Photo by Jenny Kirk Sen. Amy Klobuchar, left, and key child care advocates from the Marshall area listen while Brad Gruhot, right, talks during a roundtable discussion on Tuesday at the Marshall Area Chamber of Commerce office.

MARSHALL — There are a lot of child care issues in southwest Minnesota that need to be addressed, according to several area individuals and agency representatives who joined Sen. Amy Klobuchar in a roundtable discussion on Tuesday morning at the Marshall Area Chamber office.

The childcare advocates and professionals were hopeful that the conversation would spark some solutions in the near future.

“When I lived in the Twin Cities, child care was a cost issue,” Marshall Area Chamber Director Brad Gruhot said. “Now in Greater Minnesota, it’s not only a cost issue, it’s also availability, its effect on economic development — the whole works. So we brought in people who are key to child care in general. We wanted to have the right people in the room so (Klobuchar) could get a good scope on the issue for Greater Minnesota, because it’s not just Marshall, it’s Greater Minnesota.”

Kari Condezo, director of the Southwest Minnesota State University Child Care Center, was in attendance as was Heather Willert with Li’l Diggers.

“I’ve been the director for 20 years and in those 20 years, I’ve seen a lot of changes,” Condezo said. “Right now, a lot of directors and in-home providers are going to tell you the joy is being taken out of the business. A lot of in-home providers are quitting because it’s getting pushed to the regulations.”

Condezo noted that it seems as though the people making the rules and regulations aren’t necessarily the ones in the force who live it day to day.

“There are some that I would call ‘silly rules,'” she said. “They may be there for a reason, but when we’re living and breathing it every day, it is a little bit silly.”

Condezo explained that interpretation has been a big factor.

“A lot of the governing agencies oversee, but they’re not necessarily on the same page, which is frustrating,” Condezo said.

Burnout and finding quality staff are additional concerns.

“One of the centers that just opened 5 months ago, she was an in-home provider for 15 years, and she’s not able to be teacher qualified in a classroom,” Condezo said. “She could serve in her home for 15 years but now she can’t be in a classroom potentially by herself? So some of the regulations are a little different and may need changing.”

Availability has been a major concern for some time.

“We definitely see a decline (in childcare availability),” Condezo said. “I have over 80 on the waiting list — and all five centers are full. One is expanding, to add more infants and a gym space. Some of it started when all-day kindergarten started. We saw a huge decline then. Then within the last two years, we’ve lost preschoolers with the voluntary pre-K program. For an in-home provider, the preschoolers are the majority of their income.”

Marshall Area YMCA Executive Director Tom Bolin said when the kids are going to school, they no longer need child care all day.

“It’s not a guaranteed, all day thing,” Bolin said. “So we lose those kids. It affects the center — maybe the center closes and all of a sudden that program will end and those kids now need care again.”

Representing Schwan’s Food Company, Theresa Zaske said their challenge was when employees lose their day care.

“It becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back for the employees,” she said. “We can work as much as we want to with changing the shifts and having people work odd days because our manufacturing runs so often, but if you lose your day care because all-day preschool does it year-round or you lose it because you’ve got a relative watching your kid or because your day care closes, we lose employees or have employees have to go to part time because they don’t have any day care. That’s a challenge for Schwan’s here in Marshall, but honestly around the country.”

Zaske said there were currently 40 jobs open just in manufacturing.

“We need some more workers to come in,” Klobuchar said. “We have to deal with it, but it’s not always easy. Part of it is because of immigration issues. In my mind, if we’d done the Path to Citizenship 5 years ago that passed through the Senate, we would have 12 million reversed that went underground who could’ve worked and applied to do jobs that we have right now.”

Klobuchar added that child care is suffering in part because of the strong economy in Minnesota.

“Minnesota has a very high number of working women, so that’s part of it,” she said. “The second part of it is that our businesses are good here. We’re strong and it has led to this situation for us, which is a good problem to have.”

Cal Brink, Marshall Economic Development Authority director, said the area currently has a 1.9 percent unemployment rate.

“It’s the lowest in the state,” Brink said.

Training people right out of high school for the childcare positions and other jobs that need filling could be part of a short-term solution.

“That is something we have been working on — training kids out of high school to go into the jobs we have instead of getting degrees in things that we don’t have jobs in,” Klobuchar said. “Then they have all these loans and debt and everything.”

Willert explained how D & G Excavating attempted to retain staff and assist with the childcare shortage in the area by opening a special family day care.

“We’re a small excavating contractor, employing about 35 employees,” she said. “A few years ago, we really recognized the shortage of construction workers, so we wanted to do something to capture new construction workers that are coming out of high school and college, to intrigue them into the construction industry. But we also realized there was a huge shortage for day care and we needed to do something to benefit the young staff because we have such an aging workforce as well.”

In order to be a special family day care, Willert said you have to be a nonprofit employer-based or a church. The classification comes with its own challenges, though, including the ratio of adults to children compared to in-home providers and childcare centers as well as not qualifying for certain incentives.

When asked by Klobuchar how many kids are from the company’s own employees, Willert said that “approximately 70 percent of them are right now.”

Brink noted that the problem was that it isn’t a money-making thing for small businesses.

“It’s an investment in your employees,” he said. “You have to give Schwan’s or D & G a reason to do it. They’ll put a certain amount of investment in, but at a certain point, can you continue to do it? Can you continue to lose money? The ratio of retention is worth something, but how much is it worth?”

Zaske said Schwan’s has been looking at possible day care options, but more importantly, they’re looking at the big picture.

“We’re trying to work toward a large solution that involves more organization, involves more day cares in Marshall, just to even out the fluctuation,” Zaske said. “If Schwan’s opens a day care, that actually could wreak havoc on other day care that are still around in Marshall. We don’t want to end up closing anything.”

Avera Marshall representative Michelle Person addressed the issue of child care availability for many of its employees.

“Our biggest challenge is the overnights, the weekends, the holidays because people aren’t open,” Person said. “So who is going to watch the children when you’re a single parent and you can’t get anybody to do it? We’re struggling to get certified nursing assistant the way it is. We’re losing them now because they can’t work overnights. It’s a never-ending battle it seems like.”

Jodi Maertens from Southwest Initiative Foundation, which serves 18 counties, said a survey conducted with centers across the state found that staffing, wages and benefits were big concerns.

“Some of them said they can make more money over at Casey’s, so they’re leaving their position at the center to go make income for their family,” Maertens said. “The qualified staff that you are getting are leaving because of the wages.”

Maertens added that raising the rates on families is not the solution.

“It’s hard enough for them to afford the rates the way they are,” she said.

Greg Carlson echoed what Maertens said about retaining staff, noting Tracy Kids World has had its share of challenges with that.

“We have direct competition with the school, for example,” he said. “I have teachers that are licensed teacher — they have the schooling and they have everything else, which they don’t even need — and they can go to the school and get $3 or $4 more an hour just being a para.”

On the flip side, quality educators might struggle with day care licensures.

“I have a mother whose kids are grown and she was a para at the school for many years,” Carlson said. “She has to come in at my center, technically, as one of the lower aides even though she has a lot of that experience. It makes it tough, especially living in Tracy, a town of 2,200 people, to find enough qualified staff to staff our center.”

Jean Duane from Born to Thrive said she’s in favor of getting rid of the Tier program and just reimburse providers at the same rate. Willert said she’d like to see special family day cares be included in food program incentives.

“That would be huge for us,” Willert said. “That could potentially be the difference between black and red.”

Economic development representatives were also in attendance as were licensing specialists. Southwest Health and Human Services’ Gail Bielen, who serves as a licensing supervisor for six counties in the area, spoke about the frustration of having to enforce some regulations and was quick to credit the individuals who care for children.

“We have rock-star providers,” Bielen said. “They do such hard work every day. And it’s just saddening that this is what it’s come to.”