Senator Smith Talks With St. Cloud Leaders About Childcare crises

(KNSI) – Minnesota U.S. Senator Tina Smith was in St. Cloud to talk about childcare and mental health.

Minnesota’s Junior Senator met with Blooming Kids Childcare Center operators and learned about the struggles they’ve gone through because of the pandemic.

Smith then sat down for a roundtable discussion with a group of community nonprofits, elected officials, and business groups to hear about what they see are the most significant issues facing childcare.

“We have a crisis of access to childcare in this country and in Minnesota, and we have a crisis of cost, it’s too expensive. And on top of that, the people providing this really important care for our babies are paid hardly anything. And in fact, many of them are working at near poverty wages and not getting any benefits at all. So the whole system is broken.”

Jake Judd (KNSI News)

Smith has proposed the Childcare for Working Families Act in Congress and believes the law would help people deal with many of those child care issues.

“You would be able to get help paying for your childcare, that would be money that would go into the system, it would help to raise wages, it would help to make childcare affordable, it would help to keep family providers in the business, which are so important in rural parts of the state.”

The bill would cap family childcare costs at 7% of a family’s pay for a family making a median household income.

In the St. Cloud area, a family making around $73,000 a year would pay about five thousand a year for childcare instead of the $8,000 to $15,000 a year today.

Those on the roundtable discussion say the pandemic made the childcare crises significantly worse, and it’s still not even close to recovering.

According to statistics, almost 11% of women have left the workforce since the pandemic to care for their kids.

Smith says data shows that two out of three counties in Minnesota are in childcare deserts meaning there is one spot open for every three kids needing childcare.

In the St. Cloud area, officials say 80% of kids go to in-home childcare, and around 20% go to daycare centers.

Smith supported several pandemic relief packages for a total of $50 billion to help the nation’s hard-hit childcare system.

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