Posted on 10/13/2002 12:18:19 PM PDT by wallcrawlr
At more than $12,000 a year, the rising cost of day care in Minnesota has blown past that of many college tuitions.
That fact has a local advocacy group suggesting a radical solution: college-style financing. Grants, subsidies and loans should all be available to help parents cover the cost of caring for small children, the group says.
"That is the dream," said Sharon Henry-Blythe, director of the Greater Minneapolis Day Care Association.
The U.S. Department of Education has given the organization a $350,000 grant to study the issue. Among the ideas: a one-stop financial aid office.
The cost of day-care centers nationally has increased about 58 percent over the past 10 years, according to one report, roughly twice the rate of inflation over the same period; in the Twin Cities, the cost spiked 8 percent between the end of 2000 and the end of 2001.
Experts cite several reasons:
Labor costs. Day-care jobs used to pay minimum wage, industry officials say. Now, employers want to attract college graduates. Between 1992 and 2001, the average weekly wage for a child-care worker in Minnesota rose 57 percent, while the average worker's wage rose 44 percent, according to state figures.
More intensive programs. At Children's World Learning Centers, for example, classes from German to karate to gymnastics are available for preschoolers.
The emergence of high-cost centers in the suburbs. New Horizon Day Care, the largest chain in the state, has added 18 new centers in the past 10 years — with 17 in the suburbs. The construction costs can be steep: A New Horizon center, with computers, toys and furnishings, costs about $2.5 million.
The cost is constantly on the minds of parents.
"We had a conversation about this at work today. We were talking about how we don't need cable TV, don't need two nice cars," said Lakeville mom and school psychologist Kari Komar. But she does need the part-time day care for her two children, at $10,000 a year.
She was picking up her 18-month-old daughter, Jordan, at a New Horizon Day Care Center in Lakeville, a state-of-the-art facility with a toy-filled great room, security cameras, and hallways lined with specialized classrooms. She explained that her husband and she "weighed everything, and for right now and for the long run, this is what is right for us."
For years, day-care experts have looked jealously at the glut of funding options for college — private grants, government loans, scholarships and subsidies. They note that a drumbeat of advertisements from investment firms and banks remind parents to save for college. Yet what parent saves for the even greater cost of day care?
"No one plans day care 18 years in advance," said Chad Dunkley, vice president for New Horizon.
And while college costs can be adjusted to fit family needs, the costs of day care are as unyielding as a utility bill.
"Early childhood (care) does not have that," said Henry-Blythe. "There is no way now to determine how to lower the costs for people based on income."
That may change. The Minnesota group is one of four nationwide participating in the Early Education Finance Demonstration Project — the others are in Fairfax, Va.; Seattle; and Kansas City — that will make recommendations within 18 months.
As a first concrete step, the Twin Cities group will create an "online eligibility calculator" to allow parents to see what existing government subsidies or tax breaks are available.
But private money is the new frontier.
According to Nancy Johnson, director of the Early Education Finance Demonstration Project in Minneapolis, tuition pays 23 percent of the total cost of higher education, with the rest subsidized by the government and private sources. But parents pay 60 percent of day-care costs, and almost all the remainder comes from government. Only 1 percent comes from private sources.
"We need to create more ways to bring more subsidies in. We have got to bring in private subsidies from 3M, Cargill, whatever," Henry-Blythe said.
Some in the field say the trends simply can't continue.
"We just can't keep charging parents more. They simply can't afford it," said Karen Fogolin of the Minnesota Child Care Resources and Referral Network. "But we can't do it on the backs of the providers, either."
The cost of care nationally has increased 58 percent in 10 years — double the inflation rate — for a 3-year-old in a day-care center, according to Runzheimer International, a Rochester, Wis., firm specializing in cost-of-living data.
In Ramsey County, the average cost for infants in day-care centers is about $12,000 a year. Compare that to the cost of full-time tuition at the University of Minnesota — $6,280.
Does that mean day care is too expensive?
No, said Sue Molstad, of Resources for Child Caring, a nonprofit based in Minneapolis. Molstad said that wages for day-care workers still remain low.
Minnesota child-care workers enjoyed a sharp increase in their average weekly pay from 1992 to 2001 — roughly 57 percent, to $487 — but they still make less than the average worker, who earns $704, according to Jay Mousa, research director for the Minnesota Department of Economic Security.
The median hourly wage for a child-care worker in the Twin Cities is $8.44, according to state figures. The median salary for a child-care worker in the Twin Cities is $17,547. The top 10 percent of child-care workers in the Twin Cities earn $23,832 or more.
Those labor costs can't be spread out over more students the way they can in high school or college.
"If you have a child in the university, he could be in a class where 700 kids get instruction at one time. With infants, the ratio is 4-to-1," said Cherie Kotilinek, of the state Department of Children, Families and Learning.
Said New Horizon's Dunkley: "Even at a weekly rate of $240, that's $4.80 per hour (for 50 hours of care). That's less than you'd pay a 15-year-old to go out on a Friday night."
The competition for day-care centers is often the house just down the street.
The cost of in-home care is about two-thirds that of the centers, and there are more of them — 14,126 licensed statewide, compared with 1,616 day-care centers. Each center, of course, can handle far more children, such as the newest New Horizon centers, built for 185 kids.
Day-care centers are more common in the Twin Cities — they make up 13 percent of all licenses in the metro area, compared with 8 percent in greater Minnesota.
Building costs are also partly to blame for the rising costs.
The square-foot cost of building a day-care center is as much as for building a hospital, according to Steve Swanson, vice president of New Horizon. Those expenses get passed along to parents in the form of higher fees.
Stringent building codes and commercial-grade kitchens push up the costs. Fixing up a home to take in children, he said, could mean "putting a fence around the yard and getting some playground equipment."
The growth of day-care centers has been a suburban phenomenon. Figures are elusive, but examples abound of chains of day-care centers that operate almost entirely in the suburbs.
The business follows the money. New Horizon calculates that a family's income needs to be about $75,000 to afford its day care, which now costs $12,480 for an infant, Dunkley said. New Horizon's rates — which are not the most expensive in the area — increased about 68 percent in 10 years.
The next one, and their largest ever, will be in the suburbs — in the Best Buy corporate offices, opening in March in Richfield.
The bottom line for day-care customers is peace of mind, whatever the cost.
"The money guarantees a good, solid upbringing," said Mary Schmidt, as she caressed the hair of her 2-year-old daughter, Elain, comforting her by rocking back and forth in the New Horizon Lakeville center.
"I love this great room. I love the infant room and the low windows" so the kids can see the weather outside, she said.
"I didn't cry when I left her here for the first time."
$350,000
58 percent
$2.5 million
Or......Mom could just stay home with the kids!
Oh, that would be too simple.
The solution: she now stays at home full-time, and runs a home daycare, providing a valuable service while spending time with our children (most of the daycare kids we watch attend school, so she only has them about 4 hours per day)
Congratulations on making a great decision!
However, I explained that my goal was to eventually ALLOW her to stay at home if circumstances permit (the first 10 years of marriage required her to work while I finished grad school and started career-building).
She loved her job, but, she is now more happy, just some lingering guilt. BTW when we married she was a confirmed democrat - it took time, but now she's republican, but the guilt remains I think from her liberal upbringing...it was very damaging - but she is learning that logic does triumph over "feel-good" pathos...but it's a slow process.
One thing that never gets mentioned, the child care credit has remained absolutely unchanged since 1981, maybe its time to think about at least keeping it even with inflation.
Does everybody see where this is going?
It won't be too long in the future before Big Brother's Department of Child Rearing gives the "birthing units" [formerly known as 'parents'] six weeks to drop off their "breeding stock" [formerly 'children'] to the "indoctrination centers" ['schools'].
We need to leave child rearing to the professionals. -:]
It's much better trying to find an unlicensed family day care for your kids. My kids have absolutely refused to go to regular day care centers, they insist they'd run away but they have no problem going to an unlicensed home I use, in fact they like the lady there very very much.
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