Everything at Kim Mueller’s in-home child care business is different these days.
At naptime, cots are shrouded in tents to limit the spread of droplets. Partitions separate children from close interactions when they play at a table. An air purifier purrs softly all day long, and boxes of vinyl gloves and alcohol wipes are always within reach.
Once the children leave, Mueller fills every room of her Coon Rapids home with a disinfectant fog.
“We don’t have a safe space we can go home to at the end of the day,” she said. “If we aren’t super vigilant, COVID could walk through our front door at any time.”
The number of children in Mueller’s care has dropped by two-thirds since the coronavirus hit last spring, but she estimates that she has spent close to $10,000 on safety equipment and cleaning supplies.
Mueller has been able to stay open with the aid of a federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) grant and $1,200 monthly payments that the state made available to every licensed in-home provider starting in April. Larger child care centers were eligible for $8,500 a month through the same program.
But those monthly payments dried up at the end of the year, and now Minnesota’s 9,600 licensed and certified child care providers are waiting for what comes next.
“I’ve already cut all the expenses I can cut out of my budget,” said Mueller, a former 911 emergency dispatcher who became a licensed family child care provider more than a decade ago.
If one more child drops out and no assistance is forthcoming, she’ll have to make “some very hard choices,” she said.
As part of the $900 billion COVID relief bill that the U.S. Congress passed just before Christmas, states will receive $10 billion to support the child care industry.
Minnesota is projected to receive about $137 million, but the money has yet to arrive. Various options are being discussed about how to get it to child care workers.
Advocates of the child care industry are pushing Gov. Tim Walz and state legislators to find funds to keep the monthly payments coming to centers and in-home providers at least through January to cover the gap.
“That stream of money and the consistency really shored up a sense of confidence and stability in the industry,” said Cyndi Cunningham of the Minnesota Child Care Provider Information Network, which lobbies for interests of licensed in-home child care providers. “Now we’re back to, ‘OK. Now what do we do?’ “
The pandemic has amplified the crucial role that safe and affordable child care plays to support public health and other essential businesses by enabling workers to do their jobs. But as with other sectors of the American economy, the coronavirus crisis has also laid bare existing strains in an industry funded largely on the backs of working parents and low-income workers.
“Minnesota and the nation already were in a child care crisis before COVID hit,” said Clare Sanford of the Minnesota Child Care Association, which represents child care centers. “Unlike every other developed nation in the world, ours does not consider child care to be a public good and fund it in the way it funds K-12 education.”
While low-income families may receive some government help, the system is underfunded and reimbursements don’t fully cover the cost of care. Providers get most of their revenue from parents who pay out of their pockets, devoting a huge chunk of their pay toward it even as wages haven’t kept up with inflation.
Child care is expensive and labor-intensive, with staff needed up to 12 hours a day and weekends to accommodate the shifts of working parents. Child care workers, who disproportionately are women and women of color, earn some of the lowest wages in the country. But to raise wages, providers need to collect more from families, who simply may not be able to afford it.
The pandemic has substantially increased the cost of care at a time when enrollment has dropped.
“Unlike public schools, child care providers are businesses,” Sanford said. “If they can’t survive financially, they go out of business.
“We need more resources,” she added. “otherwise there will not be a child care industry at the end of COVID to support our economic recovery.”
Across the nation, state agencies have adopted a variety of approaches to try to keep child care options available to essential workers with varying success.
Twenty-eight states have seen more than half of their child care facilities close during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the federal government. Minnesota has fared much better, with less than a quarter of providers shutting down.
Money from the state’s general revenue fund, along with the federal aid, made the difference. Since April, when direct payments began, child care providers in Minnesota have received $158 million in federal payments and $30 million from the state.
The new round of funding could land in state coffers any day. Because the amount of the support isn’t yet known, various options are being discussed.
“We’re looking at this as almost like a piece of critical infrastructure to society that we just need to support,” said Lisa Bayley, acting assistant commissioner for children and family services with the Minnesota Department of Human Services. “Really, everything’s on the table.”
The next round of funding likely will build on existing programs, Bayley said, with a better understanding of what worked.
Last year, before landing on universal monthly payments of $1,200 to family providers and $8,500 to centers, the state rolled out a grant program that provided more money — up to $21,000 a month based on licensing capacity — but only about a third of child care providers who applied for it were able to get funded.
“We’ve learned there’s huge interest,” Bayley said. “This is not just a made-up problem. People want these funds. They’re willing to go through the application process and verify how it’s used. There is a strong desire to connect with those funds.”
Small family providers and larger centers are united in pushing lawmakers to continue what they call “monthly survival grants.”
Those who run larger centers would like to see the grants tied more to the size of the operation.
“We’d like to see it scaled better based on licensed capacity,” Sanford said, “because $8,500 to a center that services 25 kids and $8,500 to a center that serves 200 kids is very different support.”
This week, Mueller learned that a child tested positive for the coronavirus, forcing her business into its fourth shutdown while she and her family go into 14-day quarantine.
“I look forward to the day I’m fully vaccinated to market my business with confidence,” she said, seeing it as the first step to reassuring reluctant parents and rebuilding enrollment.
Until then, she’ll need a financial safety net.
“If the kids can’t come in,” she said, “we don’t have a business.”
Jackie Crosby • 612-673-7335
Twitter: @JackieCrosby