Star Tribune
Child-care subsidies for middle-income families
Brittany Kjenaas and her husband are among the couples lucky enough to have a daughter in child care at Iron Range Tykes Learning Center in Mountain Iron, Minn.
The center is in such high demand, and options there are so scarce, that families living 20 to 30 miles away in Hibbing and Tower will time the births of their children with the 18-month wait for an infant care slot, owner Shawntel Gruba said last week.
Kjenaas said she and her husband earn too much to qualify for the state’s early learning scholarships, yet barely get by with costs exceeding their mortgage, adding: “Unless something is done to lower the cost of child care, she will remain our only child.”
This year, state leaders gave a big boost to low-income families struggling to pay for child care. Now the push is on to help middle-income parents.
A proposal for the coming legislative session aims to help cover costs on a sliding-scale basis for families earning up to $175,00, and it is being welcomed by Debra Messenger, director of All Ages & Faces Academy, a child-care center in St. Paul.
At a recent news conference, she spoke of calls she’s received from parents eager to enroll their children and the silence that follows when she tells them the cost: “It is heartbreaking to have a mom who is excited to have found child care at all … realize she will have to decline her new job offer because she cannot afford child care,” Messenger said.
According to early-childhood advocacy group Think Small of Little Canada, the median Minnesota family with one infant spends about 21 % of their household income on child care, compared with the 7 % of income that the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonprofit think tank, deems “affordable.” EPI put the average annual cost at $16,087.
That is more than the cost of a year’s in-state tuition at the University of Minnesota, said state Rep. Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn, DFL-Eden Prairie.
She is working with state Sen. Grant Hauschild, DFL-Hermantown, on a bill to expand the early learning scholarships program to middle-income families — a proposal that at the time of the Nov. 30 news conference carried a price tag of about $500 million.
A week later, state budget officials predicted that lawmakers would have a $2.4 billion surplus in the coming session, but added a potential $2.3 billion deficit loomed in the next biennium. Republican leaders say that leaves little room for new spending.
Hauschild, who has held child-care roundtables in his district, said last week that work continues on the bill and he is eager to hear what budget forecasters say in February when lawmakers return to the State Capitol.
“I’m not going to stop bringing up ideas to help solve the big challenges we face,” he said. “But I’m always going to be fiscally responsible when it comes to our budget.”
This year and next, funding of early learning scholarships will jump from $70 million to $196 million a year. Think Small, the scholarships administrator in Hennepin and Ramsey counties, plans to dedicate much of it to giving low-income infants and toddlers access to richer, more consistent programming.
Minnesota also provides funding for a limited number of school district preschoolers.
Carson Starkey, a St. Paul parent, said his 4-year-old daughter has free preschool at the district’s Nokomis Montessori North Campus. Good thing, he said, because he also has a 1-year-old in day care, and the combined cost could’ve topped $20,000 a year.
“That can be overwhelming and can drown a lot of young families at a time when they’re just becoming established,” he said.
Starkey’s comments came during a legislative hearing in November, during which he also gave a shout out to child-care operators and staff members for the “invaluable work they do for our society … helping to raise and educate our babies.”
At Iron Range Tykes, Gruba said that the bond between staff and families is strong. The center is licensed for 90 children, but about 350 come and go, given not all are there five days a week and cancellations can lead to calls to families on standby.
“A lot of my staff and myself attend the children’s events outside of here,” she said. “We attend birthday parties. We’re all very close.”
Despite demand, she said, the center operates at a “very low profit margin,” owing to mandates related to first aid and CPR training, and USDA food regulations, among other requirements. She said Gov. Tim Walz has been a great early-ed advocate, but the free meal program he championed for schools does not extend to child-care centers.
In January 2022, she raised rates, and saw a family of six pull three kids from the center. There always is a waiting list and the ability to fill the slots, but as a parent she feels “horrible” about making such moves. And it has been on her mind of late.
A new year will bring a new hike, she said, and she expects turnover again.
Amid the cacophony and chaos of the pregame preparation before a recent Minnetonka High School football game, an exceptional group of six girls is gathered together among the school’s deep and talented cheerleading and dance teams.
The cheerleaders, a national championship-winning program of 40 girls, dot the track around the football field. As the clock ticks down to kickoff and their night of choreographed routines begins, the six girls, proudly wearing Minnetonka blue T-shirts emblazoned with “Skippers Nation” and shaking shiny pom-poms, swirl around the track, bristling with excited energy.
Their circumstances are no different from any of the other cheerleaders with one notable exception: The girls on this team have special needs.
They’re members of the Minnetonka Sparklers, a squad of cheerleaders made up solely of girls with special needs.
A football game at Minnetonka High School is an elaborate production. The Skippers’ recent homecoming victory over Shakopee brought an announced crowd of 8,145. And that is just paying attendees; it doesn’t include school staffers, coaches, dance team, marching band, concession workers, media members and others going about their business attached to the game.
The Sparklers program, now in its 12th season, was the brainchild of Marcy Adams, a former Minnetonka cheerleader who initiated the program in her senior year of high school. Adams has been coach of the team since its inception, staying on through her tenure as a cheerleader at the University of Minnesota.
She started the program after experiencing the Unified Sports program at Minnetonka. The unified sports movement at high schools brings together student-athletes with cognitive or physical disabilities and athletes with no disabilities to foster relationships, understanding and compassion through athletics. Many Minnesota schools offer unified sports.
“I grew up in a household that valued students with special needs and valued inclusion,” Adams said. “I saw a need to give to those students. At Minnetonka, we have a strong Unified program, and this was a great opportunity to build relationships and offer mentorship opportunities.”
Elite runners are in a league of their own.
To get a sense of how far ahead elite runners are compared to the rest of us, the Minnesota Star Tribune took a look at how their times compare to the average marathon participant.
The 2022 Twin Cities Marathon men’s winner was Japanese competitor Yuya Yoshida, who ran the marathon in a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes and 28 seconds, for an average speed of 11.96 mph. He averaged 5 minutes and 2 seconds per mile.
That’s more than twice the speed of the average competitor across both the men’s and women’s categories, of 5.89 mph, according to race results site Mtec. The average participant finished in 4 hours, 26 minutes and 56 seconds. That comes out to an average time of 10 minutes and 11 seconds per mile.
And taking it to the most extreme, the fastest-ever marathon runner, Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya, finished the 2023 Chicago Marathon in 2 hours and 35 seconds, for an average pace of about 13 mph. Kiptum averaged 4 minutes and 36 seconds per mile.
Here is a graphic showing these differences in average marathon speed.
The school said in its lawsuit that both Hugo and May Township consider the land rural residential zoning, and that the codes identify a school as a conditional use. Hugo officials have generally supported the LCA plan, granting a building permit in 2022 that allowed LCA to invest $2.1 million into the former Withrow school for renovations.
The school said in its lawsuit that the existing septic system is failing and needs to be replaced, regardless of expansion plans.
The school said it notified neighbors of the property in 2022 and again in 2023 about its land purchase. About 50 residents in total attended those meetings, and just two expressed concerns over the issues of traffic and lights, according to the suit. The school met with the May Township board in May of 2023, and minutes from that meeting show that the board had no concerns beyond lighting at the time, according to the suit. The board asked if the school could use “down lighting” for its athletic fields and the school said it would.
In June, Hugo City Council approved a conditional use permit for the school, but the May Township board voted to extend the decision deadline to early August.
The suit says it was at a subsequent meeting in July that May Town Board Chairman John Pazlar objected to the plan for the first time, saying “the main concern, based on public comment, is to keep Town of May rural.”
The school said its plans for the May Township portion of its property had been submitted eight months prior to the July meeting, and that its plans met requirements of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
