Affordable Childcare Advocates Make Renewed Push as Session Gets Underway

(KNSI) — The 2022 Minnesota legislative session is underway. With the state facing a record $7.7 billion budget surplus and $1 billion in unspent federal aid to work with, affordable childcare advocates are hoping lawmakers invest in kids.

A coalition of labor, faith, and family advocacy groups says policymakers can’t lose sight of families’ continued challenges getting affordable child care. They are asking the state to increase access to childcare and that costs be capped at 7% of a family’s income.

LaTanya Hughes is the vice president for the homecare sector of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota. She is also a mother of two children with disabilities. She says she had to juggle multiple jobs to afford to stay in the workforce because she makes too much for childcare assistance in one of her positions and feels working families and working mothers “are penalized the most. As a parent, I know we need a childcare system that is accessible and affordable to all kinds of families.”

Lydia Boerboom, with the coalition Kids Count On Us, argues that strong investments in childcare can go a long way in providing stability, calling it “one of the cornerstones of our communities is having a safe childcare center, or family or school setting, that a child can go and be safe and have the resources that they need – like food, love, support, all of those kinds of things.”

Before the session started, Governor Tim Walz put forth a spending proposal to expand childcare access through school-based programs, Head Start, childcare centers, and family childcare programs.
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MNC Reporter Mike Moen contributed to this story.

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