Rep. Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn, DFL-Eden Prairie, plays with one of her children before a press conference on child care affordability at All Ages & Faces Academy in St. Paul on Nov. 30, 2023. Kotyza-Witthuhn is the DFL lead on the House Children and Families Finance and policy committee this year.Photo by Madison McVan/Minnesota Reformer.
Since Benny Roberts took over as the executive director of St. Paul’s historic Hallie Q. Brown Community Center in July, he’s also served as the interim early learning center director, interim lead teacher and “interim many other things.”
Roberts struggled to find enough licensed teachers to fill the open positions at the 96-year-old early learning center, which was founded to serve Black St. Paul residents in the Summit-University neighborhood. He worked with staffing agencies to find substitutes. He shoveled snow, covered classes and portioned meals in the cafeteria. He raised staff pay and tried to create a pathway for existing staff to get teacher certifications, but that plan fell apart due to, well, short staffing.
In January, Roberts realized this patched-together system was becoming a safety risk for the children.
“It was really important to try everything that we could, to preserve (the early learning center), to keep it open. Ultimately, it fell into a crisis where it was not offering the excellence that our families deserve and need,” Roberts said at a roundtable conversation Monday night in one of the out-of-commission early learning classrooms at Hallie Q. Brown Community Center.
Roberts and the center’s board of directors decided to close the child care center. Roberts called all 18 families that night to inform them of the impending closure, and helped all families find new placements.
Lawmakers, parents, child care center directors, early learning educators and other stakeholders gathered Monday to share their perspectives on Minnesota’s child care crisis.
All who spoke agreed that the government needs to take action to keep child care providers afloat. But the state of Minnesota is already spending more money than it’s bringing in, and with Republicans sharing control of the Minnesota House, a fresh infusion of child care spending seems unlikely.
President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress are also unlikely to send any additional funding to child care providers; Trump’s federal funding freeze, which has been blocked by courts, shocked child care providers that rely on federal programs like Head Start.
Minnesota also receives more than $200 million per year from the federal government to fund child care subsidies for low-income families. Trump proposed cutting this funding in his first term.
Last year, child care advocates campaigned for a massive state-level child care subsidy that would assist all families making up to 150% of their area’s median income, accounting for the number of people in the household. Lawmakers last year requested $500 million to fund the program for one year.
Lydia Boerboom, lead organizer of a coalition called Kids Count on Us, said at least six Minnesota child care centers have shuttered in the past year.
While funding is the priority for child care providers and advocates, providers at the roundtable also named other structural challenges: delayed processing of payments at the county level; astronomical startup costs and difficulty financing a new center; and, the reimbursement-based system for child care subsidies, which pays providers weeks after they’ve provided care to a child.
There’s also a shortage of qualified teachers, providers said.
Some attendees left the meeting feeling hopeful. With most families relying on two incomes, the child care shortage and resulting high costs are a bipartisan issue. Employers are also motivated to push for a solution.
Roberts, for his part, is optimistic that he can bring child care back to Hallie Q. Brown Community Center; he’s working with Olu’s Beginnings, an early learning center in north Minneapolis, to open a new location at Hallie Q. Brown.