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In Milwaukee at H.W. Longfellow School’s Community Learning Center, which is operated by the South Side nonprofit Journey House, staff are always finding new ways to immerse students in art and culture.

To help, Cherise Myers, Journey House director of community partnerships, said the nonprofit utilizes state Child Care Bridge payments to bring in instructors specializing in art, dance, digital media and more.

Now Longfellow and other Milwaukee Public Schools-based before- and after-school programs must grapple with how to continue exposing students who don’t often get exposure to art while losing thousands of dollars in stabilization payments.

“This is kind of putting the nail in the coffin,” Myers said. “Not being able to have the money to contract or work with these opportunities.”

The Child Care Bridge Payments Program was the state’s temporary solution to the federal government sunsetting Child Care Counts, a monthly federal child care stabilization program born out of the pandemic that supported nearly 1,400 child care providers in the city of Milwaukee. 

The Wisconsin Legislature budgeted for a year of Child Care Bridge payments, which ended last month. 

Journey House received over $6,300 from the state in 2026 to support the Longfellow Community Learning Center. About 90 MPS-based before- and after-school programs collectively received $1.2 million in 2025.

Activities to be cut

Milwaukee Recreation, which received Child Care Bridge funding to operate child care as part of its programming at MPS locations, has struggled to attract and retain high-quality staff with competitive wages.

The monthly Child Care Counts and later state Child Care Bridge funding were critical in raising wages and giving employee bonuses, Community Learning Center coordinator Leighton Cooper said. 

Cooper, who coordinates Community Learning Centers through Milwaukee Recreation, said the funding helped staff stay longer at their programs overall.

“It’s causing us less and less to have to go out and find and recruit more and more staff to operate our programs,” he said. 

Now that Child Care Counts and Child Care Bridge payments have ended, Cooper said Milwaukee Recreation may have to cut funding for some supplies and activities, stop giving bonuses and cut staff positions beyond the required ratios from the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families.

“Our staff wages certainly can’t be changed,” Cooper said. “Staff are paid and that’s going to help us to keep staff in spaces.”

Journey House received less funding than other Community Learning Centers, and Myers said the organization already can’t always compete with wages at other schools.  

Myers said the ended funding may not affect new employees who were hired on starting pay, but veteran employees may leave if pay drops. Many already rely on other jobs to make ends meet, she said. 

Still, Myers said the money helped Journey House bring in instructors from local colleges, universities and community organizations to lead activities because those instructors aren’t always free.

Myers said Journey House programming depends on student needs, but the organization runs chess and Lego clubs, flag football, basketball and cheerleading classes, painting and metal classes and more.

500 programs across state losing funds

Across Milwaukee, about 90 MPS-based Community Learning Centers and before- and after-school camps received $1.2 million in 2025, according to Wisconsin Department of Children and Families data. 

Randy Neve, lead of the Wisconsin Out of School Time Alliance, estimates more than 500 before- and after-school programs serving school-aged children statewide are losing monthly stabilization payments. Milwaukee’s MPS-based programs are among them.

Many of the providers who received state and federal stabilization payments were early-childhood centers serving infants and toddlers, NNS reported in June. 

But Neve said these programs, including the ones across MPS, serve thousands of 4- to 12-year-olds. The loss of stabilization payments will affect that population of children and families. 

“In the long run, the kids are the ones that lose out and are hurt,” Neve said.

Push for the state

The state budgeted for one year of Child Care Bridge payments in the biennial budget. 

Legislators including state Sen. LaTonya Johnson, who represents District 6 on Milwaukee’s North Side, proposed SB 322 to support child care providers, but the bill didn’t get a hearing, NNS reported. 

Neve said the Wisconsin Out of School Time Alliance is working with other organizations to advocate for greater funding for before- and after-school programs like the one Journey House hosts at Longfellow. He and other partners are educating policymakers about what the loss of this funding will mean for providers and families. 

Myers said many of the families at Longfellow are already struggling with the rising cost of living, and the loss of stabilization payments will ultimately hurt students and families. 

“Things are tough, and it’s sad to say that this is just going to make things tougher,” Myers said.

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Alex Klaus is the education solutions reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.

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Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

After-school programs lose thousands each month as child care stabilization funding ends 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.

Funding that has been supporting child care centers in Wisconsin since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic expires this week, and childcare centers around the state are making plans to adapt — or close entirely.

The post State funding for Wisconsin’s childcare centers ended this week. Here’s how they plan to adapt. appeared first on WPR.

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$37,000. 

More than the price of a new Toyota RAV-4 or Subaru Outback, two of the more popular cars I see on the streets of Madison. 

Far more than the average rent for a three-bedroom apartment in this fast-growing, rent-spiking city. 

More than my family’s mortgage and health insurance costs combined. 

Well over half of my $65,000 salary. 

$37,000, if you haven’t already guessed, is about how much it’ll cost to send my two kids, aged 1 and 3, to daycare this year. 

If you or someone you know has young kids, this probably isn’t news to you. 

The Department of Children and Families surveys child care providers across the state each year to assess the going rate for child care in every county and tribal nation. The latest figures, released last week, show the median price for full-time infant care in a child care center — by far the most common place for regulated child care in Wisconsin today — rose 8% since 2025 to $17,400 a year. 

That’s nearly a quarter of the median family’s income — and that’s just for one kid. 

Families like mine, with two kids still too young for school, often find themselves paying more for child care than for housing. 

That’s one reason families are having kids later and having fewer kids, said Jeff Pertl, secretary-designee of the state’s Department of Children and Families, in a call with reporters. 

“This is at the heart of this conversation about how people feel like they just can’t afford, not just child care, but all the things in their lives — this sense that Americans are falling further behind,” Pertl said. “This is the first (modern) generation to be worse off than their parents … because things are just so expensive.”

Soon, families could face even higher costs as the state payments that have propped up child care providers for years end this week. 

Economists today regularly call child care a broken market because parents are already paying more than they can afford, and child care businesses still can’t afford to pay staff family-sustaining wages. According to DCF, the average wage for a lead child care teacher in Wisconsin is $13.55, less than half the $28.34 average for all Wisconsin workers.

I’ve been reporting on the child care dilemma for years. Now, I want to hear from you. How much of your family’s income goes to child care? How are you managing to pay? Has the cost forced your family to make any difficult decisions? Have you looked into whether you qualify for a subsidy? Email me at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org or call or text me at ‪(608) 620-5610‬.

How much are you paying for child care? 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.

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It isn’t easy running a child care center. 

But for business owners like Daniel Balderas, who owns two centers, a monthly stabilization payment from the federal government called Child Care Counts was a major help to bring the children on field trips and take care of his employees. 

“I’m giving teachers bonuses based on performance, or sometimes it’s random or I see teachers working hard,” Balderas said. “Gifts for teachers’ birthdays, I buy the teachers’ lunches often.”

When those funds dried up last year, the state stepped in to offer one more year of stabilization payments through a Child Care Bridge Payment Program.

Now, Balderas’ daycares are among almost 1,400 child care centers in Milwaukee that will lose state funding at the end of June.

Without the support, about one in five Milwaukee County child care providers predict they’ll have to close, 39% will have to raise tuition and another 44% will have longer waitlists, according to a 2025 study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty.

‘Don’t got the funding anymore’

Balderas’ biggest challenge has been finding and retaining staff. 

Balderas, who is also certified as a lead teacher, said he’s lost some great teachers to schools or franchises that offer higher pay he can’t afford to match. As a result, he covers shifts, and employees sometimes work between his two child care centers when they are short-staffed. 

The number of children a child care center can legally serve is limited by the number of staff working at that business, even if a facility has the physical space and materials to accommodate more, said Paula Drew, director of Early Care and Education Policy and Research at the Wisconsin Early Childcare Association. 

Balderas has not struggled with retention alone. Research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2024 found that about 33,000 potential child care spots across the state could be filled if staffing barriers were addressed.

Child care stabilization funding made it easier for providers like Balderas to offer more competitive benefits to retain staff. 

But when the federal government cut Child Care Counts funding in half in 2023, Balderas said there were times that the business was merely breaking even as he continued supporting the staff with the reduced funds. 

Ninety percent of providers who received Child Care Counts funding before payments were cut in 2023 said the funding cuts changed their ability to offer competitive compensation, and 81% said the payment cuts contributed to changes in their ability to hire new staff, according to the 2024 study.

Balderas said he can keep his business afloat once the state’s child care stabilization payments end this month, but it will cut into his bottom line and he will have to absorb the losses.

“I can’t tell a teacher that deserves a raise that ‘well, we don’t got the funding anymore, I can’t give you the raise I promised,’” Balderas said.

Subsidy payments may not adjust for tuition increases

With 39% of Milwaukee County child care providers reporting they will have to raise tuition after child care stabilization payments end, one of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association’s biggest concerns for Milwaukee is how the tuition increases will impact families on subsidy. 

The Wisconsin Shares Child Care Subsidy Program subsidizes a portion of monthly child care costs for low-income families, at or above the price of 75% of child care slots.

Ruth Schmidt, executive director at the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, said child care tuition in Milwaukee is already one of the highest in the state, and Wisconsin does not have the ongoing funding to support increased subsidy payments for growing tuition. 

Schmidt said she’s concerned that the state subsidy payments will not keep up with rising tuition. 

“It will be underfunded as it exists right now,” Schmidt said.

Almost all of Balderas’ families at his two child care centers receive child care subsidies.

The state is also paying more toward child care subsidies than it ever has in the last 24 months. As of March 2026, the state paid $28.4 million in Wisconsin Shares child care subsidy payments to Milwaukee County families, supporting almost 25,000 children in the county.

Wisconsin did invest in education for 4-year-olds in last year’s budget, Drew said. She anticipates that more providers will turn to serve these ages due to the expenses of providing care for infants and toddlers.

State lags behind with solutions

State Sen. LaTonya Johnson, who represents District 6 on Milwaukee’s North Side, can relate to the challenges of Milwaukee child care providers. 

A former early childhood educator, Johnson transitioned her daycare, open 24 hours, seven days a week, to entirely serve families on subsidies. 

“For my kids, that was one of the best things that ever happened to them,” Johnson said. “But for me, by the time I ran for the seat, my house was in foreclosure. I almost lost my house.” 

Since the state bridge payments were temporary, Johnson and her colleagues introduced a bill last year to allocate $220 million in child care stabilization payments for 2025-26 and 2026-27 using federal Child Care Development Funds and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grants. 

The bill also would have provided additional subsidies for child care providers to cover the costs to care that family subsidies don’t cover.

Johnson said those bills died because Republican colleagues did not give the bills public hearings before the legislative sessions ended.

The Wisconsin Early Childcare Association is watching states like New Mexico, Louisiana and Alaska that are finding new ways to fund child care on a long-term scale, but the state is falling behind. 

“Wisconsin is one of the very few states that does not put state revenue directly into child care, or didn’t until last year,” Schmidt said. “They now do through the 4-year-old program.”

Balderas said there isn’t much other funding for child care owners like him who take care of toddlers and infants. He said there’s a food program, but “it’s super tedious,” requiring providers to serve certain food with specific portions.  

“I try to apply for grants for improving our flooring, painting on the outside, stuff like that,” he said. “There’s really no help.”

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Alex Klaus is the education solutions reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.

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Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

One in five Milwaukee County child care providers expect to close without stabilization aid 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.