It costs more to send a child to day care than college. Here's how costs affect Wisconsin families, educators and where to find help.

APPLETON - Brianna Lyyski is a young mother of two daughters — an almost-2-year-old and a 5-month-old — and she is spending more than $2,000 a month on day care.

Although the price may seem steep, it comes as no surprise to parents who have either enrolled or are looking to enroll in a child care facility.

"After 40 hours, it's an additional $5.25 an hour. With having the kids in the day care for about 52 hours a week — it gets expensive quick," Lyyski said.

In fact, child care costs more than college or housing, a non-partisan think tank found.

The average annual cost of child care for an infant in Wisconsin is $12,567 according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute. This makes infant care in Wisconsin 48.3% more expensive than the average in-state tuition for a four-year public college. The average annual cost of college in 2020 was $8,475 and $9,994 for housing.

"Over $2,000 a month is a huge financial adjustment," Lyyski said. "We are much more selective on deciding when to purchase 'fun' items such as house décor or birthday gifts. We did make a big move to live in an apartment that my mother owns to save money for a house. With paying over $2,000 a month, we couldn't save up for a house like we wanted to."

The Economic Policy Institute, which advocates for low- and middle-income workers, says that a typical family in Wisconsin would have to spend one-third of its income on child care for an infant and a 4-year-old.

For Jessica Oaks, a single parent of an 18-month-old son, child care is a large part of her weekly budget. Oaks pays $250 a week for her son to attend Arts for Kids in Oshkosh.

"As a single mom, when daycare is $1,000 monthly, and I pay $900 in rent, as well as utilities, a car payment, plus other bills, I am strapped," Oaks said. "With rising costs everywhere, I struggle every single month to afford to stay afloat."

Why is the cost of day care in Wisconsin so high?

According to Childcare Aware of America, in Wisconsin, the five least-affordable counties for center-based infant child care are Milwaukee, Adams, Door, Dane and Winnebago. The average annual price of infant child care in Milwaukee County is $14,543, and in Winnebago County, it averages $12,695.

Many factors play a role in the pricing for community based child care facilities.

Ashley Mansfield, the program coordinator for Apple Tree Connections Early Learning Center in Appleton, said they take into consideration families incomes and the rates of surrounding facilities when determining pricing.

Mansfield, who's worked at Apple Tree for seven years, said rates have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. She attributes this to keeping up with other local facilities, which have also been increasing rates.

Apple Tree Connections charges a base rate of $264 per week for infants and toddlers, and rates decrease as the child gets older.

Overhead costs play a role in the pricing for child care centers. Rent, food, toys, art, supplies and insurance all must be accounted for. The average startup costs for a daycare can range from $10,000 to $50,000 depending on if it is home-based or center-based, according to Bizfluent. Now, add on the expenses of insurance, licensing fees, certifications and state regulations.

In Wisconsin, certain child care facilities must be regulated. These facilities include: family child care providers caring for one to three children whose care is paid for by the county; family child care providers caring for four or more children under age 7; and all child care centers, according to Community Coordinated Child Care, Inc. (4-C).

It is required for center-based facilities to have one teacher per every four infants. As children age, the number of children in the classroom can increase. Typically, there tends to be one to two teachers per classroom.

Anyone over 18 can care for up to three children as well as their own without being regulated, unless they're providing county-funded care.

How much are early-childhood educators being paid?

Early childhood educators play an essential role in childhood development — teachers in this field are responsible for educating children at their most impressionable ages — yet wages and benefits don't reflect this.

In fact, according to Economic Policy Institute, child care workers across the country are barely being paid enough to make ends meet.

A study done by Wisconsin's Early Care and Education Workforce in September 2021 revealed that most early childhood educators, full-time lead teachers who work in year-round positions made $11 to $13 an hour. Only one in five teachers had health insurance through their job.

Starting wages for early childhood educators at Kids Kingdom Daycare in Appleton are slightly better, ranging from $12 to $14.

Jaymie Hendrickson, the assistant director of Kids Kingdom Daycare said wages have increased lately due to the statewide labor shortage and the need to match pay increases at neighboring facilities.

"It's mainly just trying to get them to want to come to work," Hendrickson said. "They want more than what we are officially starting pay at, so obviously if we increase the staff payroll then we have to increase what we charge for daycare."

Early childhood educators who work at community-based centers are typically paid less than those who work in a K-12 system.

According to the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, Wisconsin early childhood educators with a bachelor's degree earn about 10% less than their colleagues in a K-8 system. Almost 20% of these educators in Wisconsin live in poverty.

Wisconsin Public schools pay more, but teachers still struggle

While teachers in school systems are typically paid more than those working out of child care facilities, they still face difficulty with pay and funding.

Lilliana Fowler, a kindergarten teacher in the Oshkosh Area School District, got her first teaching job in March and previously worked with younger children throughout her college years.

At the elementary school she teaches kindergartners typical academic subjects, but there's much more to the job, she said.

"We work a lot with social and emotional skills and teach them things like being patient, working with others, how to be independent and in control of their own feelings," Fowler said.

Fowler says she earns a salary equivalent to a 40-hour work week, but says the pay is not an accurate reflection of the overtime hours she works or the emotional time she invests.

"I get paid to be their teacher but I am not just their teacher," she said. "There are so many unseen roles that come with being a teacher that many do not think about. When I come into my classroom, I am the teacher, a mentor, a mediator, a nurse, a counselor, a third parent, and advocate and much more."

Fowler also said that lack of funding for her classroom has proven to be a struggle. She has been buying things out-of-pocket for her classrooms for four years.

"You have to fund an entire classroom of materials on your own," Fowler said. In order to make lessons engaging and fun, but also something students can remember — a lot of times you have to purchase different materials for those lessons, as well. That comes from your own money."

A study by Wisconsin's Early Care and Education Workforce stated that the turnover rate for early childhood educators was about 36% every year. The most common reason for teachers wanting to leave their field or find different positions was to find a job that offered better compensation of more opportunity for advancement.

How can Wisconsin support families struggling to afford daycare?

In response to the challenges faced by child care providers and their employees, Congress allocated additional funds for child care to certain states in December 2020. Wisconsin received $148.8 million Child Care and Development Block Grant funds to offset the impact of the pandemic on the cost of child care.

Early last year, Gov. Tony Evers announced a two-phase plan with the Joint Committee on Finance to use these funds to assist early-childhood educators and Wisconsin families in need of child care.

Evers said that the economic success of our state is directly tied with the success of early child care and the education system.

“This plan will provide immediate and medium-term stability to ensure families can continue to access affordable, quality care. When viewed together with our budget, it sets our state up to be a national leader in early care and education," Evers said in a news release.

Phase one allocated $106 million to expand the Child Care Counts program started by  the Department of Children and Families, which provided funding for child care facilities to help them stay open through the pandemic.

Additional funds were used for technology for facilities, investing in workforce recruitment and retention and expanding shared service networks.

Phase two allocated funds to incentivize private sector partnerships, meaning it provided funding to businesses to purchase infant and child care slots for their employees, and to invest in modernizing and updating workforce training and communications.

In 2021, The Department of Children and Families also launched a new Child Care Counts program called the Child Care Counts: Stabilization Payment Program as part of the phase one plan announced by Evers.

Through this new program, regulated child care facilities are able to receive monthly payments through 2023, to assist them with costs needed to stay open and operating.

Over $351 million has been allocated to the program. To date, over $120 million has been to paid to 3,751 child care providers throughout the state.

The program has helped more than 22,000 child care workers to remain or become employed.

Help for families searching for affordable child care

There are also programs which families may apply to for help with the cost of child care or help finding more affordable child care, although some have waitlists that have been backed up for months.

These programs and additional resources can be found on the Wisconsin DCF website.

These programs may be assisting facilities with their overhead costs, but in the end, families are still struggling to find affordable care and early-childhood educators are still being underpaid.

Wisconsin stands to benefit from the solution of the child care crisis. The Economic Policy Institute states that child care reform that capped child care expenses at 7% of families incomes would expand Wisconsin economy by 0.9% or $3 billion of new economic activity.

Parents would have more ability to enter the workforce instead of watching their children and about 13.6% of their expenses would be available to spend on other necessities.

Reach Jelissa Burns at 920-226-4241 or jburns1@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @burns_jelissa or on Instagram at burns_jelissa.

This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Wisconsin families pinched as day care, early education costs rise