SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – Access to child care is an important piece of every community, but there’s a trend happening across the country and locally.
“In the last nine months now, our community has lost over 1,300 licensed spots through closure of other centers so we’ve been talking about this for a long time,” Kerri Tietgen, CEO of EmBe, said.
Tietgen says the current revenue model for child care centers is just not sustainable.
“The one area that we know we need help with is revenue diversification,” Tietgen said. “Right now, the only thing that supports the work that we do is our parent tuition. And parent tuition has exceeded what parents can and should be asked to pay in order to go to work.”
Making child care more affordable is something the whole community can help supplement.
“It’s businesses talking to their team members and asking how they can help,” Tietgen said. “Sometimes we think this is only a parent issue but I think every single person understands and can relate to how it impacts them when a coworker isn’t able to come to work because of a sick child or isn’t able to come to work because child care isn’t available or a really good coworker has to leave the workforce because child care becomes unaffordable.”
It’s an investment that benefits more than just the kids and parents.
“When you do that, the families thrive, education rates for parents and students increase significantly, the reduction on other welfare programs is lowered, it’s significant,” Tietgen said. “And it’s all by allowing students to go to an excellent program and parents to stay in the workforce.”
And there are studies that prove it.
“There was a study that was done, it’s called the Heckman Equation, they’ve done work, as well as the Federal Reserve in Minneapolis, looking at the impact of investing in child care,” Tietgen said. “The return on investment is one of the highest returns of investment in a community and state of any other program there is. It beats the stock market, it beats most new business investment.”
Tietgen says a community can invest in child care through donations to non-profits like EmBe. She says just $50 a week is enough to fund a full scholarship for a family.
