"Wisconsin Today" spoke with the directors of two higher education child care centers about the needs of student-parents and the challenges they face when it comes to seeking child care and education.
The post Wisconsin’s campus child care facilities offer parents foothold in higher education appeared first on WPR.
Research shows that children benefit from after-school programs, but four in five Wisconsin children are missing out. | Photo of girl on playground by Tang Ming Tung/Getty Images
I have visited many after-school and summer programs across Wisconsin, from large urban sites to small rural schools, and what I’ve seen has stayed with me. I’ve watched students immersed in creative writing, acting and robotics. I’ve observed staff working one-on-one with kids navigating intense emotional challenges. And I’ve seen the smiles on middle schoolers’ faces as they reconnect with trusted mentors at the end of the school day. These programs are not “extras”; they provide crucial support to kids, families, and entire communities.
And yet, for far too many Wisconsin families, these opportunities remain out of reach. According to the latest America After 3PM report, nearly 275,000 Wisconsin children who would participate in after-school programs are not enrolled because none are available. Four in five children who could benefit from these supports are missing out. Parents cite cost, lack of transportation, and a simple lack of local programming as the biggest barriers.
The impact of these programs is undeniable. Parents overwhelmingly rate their children’s after-school programs as excellent or very good, reporting that they keep kids safe, build social skills, and support mental wellness. Research in Wisconsin shows that students who participate in extracurricular activities are less likely to report anxiety or depression and more likely to feel a sense of belonging.
Out-of-school time programs often provide the space for deep, long-term mentoring, a powerful protective factor in a young person’s life. While teachers are often stretched thin during the academic day, out-of-school time staff can focus on the relational side of development.
When funding is unstable, it undermines the very connections that make these programs transformative. Recently, a Boys & Girls Club director shared the human cost of budget constraints: they were forced to reduce a veteran staff member to part-time. This didn’t just trim a budget; it severed a multi-year mentorship. When that bond was broken, several youths stopped attending entirely.
Across the country, after-school and summer programs are increasingly viewed as essential to youth development. Twenty-seven states provide dedicated state funding for these programs; Wisconsin provides none. States as different as Alabama and Texas recognize that federal funding alone is not enough. So do our Midwestern neighbors.
Public support for these programs is strong and bipartisan. Families across Wisconsin want safe, enriching opportunities for their children. With a significant budget surplus, Wisconsin is uniquely positioned to invest in its future.
State leaders should view out-of-school programming as a foundation for safety, mental health, and long-term economic opportunity. We have the resources; now we need the will. By committing to consistent state funding, we can ensure that every young person in Wisconsin has a place to belong when the school bell rings.
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A September poll from First Five Years Fund, an advocacy group, found that 4 out of 5 rural Americans “say the ability of working parents to find and afford quality child care is either in a ‘state of crisis’ or ‘a major problem.’” (Photo by Sue Barr/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Several U.S. Senate Democrats launched an investigation into how the Trump administration’s child care funding cuts and policy changes are affecting rural families, in a Sunday letter provided exclusively to States Newsroom.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Raphael Warnock of Georgia led four of their colleagues in urging the respective heads of Rural Development at the Department of Agriculture and the Administration for Children and Families at the Department of Health and Human Services to offer up more information on their “current capacity to support child care, particularly in rural communities.”
Joining Warren and Warnock are Sens. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, Alex Padilla of California and Jeff Merkley of Oregon.
“Despite child care being one of the biggest costs American families face, the Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to the federal programs that aim to make child care more accessible and affordable, including ACF and USDA’s Rural Development Office,” the senators wrote to acting Under Secretary for Rural Development Todd Lindsey and ACF’s Assistant Secretary Alex Adams.
USDA Rural Development and ACF work to expand access to child care in rural areas.
The senators pointed to a September poll from First Five Years Fund, an advocacy group, which found that 4 out of 5 rural Americans “say the ability of working parents to find and afford quality child care is either in a ‘state of crisis’ or ‘a major problem.’”
The group said the administration’s slashing of staff at agencies and programs that support affordable child care, including ACF and Rural Development at USDA, are raising concerns that the administration is “failing families across the country and adding to the affordability crisis facing working-class families.”
The senators raised alarm over some of the administration’s most sweeping actions regarding child care programs, including attempts to cut off nearly $2.4 billion from the multibillion-dollar Child Care and Development Fund, or CCDF, to California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York earlier in January.
All are led by Democratic governors and the administration cited concerns about allegations of fraud.
CCDF — administered within the Office of Child Care under ACF — provides federal funding to states, territories and tribes to help low-income families obtain child care.
The five Democratic-led states sued in a New York federal court over the freeze, which also included $7.35 billion from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and $869 million from the Social Services Block Grant — totaling more than $10 billion when combined with CCDF.
A judge temporarily blocked the administration from freezing the funds earlier this month. A separate judge extended that order Friday.
“States are challenging the legality of this freeze, but the consequences would be devastating should the courts permit the administration to permanently withhold the funds,” the senators wrote.
Days prior to the announced freeze, the administration said states had to provide “justification” that federal child care funds they receive are spent on “legitimate” providers to get those dollars.
That demand followed allegations of fraud in Minnesota child care programs, which had prompted HHS to freeze all child care payments to the state.
The administration also announced earlier in January it would be rescinding multiple Biden administration child care rules that “required states to pay providers before verifying any attendance and before care was delivered.”
The Democrats argued that President Donald Trump has also “attacked Head Start at every turn since his inauguration.”
ACF administers Head Start, which provides early childhood education, nutritious meals, health screenings and other support services to low-income families.
The senators noted that “Head Start is especially crucial in rural communities, where it is often the only licensed child care program available.”
During the record-long government shutdown in 2025, scores of Head Start centers experienced lapses in funding grants as a result.
Even prior to the shutdown, Head Start already experienced chaos during the Trump administration, such as reports of delays in accessing approved grant funding, regional office closures and firings at ACF’s Office of Head Start.
Meanwhile, USDA saw more than 20,000 employees leave in the first half of 2025, according to a report from the agency’s Office of Inspector General. More than one-third of the agency’s Rural Development unit left during that time.
“Instead of strengthening the programs that aim to address the rural child care crisis, President Trump is firing the people who administer them,” the senators wrote.
On top of that, the agency in March confirmed it would be slashing around $1 billion in previously announced funding for programs to help child care facilities, schools and food banks purchase from local farmers.
USDA also faced backlash during the shutdown for refusing to tap into a multibillion-dollar contingency fund in order to keep benefits flowing for the country’s main food assistance program known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
The senators urged Lindsey and Adams to respond to their inquiries by Feb. 16.
USDA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In response to a request for comment, ACF said Monday it is “currently reviewing the U.S. Senators’ letter and will respond to them directly.”
In Walworth County, Wisconsin, a grassroots effort is reimagining what care can look like across generations. A local community group has launched the “Nursery to Nursing Home” campaign, a proposal to transform a vacant wing of the county’s nursing home into a combined child care center and living space for older adults, addressing caregiving shortages.
“Some of the issues we’ve seen as top concerns in Walworth County include a lack of child care, a lack of senior care and the loneliness that comes with living in a rural community with an aging population and harsh winters. Together, it all creates a perfect storm for feeling isolated,” said Maddie Sweetman, who lives in Walworth County. “(The intergenerational care center) would be a beautiful way to not only address the need for seats and beds, but also to bring these two vulnerable communities together.”
The Lakeland Health Care Center, a county-owned skilled nursing facility in Elkhorn, has had a vacant wing since 2019 when staff shortages forced the facility to downsize. Now, Groundswell Collective, a local community group with a track record of advocating for older residents, is leading an effort to turn that space into 12 apartments for older people and a child care center that serves 60 to 70 children. After nearly a year of community organizing around the proposal, the Walworth County Board approved funding for a feasibility study in November for the intergenerational care center, a major step in advancing the project.
“In Walworth County, all 2,240 licensed child care slots, spread across the 35 active centers listed on the DCF (Department of Children and Families) website, are already full. That leaves nearly 2,680 children without stable care,” said Abriana Krause, who lives and works in East Troy as a child care provider, at a board committee meeting. “At the same time, Wisconsin is projected to need 30,000 additional senior beds by 2030 .… We are facing two parallel crises, child care and senior care, and the vacant wing at Lakeland Health Care Center offers us a rare opportunity to address both at once.”
As part of the proposal, county employees would get priority for child care slots.
Sweetman, a mother of two who is a full-time student and employee at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, knows firsthand how valuable this benefit could be for parents. When Sweetman’s children were younger, her husband worked at Lakeland Health Care Center as a certified nursing assistant while he completed nursing school. Unable to afford child care, Sweetman stayed home with her young children.
“I wonder whether having a child care facility under the same roof would have given me more access to child care, allowing me to return to school work sooner, graduate sooner, and be working full time now,” Sweetman said. “I also think about how that might have changed our overall trajectory, and what it would have meant for me personally as I managed two kids under two on my own and all the mental health challenges that came with that.”
Now, Sweetman is part of Groundswell Collective and advocating for other families to have the opportunity she did not.
“That (child care opportunity) didn’t happen for us, but I think about how it could happen for people going forward and for our community, not just for those who have children but also for seniors and for people who may soon need assisted living,” Sweetman said.
Groundswell Collective has leaned heavily on research to make its case.
“We have looked into the evidence-based benefits of intergenerational care,” said Deb Gill-Dorgan, a retired speech language pathologist and member of Groundswell Collective. “We know that adults report less loneliness, better health, a renewed sense of purpose in life, and it improves children’s social skills and educational outcomes.”
Research shows that intergenerational care sites boost well-being for both children and older people, reducing isolation, improving cognitive and physical health for older people, and cultivating empathy and connection in young children. Studies also find that these programs create cost efficiencies, especially when facility expenses and other operational costs can be shared.
Jill Juris, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Recreation Management and Physical Education at Appalachian State University, is seeing these benefits through her research with BRIDGE2Health, an intergenerational mentoring program. The program is a collaboration between the Cooperative Extensions in Ohio and Virginia that connects high school students with older adults and is generating qualitative and quantitative data demonstrating increases in social connections and life skills.
“These findings align with other research indicating intergenerational interaction improves empathy, peer relationships and academic performance in younger populations, while increasing the quality of life and sense of purpose for older adults,” Juris said. “By bridging the gap between ages, these programs truly make a difference, improving the all-around well-being of everyone involved.”
Sheri Steinig, director of strategic initiatives and communications at Generations United, said that intergenerational care fosters relationships that transcend age that can serve the community as a whole.
“There’s a breakdown of age stereotypes that we see at a very young age when babies and toddlers are around older people,” Steinig said. “There are these characteristics of care, compassion and empathy that ripple out into both the families and the communities.”
In intentionally creating spaces that bring older and younger people together, these benefits organically emerge in daily interactions.
“By eliminating or reducing barriers that we’ve unintentionally put up between connecting younger and older people, there’s just a wealth of benefits that we can see in terms of educational outcomes, well-being, physical and mental health,” Steinig said.
“Intergenerational spaces offer opportunities for meaningful interactions through repeated connections that foster lasting relationships,” Juris said. “Children and older adults seeing each other within a daily routine allows for magical moments of interaction to occur.”
Those benefits extend to the caregiving staff. Steinig said that daily interaction with both children and older adults can enhance the work environment and make intergenerational centers more rewarding for staff.
Gill-Dorgan said she hopes that prioritizing county employees for child care placements at the proposed intergenerational center will help retain nursing staff, who can experience high turnover while managing their own family caregiving responsibilities.
For many involved in Groundswell Collective, the intergenerational center proposal offers a path forward on common ground at a time of uncertainty.
“As gaps widen at the federal level, I feel like there’s this turn to local solutions and our local government, and how can we fill the gaps? I see this intergenerational facility as part of that effort,” Sweetman said.
Pastor Lily Brellenthin, a mother of three who leads a Lutheran church in Walworth that serves an older congregation, has found hope through her community work with Groundswell Collective.
“In a world that’s so divided, to have some people now linking arm and arm to come together in our little place of the world is so uplifting,” said Brellenthin. “I feel like it’s proving that we are stronger in community.”
“We hope this is just the beginning,” Gill-Dorgan said. “We hope something like this will be seen as being beneficial and a wonderful idea, and hopefully other people will get involved and build more such centers.”
This article was written with the support of a journalism fellowship from The Gerontological Society of America, The Journalists Network on Generations, and The Commonwealth Fund.
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
‘Nursery to nursing home’: Walworth County group envisions shared care across generations is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
An aerial view of residential housing under construction at a planned community in Fontana, California, on Sept. 17, 2025. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats began detailing their affordability agenda Thursday ahead of the November midterm elections, starting with a focus on housing.
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said during an event at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, that if Democrats regain control of the House and Senate they would pass legislation to expand rental assistance, reduce barriers to home ownership, build more housing and address predatory practices.
Schumer listed several statistics he finds concerning, including that the median price of a home has gone up by 55% since the coronavirus pandemic, that rent has risen by one-third and that the average age for a first-time home buyer is 40.
“That’s a record high,” he said. “That’s a devastating statistic that should shake up everyone in a position of power at the federal, state or local levels.”
Schumer said the outline for housing is just the first of several cost-of-living policy proposals Democrats will detail this year as they seek to sway voters in key districts and states to vote for their candidates over Republicans.
Democrats, he said, will also focus on how to curb the rising cost of groceries, electricity, child care and health care as part of the midterms messaging.
On housing, Schumer said Democrats will focus on legislation that would
Democratic bills would provide down payment assistance, lower the cost of mortgage insurance, expand access to portable mortgages and “reform homeowners insurance which is now at a crisis level and so important for people who can’t afford that down payment,” Schumer said.
Democrats have relatively good odds of winning back control of the House during the November midterm elections, especially since the president’s party tends to lose that chamber two years after taking power.
Campaigns to regain control of the Senate will be much more difficult for Democrats, who face challenges keeping seats in Georgia and Michigan, while trying to flip Republican seats in Alaska, Maine, North Carolina and Ohio.
Even if voters were to give Democrats control of Congress, leaders in the party would still need some Republican buy-in to move legislation past the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster and need President Donald Trump to sign legislation into law, unless they had the two-thirds needed in each chamber to override a veto.
Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz said during a panel discussion with Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth that was moderated by CAP President and CEO Neera Tanden that he’s been “radicalized on housing” and pressed for members of the party to talk realistically about issues with supply and affordability.
“And the reason is that our shortage nationwide, but especially in Hawaii, is so acute that people can’t make the math work anymore,” Schatz said. “In Hawaii, people are paying more than 50%, all-in, of their income for housing, either rental housing or paying a mortgage. And what I have come to realize is that we are the problem.”
Schatz argued that the government “is the primary impediment to alleviating the shortage” and said that realization has led him to have some “very difficult conversations.”
In Hawaii, he said, there are environmental and cultural protections intended to safeguard “special places” but that have ended up applied more broadly, impeding housing development.
“They were not originally conceived to prevent a walk-up apartment building on the corner of Eisenberg and King to house Native Hawaiian families,” Schatz said. “And yet those same laws are being weaponized against people in Hawaii even being able to live in the state of Hawaii.”
Schatz said Democrats must be honest with voters about what their housing policies would mean for communities throughout the country, contending the party needs to “solve the politics” around expanded housing before it can tackle the policy debate.
“I actually think we have to have this family conversation around the politics of housing and realize that some of our base voters in the suburbs, who are otherwise good all the way down the line on all the progressive issues, also want to prevent a nurse or a firefighter or the disabled or the elderly or the student from living anywhere near them,” Schatz said. “And we have to have that conversation in the progressive coalition.”
Duckworth said some solutions to housing could come through rethinking the processes in place now, similar to how the Department of Veterans Affairs changed its approach to homeless veterans.
“VA used to say, ‘You have to get clean and sober, and then we’ll give you a voucher to get into an apartment.’ And so it made no sense, right?” Duckworth said.
“So we had to change the thinking to what the homelessness community had been working on, which is reduction of harm — get them into the housing and then work on getting them clean and sober,” she continued. “And by changing that thought, we were able to immediately start pulling veterans off the streets, put them into housing units where they immediately were also getting counseling, getting treatment.”
Duckworth compared the sometimes slow process of housing inspections that can stop construction with the way the government approaches vehicle safety as one possible way to get things moving faster.
“With automobiles, we say, ‘This car that you’re manufacturing must be able to withstand a crash at 35 miles an hour into a brick wall.’ And then when they meet and get that car approved, when we go buy that car, we don’t have to take that car to get it inspected from top to bottom, like we do with homes,” Duckworth said.
She added: “So why would we not say to homebuilders, especially (prefabricated) homes, if you come to VA and you are willing to get two models of your home, pre-inspected, pre-approved, then when a veteran builds a new home and they say, ‘Hey, I’m going to choose one of these models that already has a VA good housekeeping seal of approval,’ they can shortcut that inspection process.”
Child care provider Heather Murray, right, gives Mandela Barnes, left, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin governor, a tour of her facility, Art House Preschool in Waunakee. Joining them were, second from left, Paula Drew and Kayla Gardner, both from the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
Wisconsin should make child care universally available, just as public education is, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes said Thursday during a child care center visit that was part of the rollout for his campaign for governor.
“I support having full, comprehensive, universal childcare,” Barnes told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview that followed a round table session with providers, parents and child care policy analysts. “I, for sure, hope others understand the urgency of this issue, understand the complexity of it as well, and we’ll be ready to fight tooth and nail to do everything we can to improve the system for our providers, for our parents and most importantly, for the young people, for the students, for our children.”
The round table took place at the Art House Preschool, a Waunakee child care center.
Barnes is not the first Democratic hopeful in the 2026 race for governor to visit the Art House. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley held a round table on child care issues in November at the same location. And virtually every other active Democratic primary candidate in the governor’s race mentions affordable child care on their website as a priority of their campaigns.
During his event Thursday, Barnes coupled state funding for child care with his support for better public education funding.
“If we aren’t invested in children, what are we doing as a state? What are we doing as a country?” he asked at the start of the nearly hour-long discussion. “We need to ensure, one, that our schools, K-12, are fully funded, but also that our children are ready to enter K-12. And that means that early childhood education has support.”
During most of the session, Barnes refrained from lengthy policy prescriptions and focused instead on questions for the round table participants — asking for both their biggest challenges and their “biggest ideas” for addressing Wisconsin’s child care needs.
“Direct investment to providers, I believe, would be the best to keep people from closing their doors,” said Heather Murray, the owner of Art House, who has been a child care provider for nearly two decades. “I like to call it a public good, because I don’t believe it can exist without government funding.”
Stephanie Frontz is an IT specialist and the mother of four, one of them at Art House. She recently gave birth to infant twins who are slated to be enrolled there.
“We need the help there so the state can help pay fair wages,” Frontz said. That will ensure child care workers stay, which in turn makes it possible for more parents to work, she added. “It impacts my family and the economy if I can’t work.”
Child care providers who have a shortage of teachers reduce the hours that they’re open, said Carly Eaton, a parent whose day job is with an organized labor environmental group.
She understands why, but jobs in construction, manufacturing and especially health care often “don’t fit in the 7 a.m. to 6 a.m. hours that you may be able to find child care,” Eaton said. “To hear legislators on a certain side of the aisle talk about the worker shortage and then not do anything about child care just breaks my brain.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal relief funds included money designated for child care. In Wisconsin that money went to the Child Care Counts program, which originally distributed $20 million a month to the state’s child care providers.
The monthly support was later cut in half and extended through mid-2025 after the GOP majority in the Wisconsin Legislature rejected the proposal Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, made in the 2023-25 state budget to continue the subsidy with state funds.
Evers again proposed ongoing state funding in the 2025-27 budget. “I heard a lot of people say during the last budget cycle, ‘We can’t just keep writing checks …. It didn’t work,’” said Kayla Gardner, engagement specialist at the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association. “It actually did — it very much did work.”
“When the payments were the highest, we had very few closures,” said Paula Drew, director of early childhood education policy and research at WECA. “It stabilized the field.”
When the current budget finally passed in late June, it for the first time included some direct state funding for centers, but just for one year and at a smaller amount than Evers or child care advocates originally sought.
That money helped, said Jenn Bilderback, administrative director of Big Oak Child Care in Madison. But it also came with restrictions that made it less accessible for some providers and it will go away in June 2026.
“We have to do something that’s much more universal and that allows the flexibility for a provider,” Bilderback told Barnes.
She said her center’s board of directors, most of whom are parents, have supported providing benefits — a rarity for many child care providers — and paying a living wage. “We need to do this, but the cost of living in Madison and outside Madison is increasing too high to be able to keep up with that.”
Barnes — who along with most Democrats running for elected office in the 2026 cycle has seized on affordability as a campaign theme — responded that “the cost of living is top of mind for everybody.” But then he turned back to her earlier comments.
“You mentioned ‘something more universal,’ Barnes said. “I want you to say the thing out loud. Somebody can say it — universal child care, right?”
“We do dream big, and we do think of all these things,” said Gardner. “But what we see in return is almost nothing.”
Drew said that with turnover among child care teachers, programs are often operating at less than capacity, even as parents have trouble finding care.
“We don’t necessarily, right now, need new buildings, because we’ve got 33,000 open spots . . . across the state. We need teachers that can be working in programs to open up those 33,000 spots,” Drew said. “We’ve got the demand, but we also need the supply available in early education.”
Katie Licitis, an Art House Preschool teacher, said she first took the job four years ago after she and her husband moved to Wisconsin from Georgia. For the first time, she said, she needed child care after having been a stay-at-home mom until then. But with the turnover that providers are seeing, she asked Barnes, “Do you have a plan to retain teachers?”
“You shouldn’t have to choose between a job you love and Kwik Trip, as an example, because they’re paying more money, right?” Barnes replied. “Like, that’s an indictment on the way that things have been going. And I think that’s a big part of the broader universal child care package. And I don’t think people should be shy about wanting universal child care in this state. I think that this is exactly one of those areas that Wisconsin should be a leader in the nation.”
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