Imagine sitting in a lecture hall, taking notes as your professor prepares the class for an exam you can’t fail, and then you receive a phone call that you need to pick up your sick child from childcare. What do you do? This is the life of Melissa Maki, and her answer will always be, “My children come first.” As a single parent attending graduate school at UW-Milwaukee (UWM), Maki has to find ways to balance the life of being a student while being a mother. Without the option of childcare, higher education would be close to impossible for her.

“Most of my family does not live in the area, so the struggle is all-too real at times,” she said. There are no grandparents to fall back on. She needs childcare, but gaining access to it was far from easy. After attending a technical college—where she received funding for childcare while not working—Maki transferred to UWM and was told that an individual must work in order to receive childcare benefits. Working, being a parent and being a student isn’t the best fit for her, so she decided to not work while in school.

To receive those childcare benefits, she spent hours searching for jobs, kept a log of those searches and then turned in a weekly log to prove she was actively looking for work. Maki dealt with this for three to four months while being a full-time student, until she discovered from another individual that she only needed to work five hours a week to receive the benefits. She then applied for a campus job, got hired and began receiving help through financial aid.

Maki says the cost of childcare is so high that she doesn’t understand how anyone can afford childcare without state assistance, especially with multiple children.

According to the Governor’s Early Childhood Advisory Council (ECAC) 2017 Annual Report, only 26% of families with children receiving Wisconsin Shares (a childcare subsidy program) are in a four or five-star program. (The Wisconsin YoungStar Program rates the state’s childcare facilities on a scale of one to five stars.) The report goes on to say that, in 2016, only 20.5% of Wisconsin’s childcare facilities/programs were receiving four or five stars.

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But what do these numbers mean to a parent like Maki who can’t always afford or have time to pick out the best quality childcare for her child? Maki said her daughter actually attended a five-star childcare facility, and she felt it was a just a “drop-off/pickup service” and not an educational one. She had the concern of “what are you doing with my kid when I’m not there?” She prefers to use the YMCA’s before and after school programs, which are more affordable and of better quality, she said.

Maki’s experience is only one of many parents who struggle with the hassles of childcare—the cost, quality and access. Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, put together a presentation this year entitled “Telling the Child Care Story” that states more than 35% of Wisconsin counties’ regulated childcare facilities meet less than 50% of its needs. According to the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, regulated childcare is “anyone providing care and supervision for four or more children, under age 7 years, for less than 24 hours a day must be licensed” by the department. According to the Department of Human Services, there are four types of childcare facilities: child care centers, group child care homes, drop-in centers and family child care homes.

Schmidt said we need to find different ways to fund childcare if we want to improve it. Right now, there are three ways it’s being funded. According to her, the primary way is through the family, then through the government and employers. To afford quality childcare, funding is needed to adequately run the facility; yet people who work in childcare are primarily low-income, so they tend to leave the field. It’s a vicious cycle that can be fixed by bringing attention to the childcare field, because it’s not just a daycare service.

Associate professor of pediatrics at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health Dipesha Navasaria said that, at a point in time, society decided that everyone would have access to public education down to the age of 5, but then we stop. But, according to Navasaria, “education really starts at birth.” He also says that society treats K-12 education different from early childhood education because it doesn’t focus on birth to 5 years of age. According to him, research now exists that shows investing in early childcare will create a huge return in the future.

Schmidt and Navasaria stated that early childcare prepares young children for kindergarten, because when a child comes unprepared, not knowing the basics, the teacher has to spend extra time teaching things that could’ve been already learned. In turn, this puts the child behind and affects them long into their educational career, Navasaria says. “If we don’t get it right at the beginning [of a child’s educational track], it can cost a lot later,” Schmidt adds.

Parents like Maki understand the importance of teaching her children early, but she also said she just doesn’t always have the time to do so, which is where quality childcare becomes important. There isn’t one key system to fix these issues residing in the childcare field but bringing the topic to the discussion table is a start.

Professor and director of the Institute for Health and Equity at the Medical College of Wisconsin John Meurer suggest tax credits for families and childcare facilities. According to the Internal Revenue Service, a tax credit is an amount of money that a taxpayer can subtract from taxes owed to the government. If a low-income family were to receive tax credits for their childcare, that money can then be used for other expenses such as food, and facilities could spend the money on paying for quality employees.

Muerer worked with others on a 2018 policy proposal discussing the benefits of tax credits. It uses Louisiana School Readiness, Colorado Child Care Expenses and Nebraska School Readiness tax credits as examples of how those systems could work for Wisconsin families. In 2014, according to the proposal, under the Louisiana tax credits, more than 14,500 parents claimed the credit on their taxes.

Doing something similar to these states could bring financial relief to thousands of families when it comes to childcare, Muerer says. If a tax credit like Louisiana’s existed in Wisconsin, a parent like Maki could very well benefit from it. Muerer also states that tax credits only reach a small portion of the people who need them, so educating families is important; often parents don’t know it even exists or don’t know how to apply for it.

We have to understand that a lack of quality childcare not only adversely affects children but the entire community in which they live. These children are our future, and we have to provide them with the tools necessary to, one day, be our community’s leaders. Thus, it is all too clear that we have to start taking action as early in their lives as possible. This isn’t just a state or federal government issue, it’s a societal problem that can be solved with collective effort.