Commissioner: Cost of child care pinching families

SARTELL – At New Horizon Academy, sunlight streams in through large windows as children play with colorful blocks and stick magnetic letters onto an easel, under the careful watch of attentive teachers.

It's the kind of quality, educational child care many parents seek, but it comes at a steep price. For an infant enrolled full time, the cost is about $322 a week.

For parents like Scott and Rebecca Pickler, whose 3-year-old daughter Adrianna and 1-year-old son Jack attend New Horizon, it's a significant expense, one that comes on top of student loans and the possibility of caring for aging parents.

The Picklers were on hand Wednesday when state Revenue Commissioner Cynthia Bauerly visited the Sartell center to promote Gov. Mark Dayton's plan to expand a tax credit to help families afford the often-staggering cost of child care.

Minnesota is among the states with the highest child care costs, Bauerly said. The average cost of child care in Minnesota is $901 a month or $10,812 a year for one child in a center, according to the governor's office.

"We think that this is a way to help families with a really important investment in their own children, and particularly in high-quality care that helps advance that early learning stage as well," Bauerly said.

About 38,000 Minnesota families are eligible for the tax credit. Dayton wants to expand it to cover an additional 92,000 families.

The cost of the expansion would be about $100 million over the 2016-17 biennium. It's part of Dayton's overall $42 billion two-year budget proposal, which also includes $109 million to provide preschool for 4-year-olds.

The proposal has met with skepticism from some who feel it's too generous for middle- and upper-middle income families who don't truly need the assistance.

Currently, the tax credit is available to families earning $39,000 or less. The governor's plan would raise the income limit to $112,000 for families with one child or $124,000 for families with two or more children.

If it's approved, the average family would receive a tax credit of $481, depending on income, number of children and child care expenses. The maximum credit a family could receive would be $2,100 per year.

Bauerly said the expansion is targeted at middle-class families who don't qualify for the tax break now, but are having to make difficult choices about going back to work or staying home because of the high cost of child care.

"This is really hitting middle-class families," Bauerly said. "And there are families who when they look at the cost of child care and they look at both parents working, it may come down to the fact that that math just doesn't make sense. And so it might force a family into making a decision based on those cost drivers as opposed to what might be best for that family."

The cost — and quality — of child care varies widely around the state. Child care in the Twin Cities metro area is typically more costly than in outstate Minnesota.

Child care centers also tend to be considerably more expensive than providers who care for children in their home. But they also tend to have more structured curriculum and trained staff, often with teaching experience.

New Horizon in Sartell is nationally accredited and has a top rating from the state's Parent Aware system, said director Lori Loehrer.

"For us, delivering high quality is really really important," Loehrer said. "We understand that with that high quality comes a cost. We fully support any way to help parents pay for (care)."

For the Picklers, the Sartell New Horizon center offers flexible hours and quality child development programs, but the quality care "comes at a price," Scott Pickler said.

"Having this tax credit can help us and a lot of other families have access to that," he said.

Follow Kirsti Marohn on Twitter @kirstimarohn or reach her by phone at 255-8746.