The pandemic child care money helped keep Giggles & Wiggles going. Combined with a tuition increase, the funds helped raise wages by $2 to about $14 an hour on average in the fall of 2022, but it still wasn’t nearly enough to attract job candidates to the center. Child care workers in Wisconsin and everywhere in the United States are in the bottom 2 percent of jobs in terms of pay, along with fast food cooks and theme park workers. The local McDonalds advertises $13 an hour — $12 at the Piggly Wiggly.

By June, the federal child care money that Giggles & Wiggles and all those other centers have been relying on started to run out. In Wisconsin, monthly payments were cut in half. Nationally, the entire $24 billion pot of money is set to expire September 30. The money was always meant to be temporary, but in an industry that has existed almost only in crisis mode, centers did whatever they could to keep their staff, keep their families and keep their doors open. Most used the money to raise wages and keep tuition flat, but now without the funding, that business model is about to blow up.

Giggles & Wiggles is a preview of what could happen to other centers in other towns after September 30. The day has been referred to as a “child care cliff,” but that’s something of a misnomer. The impact will play out over time, in parts. Classrooms will close first; day care hours will be cut to save on staff. States that have tried to add bits of additional child care funding might hold on longer. A 30 percent increase in the federal subsidy program for low-income children in child care, the Child Care and Development Block Grant, will help somewhat. So too will a second, much smaller pot of $15 billion in federal pandemic money that will run out at the end of September 2024.

When a child care center closes, especially in a small town, it frays the ties that keep a community together. Children become scattered, separated from the only caregivers most had ever known. Families are left scrambling to find alternate care in a system known for years-long waiting lists. And working parents are stymied, making impossible decisions around leaving their jobs or cutting back hours.

For parents whose kids are in child care, there is little disagreement about the importance of funding the industry and paying teachers well. But at the state and federal level, child care has been treated like a political afterthought, cast aside as a nice-to-have in a country that has long viewed child care as a “family problem,” not a government one.

Read the full article about childcare funding by Chabeli Carrazana at The19th.