaled he would like to eliminate Head Start—but that’s not his choice to make,” Murray said. “Congress delivered this funding for Head Start on a bipartisan basis, and instead of trying to destroy preschool programs and breaking our laws to hurt working families, President Trump needs to ensure every penny of these funds get out in a timely, consistent way moving forward—and he must also finally get out the rest of the investments he has been robbing the American people of.”
Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, highlighted Congress’ role in directing federal funding, calling on Trump and White House Budget Director Russell Vought to comply with appropriations laws.
“The President is not a king, and laws are not suggestions,” Merkley said in a statement. “Once again, we’re seeing proof that this administration is in clear violation of the law under the Impoundment Control Act. The funds appropriated by Congress are not merely suggestions for Donald Trump and Russ Vought to ignore – these are funds that hardworking families rely on, and Head Start is essential to making sure the doors of opportunity are open to every child in our country.”
ACLU lawsuit
The GAO report did not list any further action the agency would take but did note that litigation over the withheld funding is ongoing.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit in April in federal court in Seattle that included parents and Head Start grant recipients.
The suit described widespread confusion that Head Start organizations experienced when they could not access expected federal funding, compounded by cuts to support staff in regional offices.
No cooperation
The report detailed the lack of participation by HHS in the GAO’s investigation and tied it to a separate legal fight involving a public website.
“HHS has not provided the information we requested regarding factual information and its legal views concerning the potential impoundment of appropriated funds,” the report said.
Without information from the administration, the watchdog based its findings on publicly available data.
The White House Office of Management and Budget added an obstacle to that task, the watchdog said.
The office “removed agency apportionment data from its public websites, which is both contrary to OMB’s duty to make such information publicly available and to GAO’s statutory authority to access such information,” the GAO report said.
On that question, a federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to once again publish details about the pace at which it plans to spend money approved by Congress.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Emmet Sullivan wrote in his ruling that Congress “has sweeping authority” to require the president to post a website detailing how it doles out taxpayer dollars throughout the year.
As federal aid ran out, advocates called on lawmakers to fund the Child Care Counts program using state dollars, as Evers proposed. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)
This summer Democratic and Republican legislators along with the Gov. Tony Evers participated in closed-door negotiations to come up with the 2025-27 state budget. All of the parties involved are touting the budget as a historic advance for children and patting themselves on the back for compromising with each other and the work they accomplished. In other words, they played well in the sandbox together. While yes, the state budget has never included funding for child care in its history, as we were one of only six states that didn’t, crowing about it now is kind of like touting the fact that you’ve just changed a diaper for the first time when your child is 2 years old. It’s not something to brag about, and the new state budget is nothing to brag about either.
On the surface, as you read the claims about historic investments in child care and K-12 schools, you might think the budget really solved some big problems. Take Evers’ statement celebrating “Over $330 million to support Wisconsin’s child care industry and help lower child care costs for working families, a third of which is in direct payments to providers.” That means only $110 million is to continue the direct investment to all 4,700 eligible regulated child care programs. The original amount for this program was $480 million. Child care is receiving less than 25% of the requested amount. You might have surmised from Evers’ victorious statement that parents will see a decrease in tuition costs with the new budget. However, the opposite is going to be occurring, and tuition increases will start in August. The $110 million will cause child care rates to increase next month because the new state investment is less than a third of what Child Care Counts, funded through the American Rescue Plan Act, originally provided.
The purpose of that money was to stabilize a field that had been declining for decades. It increased teachers’ wages while holding down tuition costs for parents. It worked. The data showed a decline in closures and it raised the average child care educator’s wage from $11 an hour to $13 an hour in Wisconsin. (In our state, over 50% of early child care teachers have some college education or degree, with an average of 10 years experience.)
This month the ARPA funds run out, and for the past few years, knowing the federal funding would be ending, families, child care providers, and businesses have been advocating for the state to fill the gap and to subsidize child care. We know that for every $1 a state invests in early childhood education, the rate of return is between $10-$16. Not only does quality early child care give children an opportunity for greater success as adults, it also supports our workforce, families and the economy.
Regardless of the research and well-being of children, the gatekeepers of our tax dollars on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee deleted Evers’ $480 million direct state investment budget request for child care. Instead, child care funding was determined behind closed doors with Senate Minority Leader Diane Hesselbein and Evers in one corner and Rep. Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin Lemahieu in the other. It should be noted that no one in that space is considered an expert in child care policy. What came out of this room was a compromise for the sake of compromise.
The $110 million for child care won’t come from state dollars. It’s the interest that has accrued on the federal ARPA funds. It will be allocated directly to child care providers over the next 11 months, until June of 2026. It comes to about 70% less than the original amount paid through CCC. This is why, starting in August, there will be significant closures of child care centers and home daycares in rural areas of the state — already considered a child care desert. Tuition will increase at the child care operations that try to stay open. So no, working families will not “see a decrease in childcare costs” as stated by Evers.
And when the $110 million ends next year, there is nothing to replace it. The Wisconsin Legislature will gavel out in March and not gavel in until January of 2027, as legislators will be campaigning the rest of 2026. There won’t be an opportunity to pass emergency legislation funding child care. Rates will increase again and closures will continue.
The remainder of the $330 million in child care funding in the new state budget is for several new programs. A $66 million state investment for 4-year-olds to access “school readiness” in their child care program. This will help parents as the state will pay for their “preschool” time, but it replaces tuition for part of the school day. Child care programs that have school districts with all-day, free 4K will likely find it almost impossible to compete with public schools when they still need to charge for the remainder of the day plus wrap-around care.
In addition, there is a $28 million pilot project to deregulate the child care field, which ends in July 2027. This move comes directly from the Republicans’ playbook. The pilot project will incentivize providers to increase their ratios, meaning more children per teacher, lower quality and safety for children and more stress on teachers.
Another harmful policy in the new budget is that 16-year-olds are now allowed to be assistant teachers and count as adults in the ratio. Coupled with the pilot project mentioned above, this means a classroom of 14 toddlers can be supervised by one 18-year-old and one 16-year-old. This reduces the quality, safety, care and education for the children in our programs. Recall that while these decisions were being made behind closed doors, there were no experts in child care policy in the room. This policy was made without consideration of our state accreditation program, YoungStar, and our national accreditations. Any program that participates in the pilot project will no longer qualify to be accredited. And in Wisconsin, accreditation is not just a certificate to state you are following high safety standards, but our YoungStar program is tethered to our Wisconsin Shares (subsidy for child care). Programs with a five or four-star rating receive a bonus subsidy rate. It can mean a considerable loss of funding for providers to participate in the new pilot project.
The politicians who wrote the budget deal behind closed doors neglected to consider the increased cost or loss of insurance for providers when we increase the teacher-to-child ratio and when we allow 16-year-olds to count as adults.
The same group of non-experts also decided to allow policies that, in 2023, were already proposed and had failed to become law due to the overwhelming outcry from families, providers and the medical field against a policy that reduces quality and safety for our children. The state is throwing millions of dollars in the garbage for these policies, which won’t benefit child care programs and will cause actual harm to Wisconsin children.
Enacting policies like these without holding hearings raises the question: Who is representing us? The public already overwhelmingly said no to these policies two years ago. Furthermore, funding for child care is one of the top priorities that the JFC heard from voters throughout the state at budget listening sessions. Surveys show that the majority of both Republican and Democratic constituents support funding early child care. The only real compromise made in this budget was the compromise of safety and quality of our youngest children in the state.
Wisconsin’s K-12 budget
So how did school-age children fare in the state budget? Again, we are reading about record-setting investments in schools, along with the biggest investment our state has ever made for children with disabilities. Evers proclaimed that the new budget “secures the largest increase to special education reimbursement rate in state history.” You might think, great, finally children with disabilities will receive the support and resources they need. But you would be wrong. Evers’ budget request was for a 60% reimbursement for children with disabilities. After all, 90% reimbursement is the amount that Wisconsin voucher and charter schools have already been receiving for children with special needs. Unfortunately, the new budget allows public schools a maximum of 42% in 2026 and 45% in 2027 reimbursement, which is a far cry from the 60% request — the rate of the 1980s. Yes, the increase in this budget is technically the largest increase in recent years, but it is still miles away from the finish line.
To make matters worse, the budget also provided a $0 per-pupil increase in general aid funding to public schools; however, a provision was placed in the budget paperwork that guaranteed voucher and charter schools would receive additional funding for their general aid in the budget. I can’t recall a year when no new general funding was provided in a budget to public schools in Wisconsin. Last year Wisconsin saw a record number of public schools go to referendum to squeeze additional funding from their communities to compensate for the lack of state and federal funding. Under the new budget, we will see another record number of schools going to referendum next year. We will also likely see more schools close, specifically in rural, poorer areas where the communities cannot be squeezed any more than they already have been. As you can imagine, this budget will only continue to widen the education gap in quality between the wealthy and the poor.
Not to be all doom and gloom, there was one category of children that fared quite well with the new budget: our juvenile offenders. The budget will invest $1 million per juvenile offender. Yes, $1 million per kid. Remember when it was mentioned that investing in our youth early on saves us tenfold later on? The children in our juvenile justice systems are children who were not given the opportunity for quality early child care, children who were raised in poverty, children who have been abused, children who experience trauma, children with mental health issues.
The children in our juvenile systems are those who have been failed by our state. Their families could not afford child care, so they were shuffled from one person to another. They lived with violence and addiction in their homes. And when they got to school at age 5, they were already on a trajectory of despair; the school systems cannot afford to provide all the services and support these children need, especially for those who have suffered trauma at an early age.
Our new state budget only prioritizes these children once they are ready to be locked away.
Unfortunately the hype about Wisconsin making record investments in our children is terribly overblown. Instead, the truth of the matter is that we are putting in the minimum, and this budget keeps us on the lowest tier as a state for investment in our public schools and our young children compared to other states. Meanwhile, we continue to be among the biggest spenders on our juvenile offenders.
Our political leaders have misled us.
I don’t think most Wisconsinites care whether their representatives can compromise or not. I think we would all rather have elected politicians who will actually represent us with integrity. Represent us with values that prioritize our children, families, workforce and our economy. This is our common humanity. We can stop generational poverty. We can stop children from going hungry, we can support children who have been abused and neglected, and we can give children a chance in life. But we just made the choice not to do that.
Correction: An earlier version of this commentary misstated the amount of Gov. Tony Evers’ budget request as 90% instead of 60%. We regret the error.
Child care providers and parents attend a Wisconsin State Capitol rally on Wednesday, April 16, 2025. Advocates have mixed opinions about child care provisions in the new state budget released Tuesday. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
The proposed Wisconsin state budget announced Tuesday offers child care advocates less than what they sought, and while some reacted with limited optimism, for others it adds up to little better than nothing.
The final deal will spend $110 million to extend direct payments to providers for another year. Starting in mid-2026 It will direct $65 million to providers who join a proposed “School Readiness Program” — similar to 4-year-old kindergarten (4K) but distinct from current 4K programs.
The deal also will add $123 million to increase the reimbursement for child care costs for low-income families under the Wisconsin Shares program.
The agreement was reached Monday in negotiations involving Gov. Tony Evers, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton).
Kids Forward labeled the child care provisions “significant, but not sufficient, wins for Wisconsin’s working families.” Kids Forward is a policy and advocacy organization for low-income families and families of color.
“This deal doesn’t address the long-term needs of families and providers, but we look forward to working with legislators and the Governor to ensure sustained investment,” said Daithi Wolfe, senior policy analyst for Kids Forward, in a statement Tuesday.
‘Bridge’ payment program
The $110 million in direct payments to providers over the next 12 months will serve as a “bridge” after the end of Child Care Counts, the subsidy program funded with federal pandemic relief money that runs out this month.
Originally paying out $20 million a month, Child Care Counts helped stabilize the child care sector according to research reviewing the program, helping providers increase wages without having to charge parents more.
The money was cut in half two years ago, and since then providers have reported having to raise fees and, in some cases, reduce their capacity because they lacked enough child care workers. A survey report earlier this year found that 25% of providers said they might close if state payments stop.
The new payment program is intended to enable providers to plan and budget between now and July 2026 for the loss of Child Care Counts. It will be funded with interest income on the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds the Evers administration received starting in early 2021.
“The disappointing part is it’s not permanent,” said Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association (WECA). WECA has campaigned all year for Gov. Tony Evers’ original proposal, which sought $480 million including for continuing monthly provider subsidies.
“This is not going to be the sort of panacea for child care,” Schmidt said. “We will still see child care programs needing to raise rates. We will likely still see closures throughout the year. But I think we will see them at much lower rates, and I think that’s a really good thing for child care.”
Schmidt praised Evers as a “champion for children” and also credited GOP leaders for being “willing to sit down” and negotiate. “I think bipartisanship has been at play in this,” she said.
A 4K-style program
The new Early School Readiness Program for 4-year-olds is a response to the impact that 4K expansion has had on child care providers. As 4K programs expanded in Wisconsin elementary schools, “that pulled a lot of 4-year-olds out of child care,” Schmidt said.
The new School Readiness Program will set curriculum standards and require child care workers who teach in it to have at least an associate degree. Schmidt said that for child care providers who participate, it will “ensure that child care has more opportunities to continue to serve 4-year-olds.”
Child care providers who take part will for the first time receive direct payments from state funds.
“Child care as an industry has long been very interested in finding out how to continue to do the services that they know are so important for 4-year-olds in their programs, and I think this is a mechanism that will allow for that,” Schmidt said. “This is a net gain of $65 million in state general purpose revenue into child care. That’s a big thing.”
Providers view deal skeptically
For some child care providers, however, the details of the budget deal fall short of what they contend their sector needs.
The $110 million bridge program “is less than we’re getting right now, and we can’t keep teachers and we can’t keep prices down the way it is,” said Corrine Hendrickson, a New Glarus child care provider. She doesn’t expect it to achieve its stated goal of increasing the number of teachers along with accessibility and affordability in child care.
Brooke Legler, another New Glarus provider, said the $480 million that Evers had originally sought translated to keeping child care workers’ wages at $13 an hour on average. “This doesn’t even do that,” she said of the bridge program.
Hendrickson and Legler are cofounders of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), a coalition of parents and providers that also campaigned actively for the original Evers proposal.
Hendrickson said she’s concerned that the School Readiness Program will be perceived by parents as “less academic, less school, less quality than the free option at the public school.”
Legler questions whether the new program as structured will succeed in drawing more families of 4-year-olds who would otherwise send their children to 4K. School districts have expanded their 4K programs to all day schedules in part because of a lack of child care, she said.
“I think that’s such a disservice that we have … closed door negotiations and that we’re not including the people at the table that need to be at the table, especially if we want to have effective and efficient policies that work for Wisconsin,” Legler said.
Both Legler and Hendrickson said they’re also concerned about a provision creating a “large family center” category with up to 12 children. Currently there are family centers with up to eight children and group centers with nine or more children.
Another provision would lower the minimum age for entry-level child care workers to 16. Both the age change and the large family provision were in bills that Republicans introduced in the 2023-24 legislative session and that providers mostly opposed.
“That’s not an answer. That doesn’t do anything financially” to help providers, Legler said.
“We have people making life-altering decisions for many people in Wisconsin, yet they have no experience or expertise on the matter,” she said. “This method does not work.”
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