Duluth seeks to bolster child care capacity

Oct. 20—April Westman, owner of Aunty's Child Care in Duluth, has about 200 children on a list waiting for openings at her day care centers in the Lakeside and Spirit Valley neighborhoods.

"We had a shortage of spaces going into the pandemic. ... And coming out of it we have significantly fewer spaces overall in the city than we did going into it," she said.

"I feel like the pandemic has kind of brought out the issue and magnified what the problems are. So, we can hopefully start working to fix them. But I still feel this field isn't taken as seriously as it should be. Like, we are brain engineers. We are raising children, and this will really affect the rest of their lives, the things that we do with them now. That's why quality child care is so important," Westman said.

To help address the shortage of care, the Duluth City Council is expected to take up a resolution Monday that could bring new resources to bear.

Deb Otto, chair of the Duluth 1200 Fund's board of directors, said the situation presents a hardship for families and employers alike, often resulting in difficulties recruiting workers.

"We have heard that there are people who are not able to work because they can't find child care," she said.

That's why the 1200 Fund, an organization tasked with bringing more jobs to Duluth, took up the issue, seeking to help local child care providers who are struggling to recover from the challenges of the pandemic.

If the City Council signs off on its plans, the 1200 Fund aims to launch a forgivable loan program, using $465,000 in federal pandemic relief funding from the American Rescue Plan Act.

Of that sum, $450,000 would be earmarked for forgivable loans of up to $100,000 per center to support the development of additional child care capacity. Another $15,000 would be set aside to help train people entering the child care field.

"We've been working with the mayor and the city's planning and economic development department to think outside the box, to figure out how we can address this issue in our community, and thereby help those small business owners find the employees they need to be successful," Otto said.

Arik Forsman, at large city councilor, also serves on the 1200 Fund board and noted that the Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce has identified addressing child care needs as one of its top legislative priorities.

"Just like housing, it's one of those inhibiting factors to being able to have full employment in your community. If someone can't find a place to live or they don't have a place for their kids to go when they're working, obviously they have issues with participating in the workforce," Forsman said.

He noted that studies have indicated more than 1,000 families in the city lack access to child care outside the home.

Shelly Vanneste, owner of Mesabi Preschool Academy, said the situation has been further complicated by a shortage of child care workers, especially as the pandemic has evolved.

Unable to adequately staff centers in Proctor and downtown Duluth, Vanneste has been forced to operate at less than her fully licensed capacity. And recently, she made the difficult decision to downsize her Proctor center, so she could pool staff resources in Duluth.

"We're bleeding money right now," Vanneste said.

Forsman agreed that business challenges abound, and to paraphrase Tony Sertich, director of the Northland Foundation, he said: "Child care is this weird, strange industry, where it's really hard to afford it, and you can also barely make money doing it.

"It's just a fundamentally flawed business model, which is why there's so much time and effort that's going into how do we, as a community, rally around some of these providers and help them," Forsman said.

___

(c)2021 the Duluth News Tribune (Duluth, Minn.)

Visit the Duluth News Tribune (Duluth, Minn.) at www.duluthnewstribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.