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Some child care advocates express hope about budget deal, others are skeptical

By: Erik Gunn

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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We are choosing a bleak future for Wisconsin children

child care

Children at the Growing Tree child care in New Glarus. Wisconsin is one of only six states that doesn't put any money into early childhood education. (Photo by Kate Rindy)

Children are born into this world innocent. They did not choose their parents. They did not choose to be born into poverty. They do not get to choose if a parent is addicted to drugs or alcohol. Children do not get a choice to be born into an environment of neglect. Children do not choose to grow up in a home with violence. Children do not get a choice to be abused or assaulted. Children do not choose to be born with a disability. Children do not get to choose if they can access medical care. Children do not get a choice on whether they are even wanted or loved. 

Adults do have choices. In Wisconsin, we  have chosen to have a state where children are the largest demographic living in poverty. We have chosen to allow some children to live with constant hunger. We have chosen not to support children with disabilities. We are still choosing not  to create systems to support children who have experienced adversity like abuse and neglect. We made the choice to create an education system based on the income of the people living in the community. We choose to allow children to be uncared for. We as a community have made these choices deliberately and without shame. 

Consequently, we have chosen for those children to be  less likely to graduate from high school, more likely to fail at a job, have poor health (which is connected to stress in the early years) and to be statistically more likely to be placed in the prison system. 

We, as a state, have chosen to prioritize funding for  prisons and spend nothing on early care and education, one of only six states that don’t invest a penny in early childhood programs, even though we know that when children have access to quality early education that they are more likely to graduate high school, have higher incomes, be healthier, and are less likely to enter the prison system. We have chosen to remove health care options for children by not expanding Badgercare. We are soon to be the only state that does not provide postpartum Medicaid, risking the lives of new mothers and  increasing the likelihood that children will have to grow up without them. We have decided that children with disabilities will receive services not based on their actual needs, but based on the budget  for special education, which our state keeps at the barest minimum. 

We have chosen to make the word “welfare” into a bad word. Welfare by definition is the health, happiness and fortunes of a person or group. And we have chosen to deny the health, happiness and fortune of children in our state. Referring to a bipartisan push for Medicaid expansion to cover postpartum care, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has said he  “cannot imagine supporting an expansion of welfare.” Why is providing welfare to support the health and wellbeing of children or anyone for that matter a negative concept? Why are we so afraid that if we support people in need  that it somehow takes away from us? For example, why would providing children with free lunches at school be a bad thing to do? Why would ensuring that children have access to medical care regardless of whether their parents can afford it or not be bad to do? Why would ensuring that children have access to quality care and education in their early years, regardless of their parents’ income, be a bad thing? Why would ensuring that children with disabilities have access to the services they need be bad? Why is it wrong  to have systems in our state that ensure we are doing everything we can to give all children the best opportunities to grow, thrive and become productive members of our communities? 

Rep. Vos and Joint Finance Committee co-chairs Sen.Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), and Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) all disagree with creating and funding policies that support our children. Time and time again, they have voted down policies that would have provided support to children. They have continued to forgo our future by not investing in our children. Instead,  they invest in the wealthiest in our state and invest in our punitive prison systems. They invest in large businesses with expensive lobbyists who demand tax breaks and deregulation. They invest in those most likely to donate to their campaigns. These grown-up white men cannot stand the idea of anyone, even a child, getting help from the state. If they had to pay for school lunch, they figure, so should  everyone else. If they had to pay for their child’s medical visit, then so should everyone else. If they had to pay for child care, then so should everyone else. They are incapable of seeing past their privileges. They cannot appreciate what it is like to be a child born into an environment that causes  harm and the trajectory that puts the child on. However, they will certainly be there when that child becomes an adult and enters the prison system. They are more than willing to pay for incarceration and punishment. 

That’s not just financially irresponsible — we spend about four times as much to keep someone in prison as we spend on education —  it’s inhumane, and it impoverishes our state and condemns children to unnecessary suffering and a bleak future.

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Bill rewards employers for child care aid. Providers say it won’t fix crisis.

By: Erik Gunn

Children at Mariposa Learning Center in Fitchburg. (2023 file photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

While providers, their supporters and Democratic lawmakers are pressing for a substantial continuing direct state investment in Wisconsin’s child care sector, Republicans in the Legislature are pursuing another route: expanding a child care tax credit for employers.

So far, child care providers and some small business owners aren’t interested.

The legislation circulated in draft form in early May. On Friday, May 30, it was formally introduced in the Assembly (AB 283) and the state Senate (SB 291).

“We really think it’s an important opportunity to reward employers for getting involved in child care,” Neil Kline, who says he encouraged GOP lawmakers to draft the tax credit legislation, told the Examiner.

Kline is executive director of Family Friendly Workplaces, a nonprofit based in Woodville that works with businesses in Burnett, Pierce, Polk and St. Croix counties. The organization certifies employers as family-friendly “to support their recruitment and retention efforts,” Kline said. To that end, one of its missions is focusing on workforce-related problems such as housing and child care access.

In early May Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Rep. Karen Hurd (R-Withee) circulated the proposed bill seeking cosponsors.

The legislation was written “to encourage more businesses to invest in child care in their communities,” Marklein and Hurd wrote in their May 12 cosponsor memo. “These changes will increase the number of available child care slots and provide more options for families.”

Demanding direct support

The legislation has been introduced while child care providers and Democrats are continuing their campaigns to revive direct support for the child care sector.

During the COVID-19 pandemic the Evers administration used federal pandemic relief funds to pay child care providers monthly stipends through the Child Care Counts program. The $20 million a month that the state doled out helped providers stabilize child care, increasing workers’ pay while keeping care more affordable for families.

When Evers tried to use $360 million from the 2023-25 budget to continue Child Care Counts with state money, none of the Legislature’s Republican majority got behind the measure. The governor was later able to reallocate other federal dollars to fund Child Care Counts through June 2025, but at half the original amount: $10 million a month.

State Sen. Sarah Keyeski speaks at a press conference held by Democrats in the Legislature on May 22, 2025. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

With lawmakers now writing the 2025-27 budget, Evers, child care providers and their advocates have been campaigning for $480 million to continue the program for the next two years. A survey commissioned by the state and conducted by the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty forecast closures and tuition hikes if the state payments end.  

At their very first budget vote, however, Republicans on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee removed the proposal along with more than 600 other items Evers had included in his budget draft. The GOP outnumbers the Democrats 3 to 1 on the committee.

Democratic lawmakers responded by circulating a draft stand-alone bill to reinstate the Evers proposal.

“Child care providers are facing increasing cost to operate while still making poverty-level wages,” said Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) at a May 22 press conference to announce the Democrats’ bill. “This has made it extremely difficult to hire and retain quality staff. [Meanwhile] providers desperately want to avoid rising costs and rates on families already struggling to afford child care.”

Child care as business investment

As yet no Republican lawmakers have gotten behind the Child Care Counts proposal.

Instead, the bills that Marklein and Hurd have introduced would make changes to the Business Development Tax Credit, which is provided through the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC).

That tax credit is granted to reward a variety of business investments and reduces the state income tax that a business pays by the amount of the credit.

Currently, a business that spends money on starting a child care program for its employees can get up to 15% of that cost taken off its tax bill. The credit applies only to capital investments, however — building or remodeling the child care facility.

Sen. Howard Marklein speaks to reporters at a press conference in May 2025. (File photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

“Unfortunately, we have heard that the current program parameters limit the incentive for businesses to invest in child care programs,” Marklein and Hurd wrote in their co-sponsor memo. “While many businesses may want to provide child care as a benefit to employees, the current credit limitations reduce the incentive for this investment.”

In addition to capital expenditures, the draft bill would extend the tax credit to cover 15% of several other costs:

  • An employer’s spending on child care program operations;
  • Spending to reimburse employees for their child care expenses;
  • Spending to buy or reserve openings for its employees at a child care center;
  • Contributions an employer makes to an employee’s flexible spending account for dependent care.

The draft bill also allows the tax credit for “any other cost or expense incurred due to a benefit provided by an employer to facilitate the provision or utilization by employees of child care services.”

The tax credit would be refundable: Even if the credit totals more than the employer pays in taxes, the company would get its full value back from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue. 

It also would give a refund to nonprofit employers, which don’t pay taxes.

“While not a silver bullet, these changes are another step in the right direction to address the child care issue in Wisconsin,” Marklein and Hurd wrote in their memo.

Neil Kline (Family Friendly Workplaces photo)

Kline, the Family Friendly Workplaces director, said the proposal would help engage employers more directly in addressing child care shortages.

“We really think it lays the groundwork for ongoing, self-sustaining support of child care in Wisconsin,” he said. “The primary goal is to help introduce new money into the child care — really, the child care ecosystem — by rewarding employers to support the ongoing expenses of child care, because the reality is that the sector needs additional money in it.”

Kline said he understands that “the ongoing operational economics” is a central problem for the child care sector. “That’s why we are so focused on helping employers find avenues and be rewarded for helping defray the expenses that are related to child care and helping support that ongoing operational side of child care.”

Chilly reception

To date the existing child care employer tax credit hasn’t had any takers, according to the WEDC. In January, as part of an overall evaluation of the state’s business development tax credit, an outside consultant told WEDC that “due to the high operational costs of childcare centers, affordability would likely be better achieved through subsidy as opposed to a tax incentive.”

The proposal to expand the tax credit isn’t gaining traction with providers or small business owners.

Main Street Alliance, which organizes small business owners to advocate for state and national legislation, has already announced objections to the bill.

Shawn Phetteplace, Main Street Alliance

“These kinds of programs and tax credits are often advantageous for employers who can afford compliance and the procedural costs and have economies of scale,” said Shawn Phetteplace, MSA’s national campaign director. That leaves out the typical small business, said Phetteplace, who sent lawmakers a memo calling the proposal “deeply unserious.”

Evan Dannells, a chef and owner of two Madison restaurants, questioned how a relatively small business like his would benefit from the tax credit.

Of his eight full-time employees, one has two children. Most of the others are graduate students. Directly paying for the one employee’s child care, even if receiving a tax credit, doesn’t feel fair to the others who don’t have that expense, Dannells said.

“If you put the onus of taking care of child care on the employer, the employer won’t hire people with children,” he said.

Dannells considers the cost of child care a legitimate use of his tax dollars. “This is why government should be doing this,” he said. He observed that children are required to go to school when they reach the age of first grade. “Why can’t we take care of them from age 1 to 5?”

While the tax credit may make it easier for a particular company’s employees to afford child care thanks to the employer’s support, skeptics of the proposal say that assistance only helps some people — not the system as a whole.

“That doesn’t help keep the doors open,” said Heather Murray, who operates a child care center in Waunakee. “We’re hitting crisis mode and centers are shutting down now, and a quarter of them will be gone if [Child Care Counts] isn’t renewed. We need the investment to go directly to providers to make sure that the doors stay open.”

Child care as a public good

National child care analyst Eliot Haspel is also skeptical. Haspel is a fellow at Capita, a think tank that works in the area of family policy. In February 2024, the think tank New America published his report raising questions about the impact of various employer-sponsored child care benefits.

Eliot Haspel (Capita.org photo)

Haspel views child care as a public good that benefits society broadly. For that reason, he contends, it should serve families regardless of whether they work for an employer able to fund a child care benefit.

“Small business will never be able to offer a really robust child care workplace benefit,” Haspel says. That puts small businesses and small business employees at a disadvantage if supporting child care is primarily an employer’s responsibility, he argues.

The large number of low-wage workers and “gig workers” “also raises the specter of increasing inequalities,” he writes in the New America report.

Haspel says that tying child care to a job also locks people into a job — or strands them from needed care if they lose their job. It also disrupts children’s early education at a time when they need consistent and reliable connections with their caregivers, advocates say.

“It’s really bad for workers and it’s really bad for kids for your child care to be tied to your employment,” Sen. Kelda Roys said at the Democrats’ May 22 press conference.

Tying health insurance to employment has been “a disaster,” Roys said. Health care is “rationed based on the job that you have or the wealth that you have,” she added, “and we do not want to exacerbate the current problems in our child care system by tying it to people’s employment.”

In his New America report and in an interview, Haspel says the problem isn’t providing child care at the workplace.

“I’m not against the idea of onsite child care — that can make all the sense in the world,” he says. “You can have an onsite center as part of a publicly funded system” — one to which employers contribute as taxpayers.

Focusing on the employer, however, carries with it “an opportunity cost,” Haspel says. “The more we say child care should be solved primarily through employers, the harder it is to say we need a fully public system that is universal and reaches everyone.”

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Child care providers to reopen centers, urge communities to join call for funding

By: Erik Gunn

Brynne Schieffer is a child care provider in Cameron, Wisconsin. She addressed a gathering outside the state Capitol on Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

After a week at the state Capitol to draw attention to their demand for a robust state fund for child care providers, advocates will spend the next couple of weeks back home to amplify their message.

Child care centers will reopen this week after closing their doors for all or part of the past week as providers sought to underscore the urgency of additional support for child care.

Providers will focus on raising more awareness in their local communities, said Corrine Hendrickson, co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), a coalition of providers and parents. Federal pandemic relief money that has bolstered providers since 2021 will run out completely by early July.

Corrine Hendrickson addresses a gathering of parents and child care providers outside the state Capitol on Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

This week, WECAN is encouraging providers to do “larger [local] community actions to help inform the community,” Hendrickson told the Wisconsin Examiner. “We’re also going to be calling other child care programs, making sure they even know this funding’s ending.”

WECAN organized the week of action in Madison, calling it “State Without Child Care.”

A small group of providers shut down for the week to dramatize the loss of child care that they contend will be inevitable without strong state support. Others closed for a day or two, and still others opted to stay open while also endorsing the funding demand.

Earlier this month leaders of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee removed a $480 million child care funding provision from Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed 2025-27 state budget, along with more than 600 other items.

On Friday, Hendrickson and WECAN cofounder Brooke Legler were joined by parents and other providers in front of the Capitol to reiterate their case for restoring the funds.

Katy Dicks has two children who use after-school child care. Dicks is the Wisconsin lead for Mother Forward, an advocacy group for policies to support families. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

“My family still currently pays 25% of our monthly income towards child care, and honestly that’s just after-school care and then summer camps,” said Katy Dicks of Sun Prairie, who has a 10-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son. When the children were younger, child care accounted for a third of the family’s income, she said — while “it has been suggested that 7% of a family’s income is what is affordable.”

Dicks leads the Wisconsin chapter of Mother Forward, a national advocacy group for child care, paid family leave and other policies to support families.

“We need policy that works for all families,” she said. “The quality of care for children approximately 3 months to 5 years should not be based on a child’s parents’ income.”

Also at the Capitol were Rochelle Navin and her husband. They have a 2-year-old daughter, and Navin is expecting twins. Their daughter is usually at Legler’s New Glarus child care center, The Growing Tree, while her parents work, but they juggled home care arrangements to support Legler’s decision to close the center for the week.

Navin told the Wisconsin Examiner it was disruptive to their routine, but the couple understood why Legler took that step.

Rochelle Navin speaks at a gathering of parents and child care providers on the steps outside the Wisconsin State Capitol on Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

“There’s two sides of it, right?” Navin said. “You fully understand why it’s gotten to this point, and why the extreme [response] needed to be taken, while at the same time being scared about what the future looks like.”

Evers’ proposal was to extend the Child Care Counts program, originally funded by federal pandemic relief money. The subsidy — originally $20 million a month, then cut back to $10 million a month in mid-2023 — enabled providers to raise wages without having to increase the fees parents pay for care.

A statewide survey conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute for Research on Poverty found that 25% of providers said they might close if the revenue isn’t replaced.

Hendrickson said in the coming weeks she and other providers who have been active in campaigning for the support will reach out to operators with messaging guidance for talking to parents as well as to their local lawmakers.

“This week was definitely about coming together as a group in solidarity and really standing up for ourselves and for our children and our families and our communities,” Hendrickson said Friday.

Over the course of the week at the Capitol, “we visited almost every single office, dropped off information, talked to staffers and really helped them see who it is that they’re hurting,” she said.

The providers who engaged in those conversations also aimed to show legislators “that their constituents actually know what they’re talking about — we know what we’re talking about with our businesses, we can speak to it and the reason why we need the funding, and it’s not a handout,” Hendrickson added.

In the Institute for Research on Poverty study, up to 40% of rural providers said they might close if the additional funding stops. That’s  nearly twice the projected closure rate of urban providers.

Brynne Schieffer operates a child care program in the community of Cameron, near Rice Lake in Northwestern Wisconsin.

“I have spent the entirety of my adult life caring for not only my own children, but other people’s children, raising them, raising them to be kind human beings that will hopefully one day go out and be carers themselves,” Schieffer told the group gathered on the Capitol steps Friday.

“The funding runs out in July, and to avoid closure we have to raise our rates between $35 and $50 per child per week. Whose pocketbook can handle that?”

Hendrickson told the Wisconsin Examiner that if rural providers have to raise their rates, they’re more likely to lose families who can’t afford the increase, with no one to replace them. In cities, she said, moderate- and low-income families will be hurt by the loss of child care, but there are likely to be more high-income families able to keep up with rising costs, so fewer providers would have to close.

All but one of the providers who made the trip to Madison last week were from rural communities around the state, Hendrickson said.

“People drove four or five hours to get here,” she said. “It’s because they don’t feel listened to [back in their districts]. And that’s what they said — ‘I’ve had to come all the way down here to get them to listen to me.’”

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To strike or not is a fraught decision for child care providers

By: Erik Gunn

Pinwheels posted at Tree Top child care center in Ashland represent the families on the waiting list for the program. (Photo courtesy of Theresa Fredericks)

Theresa Fredericks grew up in the world of child care.

Her mother founded a child care center in Ashland 52 years ago, when Fredericks was just 5 months old. Fredericks started her career in early education as a teacher there, then took over management and ownership of the program, Tree Top Child Development Center and Preschool.

Theresa Fredericks operates Tree Top Child Development Center and Preschool in Ashland, Wisconsin. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Fredericks has been proud of the center’s reputation in the community. Tree Top currently is licensed for 33 children at a time. With schedules staggered for some children, there are a total of 39 currently enrolled.

The waiting list is nearly twice that size: 72 children. This week Fredericks put up one pinwheel for each waiting list occupant on the law in front of the center, along with some signs. “Child care wanted,” one sign said. “Quality child care should be a right” said another. “Not a luxury,” said a third.

On Tuesday Fredericks was 300 miles away, at the state Capitol in Madison. Tree Top was closed, and Fredericks says it will be closed again on Wednesday and the rest of this week.

It was a tough decision, she said — but one she and her staff felt was necessary to make a point to Wisconsin lawmakers.

“Without state investment the parents can’t afford to pay rising tuition and staff can’t afford to stay at low wages,” Fredericks told the Wisconsin Examiner. “With investment, we will see a rise in teachers going into the field, we will see an increase in available programs.”

That’s why she and her staff decided to join the statewide strike called by child care providers.

Balancing better wages, affordable fees

The strike is a response to action May 8 by the Republican majority on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee to strip $480 million from Tony Evers’ proposed budget. The money would provide child care centers with an ongoing monthly stipend, continuing support first provided through federal COVID-19 pandemic relief funds.

Child care providers have credited the money for enabling them to increase the wages of child care teachers while avoiding increases in the fees that parents pay.

“I know that there are many people who think that because we care for very young children that we don’t count as teachers,” said Tree Top teacher Betsy Westlund at a combination press conference and rally on the Capitol steps Tuesday. “But the work we do is highly skilled and deeply critical to our society, the economy, and our communities.”

She described a common suggestion that child care providers hear when they talk about funding shortfalls: increase tuition and expand enrollment.

“Never mind the tuition is already so high that so few can afford it, and never mind how difficult it is to find teachers willing to work for low wages with no benefits,” Westlund said.

“No one considers supporting the quality of child care by supporting skilled teachers because they assume anyone will do,” she added. “And that hurts. Man, does that hurt — because I know how much I have to put in to become educated in early childhood.”

Republicans favor expanding employer child care tax credit; providers skeptical

“We are not just babysitting — we are laying the foundation for lifelong learning,” said Amber Haas, a fellow Tree Top teacher.

The organizers of the strike are calling it “State Without Child Care.” They’re doing it “so that our elected representatives, especially on the Joint Finance Committee, can actually have an idea of what is going to happen this summer,” said Corrine Hendrickson, co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN) and the operator of a family child care center in New Glarus.

Child care providers sit in the Assembly gallery during a floor session Tuesday afternoon, May 13. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

At the Assembly’s floor session Tuesday afternoon, child care providers sat in the overhead gallery. On the floor, Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) introduced some by name, adding that they “are here in the Capitol to advocate for $480 million in the budget for living wages for teachers in early childhood education.”

While some providers are going all in with the strike, many say they cannot — but they are equally concerned about the issue.

Assessing the risk

Angela Norvold has grown her child care program in Hudson from a family day care  serving eight children to two centers, each licensed for 43 children. One is for younger kids and the other for older children, including 4-year-old kindergarten.

“We thought hard and as a team,” about closing for the strike, Norvold said in an interview. She and the center’s administrators decided to send a letter to parents asking for their input. “They agreed that we should stay open, and my fear was that if we closed we would lose those people for good,” she said.

There’s a child care shortage in Hudson, Norvold said. At the same time, she added, there are several providers in the area to choose from, but many have rooms that aren’t in use because they cannot find teachers.

“I don’t know that [closing] would be making a statement where we are,” Norvold said. At the same time, though, “we did have some parents volunteer to keep their children home so that we could come [to Madison] today and tomorrow.”

Norvold said that her centers were once more affordable than those in Minnesota, drawing families who moved across the border to make their home.

“They didn’t just come for lower prices, they came for quality care, educated staff that wanted to stay, and a community that values raising children well,” she said in a brief speech at the rally.  

The funding providers received during the pandemic “didn’t just help families, it helped providers,” Norvold said. “It helped us retain and educate staff, it helped us keep costs down without sacrificing quality. It helped us build futures.”

If the support doesn’t continue, “we’re looking at yet another tuition increase — at least $30 per child per week,” Norvold said. “That will push our infant care to a level that is not sustainable for most working families. It is not sustainable for us either.”

Families show support

Families of children enrolled at Tree Top in Ashland have gotten behind the center’s decision to join the child care strike .

“Our families support us,” Fredericks said. “They know that we have done everything. We’re contacting our legislators, they’re contacting our legislators —over and over again, telling them how important it is.”

Tony Singler is the father of three children who have gone through Tree Top’s program, from the age of 3 months though 4-year-old kindergarten. His youngest child is now nearing graduation from the 4-K program.

“Everything that Theresa does there is just more in-depth and more one-on-one,” Singler said in a telephone interview Tuesday. For his kids, he said, the center has been an ideal place to help their children through their first years.

“There’s a lot of research and support that the early years are very important to the children,” Singler said. “Our pediatrician supports that, and it’s a choice we make to give our children the best chance they have.”

Singler is a certified public accountant; his wife is a nurse. “We’re not teachers,” he said. “We don’t know how to teach kids at that young age.”

Now they are juggling schedules and turning to friends for help while hoping their child can return to Tree Top soon.

“It’s tough,” said Singler, but he says he understands the position that Fredericks and the center’s employees are in.

“It’s been a very good center,” he said. “And if they don’t have the funding, and they lose the teachers because the teachers have to go somewhere else, and they have to cut the enrollment and people get cut — then you don’t have the opportunity to put your child into the center like that, give them the best chance forward in their early development.”

Child care providers and allies take part in a rally and press conference in front of the state Capitol Tuesday, the beginning of a strike by some child care providers to draw attention to their demands for state support. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

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Republicans favor expanding employer child care tax credit; providers skeptical

By: Erik Gunn

Corrine Hendrickson, child care provider and advocate, waits to speak at a rally in front of the state Capitol Tuesday, May 13. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Republican lawmakers have filed a proposed bill expanding an existing state business development tax credit related to child care. Child care providers who want to see a permanent state investment in their work said the bill was an inadequate gesture.

The state’s current business tax credit for child care applies only to capital expenditures for an employee child care program. The proposed bill would expand that to include other costs, including operating a child care program for employees, reimbursing employees for child care costs and other costs related to child care benefits.

Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) speak to reporters at a press conference May 8, 2025. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

“These changes will increase the number of available child care slots and provide more options for families,” wrote Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Rep. Karen Hurd (R-Withee) in a memo seeking cosponsors. “While not a silver bullet, these changes are another step in the right direction to address the child care issue in Wisconsin.”

Critics dismissed the measure as inadequate.

In a press release Rep. Randy Udell (D-Fitchburg) sent out after the Assembly’s floor session Tuesday, he noted that last week the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee “shot down 612 budget items including $480 million in childcare funding, and they proposed a childcare tax credit in its place that would benefit corporations instead of childcare providers under threat of closure.”

Shawn Phetteplace, national campaigns director for Main Street Alliance, sent a memo to lawmakers Tuesday also dismissing the proposal.

“Providing a 15% refundable business tax credit for businesses providing child care benefits will not appreciably increase access to child care for Wisconsin workers,” Phetteplace wrote. “It will simply be another tax break for large corporations. A similar credit exists at the federal level, the 45F credit, which is widely regarded as not achieving the goal of increasing affordability and accessibility to childcare for employees.”

Corrine Hendrickson, co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), said at a Capitol rally Tuesday she would like to meet with Marklein, who cochairs the finance committee, as well as Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) the other cochair.

The business tax credit is refundable: The credit recipient receives the full value of the credit back from the state, even if it is more than what the recipient owes in taxes. Hendrickson criticized the lawmakers for “refusing to do the same for our hard-working families with the child and dependent tax credit.”

The state’s child and dependent care tax credit for families, which was expanded in legislation enacted in March 2024, is not refundable. That effectively makes the tax credit worth much more to people with higher incomes than to those with lower incomes, as the Wisconsin Examiner has previously reported.

“We are not going to accept anything more that will entrench the wealthy and well connected into our system of having success in life,” Hendrickson said.

Born issued a statement this week that declared Republicans were focusing on other alternatives to the proposal for $480 million in subsidies for child care providers.

“Legislative Republicans have consistently supported a targeted approach to helping families afford child care, build provider capacity, and support recruitment of child care professionals,” Born said. “Parents are best equipped to make decisions about the needs of their children and Legislative Republicans are committed to providing parents with options, helping families directly make child care more affordable.”

Born said the Legislature spends “almost $1 billion” for child care. 

Hendrickson said that virtually all that money is from the federal government and simply passes through the state budget. Only about $24.4 million comes from the state as a required match.

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Child care advocates organize stoppage to send message for funding

By: Erik Gunn
child care center

Children play at The Growing Tree child care center in New Glarus. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

For more than two years Wisconsin child care providers have been warning that failing to provide ongoing support will mean their fees will go up and their numbers shrink drastically.

Starting Tuesday, some providers will try to give lawmakers and the public a taste of what that could look like — by staging a strike.

Their goal is to persuade Republican leaders on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee to commit to including in the state budget a significant child care support program.

Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed $480 million child care measure was among more than 600 items the committee removed on Thursday, May 8, from the draft budget Evers proposed for 2025-27. The motion to remove the items passed 12-3 with only Republican votes.

“We are demanding that the Joint Finance Committee guarantees they will put $480 million of state dollars back into the budget” for child care support, Corrine Hendrickson, a New Glarus child care provider and advocate, told the Wisconsin Examiner Monday.

Until they get such a guarantee, some providers have decided to close their doors, Hendrickson said.

Providers who intend to shut down their operations on Tuesday will go to the state Capitol for a press conference organized by Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), which Hendrickson cofounded. They plan to remain at the Capitol at least through the rest of this week, she said.

“The goal is that Republicans and Democrats will stop by and talk to us about our concerns,” Hendrickson said. She added she was hoping for “a real conversation” about measures that child care providers favor as well as proffered solutions that they oppose — “since they keep leaving us out of these conversations.”

Hendrickson said Monday afternoon that about 100 participants — providers, child care workers and parents in support of their actions — were expected at the Capitol Tuesday. She said there was not a count yet of how many child care centers might close.

Organizers have established a donation portal with Community Change Action to raise funds that will be used to offset lost wages for child care workers and providers who take part in the walkout, Hendrickson said.  

‘Day Without Child Care’ events

The action planned to start Tuesday follows events across Wisconsin Monday for “A Day Without Child Care” —a national campaign to draw attention to the need for child care programs and their need for stronger financial resources.

At a rally Monday morning in New Glarus, parents, state officials both elected and appointed, education leaders, local economic boosters and child care providers took turns championing the need for a state investment that would strengthen child care providers.

“Whether you’re a parent, an employer, an educator or a policy advisor, child care affects each and every one of us and it touches our future as well,” Cortney Barry, director of the New Glarus Chamber of Commerce, said at the rally. “The current system is not working, especially in small communities like ours. It’s just stretched too thin. It’s fragile, and it’s scary to think just how close we are to a true crisis.”

Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski said business leaders she met with in central Wisconsin last week told her that child care was a pressing need for them to be able to hire locally rather than going out of state, and that they could not find workers “not because people don’t want to work for [them] — they can’t find a place to send their kids.”

Democratic lawmakers and parents have since 2023 pushed to continue the monthly Child Care Counts support program that Wisconsin began with the help of federal money during the COVID-19 pandemic. The funds bolstered child care providers’ revenues so they could raise wages without charging parents more for care.

“We lost 6,000 [child care] programs between 2010 and 2019,” Hendrickson said at the New Glarus rally. “You know what stopped [the decline]? COVID — when we started getting money. All of the sudden we had more programs open at the end of the year than we had at the beginning of the year. It worked.”

A proposal to continue Child Care Counts with state funds was stripped from Evers’ 2023-25 budget, and the Legislature’s Republican majority repeatedly rejected attempts to restore the funding. The Evers administration was able to continue a reduced support program, but that will end with the final payment to child care centers early this summer.

That has escalated a campaign to keep the program going with state funds. In a state survey released in April 25% or more providers said they might close without continued support at the level Child Care Counts provided.

Hendrickson said at the New Glarus rally 54% of providers in Green County in the survey expected to close after the state funding program ends. Half of providers will have to raise tuition, she said — including her family child care business, which cares for eight children.

Even with fee increases totaling $50 a week phased in over the months of August and September to replace lost Child Care Counts revenue and higher expenses, “I will still be taking a pay cut,” she added.

Brooke Legler, the other WECAN cofounder and operator of The Growing Tree child care center in New Glarus, said shutting down to protest starting Tuesday is “our last effort — it’s the only thing we have as a community, as a profession, that we can say, like, ‘No, I’m not going to subsidize the economy off of my pay, off of the teachers that work there.’”

Providers who can’t shut down

Other child care providers who took part in Monday’s Day Without Child Care campaign across the state said they cannot shut down in protest this week, but they support providers who choose to do so.

In Waupaca, Tracy Jensen, director of Sunny Day Child Care, used the day as a teach-in for parents. “We  were raising awareness about the true cost of child care and how important it is to have child care in our community,” Jensen told the Wisconsin Examiner.

About 75 parents came through the center Monday, and Jensen said she plans to continue the opportunities for more such parent education through the week.

Sunny Day is the largest center in Waupaca County, Jensen said, with a license for 292 children at one time. There are 350 families with children enrolled currently, and a waiting list of 70 families, she said.

Jensen said that given the center’s size it won’t take part in the organized shut down. She said she told employees that if they want to go to Madison Tuesday to voice their concerns they can do so, and she has tried to organize staffing to make that possible.

Tricia Peterson directs Future All Stars Academy in Juneau. On Monday she closed the center for a day and took 11 employees to an event in Waunakee, where providers, staff and parents rallied.

Peterson won’t close Future All Stars for the walkout starting Tuesday, however.

“I’m not in a position right now to do that,” she said, “But I will say I will do everything I can in support of that.”

The center’s long-term future will depend on the state budget, however.

“I’m one of those centers that if funding doesn’t come forward in June, we’ll have to close,” Peterson said. She’s already notified parents about that possibility.

“They understood where we were coming from,” Peterson said. “We didn’t have one parent complain.”

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