Building Child Care Solutions Statewide

Samantha Hovland (l) and Angie Bissen at the Inspired Beginnings Learning Academy. Photo Sarah Whiting

Family and center-based child care access in Minnesota has declined in the last 20 years, according to a 2022 Center for Rural Policy and Development research report. The biggest impact has been in Greater Minnesota. In 2021, about 6,500 child care spaces were lost in non-metro Minnesota. This meant more parents stayed home due to lack of options, and rural companies in particular had trouble retaining employees. A few cities have taken steps to correct those issues.

Austin

Of Hormel’s 20,000 global employees, around 1,800 of them work at the Austin headquarters in southern Minnesota. It was becoming increasingly difficult for Hormel to hire new talent and transfer staff to the area because of child care shortages.

Hormel began conversations with local leaders, residents, nonprofits, and other businesses. They learned that “people were either moving out of the community to seek child care or were not willing to relocate into the community,” says human resources manager Angie Bissen.

With the help of First Children’s Finance and the Rural Child Care Innovations Program (RCCIP), their strategic plan landed on developing a center-based facility for both Hormel employees and community members. But Hormel needed a partner who specialized in child care operations. “We make really great food. We don’t know how to run child care centers,” says Bissen.

The company partnered with Bright Horizons Family Solutions, which opened a $5 million, 13,000-square-foot facility that now serves up to 130 children at its Inspired Beginnings Learning Academy.

Says parent Samantha Hovland, “Everyone who is working and has young kids knows it’s constantly juggling between work, career, family, and child. Having the support from the company, with a facility like this one, indicates to me that the company cares about their employees.”

Hovland also appreciates the reduced commute time, because the company-based setup increases the time she spends with her daughter. “There really aren’t a ton of hours in the day that you have with them as working parents. We get to actually spend that time with our child, rather than sitting on a highway commuting 30–40 minutes to and from.”

Of the facility’s enrollment numbers, 70 percent are the children of Hormel employees and the remainder serve the general community.

Ortonville

Kathryn Melton said if she had not had access to child care, she would have left the workforce. After attending college, Melton moved back to her hometown of Ortonville, near the South Dakota border. After marrying and having children, she found it difficult to find child care in the small town.

Since 2010, Ortonville’s population has grown by nearly 9 percent. Between 2023 and 2024, 100 new babies were born. Lisa Graphenteen, an economic development consultant for the Ortonville Economic Development Authority, discovered multiple challenges for employers, but particularly in women-dominated work environments. The city has a health care and elder care facility that employs many women.

Graphenteen and community stakeholders, including Melton, began to work with First Children’s Finance and RCCIP. The program is funded through the Minnesota Department of Human Services and the Michigan Department of Education, helping communities develop a strategic plan to increase child care providers and affordability. “Our challenge is trying to find people interested in becoming a provider,” Graphenteen says.

The strategic plan — developed over 18 months — identified funding sources to cover provider start-up costs and help navigate child care licensing and education requirements. Two new providers have since started businesses in the area.

Morris

Stevens County Administrator Rebecca Young faced the child care shortage after the birth of her fourth child. “I was having to make some hard decisions about returning to work,” she says.

When Covid relief funding was disbursed to Stevens County, Young suggested investing the pandemic funding toward child care provider recruitment and retention. Community members, businesses, existing child care providers, and local government officials came together at a town hall to discuss solutions.

Young says, “Young women were telling us, ‘I see child care and early childhood education as a profession, and I want to do this, but I don’t have a home, or the home I have can’t be licensed, or I live in an apartment.’”

The solution was to build a 6,000-square-foot building with separate “pod” housing units equipped to serve six child care operators. The county allocated $1.28 million of the $2 million in Covid relief funding to build the units. Grants allocated by First Children’s Finance and RCCIP also contributed to the development of the housing units.

Providers pay $100 per month in rent, plus utilities, during the first year, which helps to increase their business cash flow. The result: 84 child care openings and interest from other residents in becoming child care providers.

Parent Britney House struggled with work-related decisions before this opportunity came up. “One of us was going to stay home,” she says.

House says her children and her career are both important to her, so bridging her personal and professional goals with child care accessibility is essential. “I need to work, get out of the house, and not be with my children all day long,” she says. “We are more appreciative and loving when we have some time apart. I think that’s true for other people too. They want to get out into the community to work and contribute beyond just child caregiving.”

Since the building launch, there is a waitlist of child care providers eager to open a child care business. Stevens County hopes to create more pod spaces in this west central Minnesota community.

Bemidji

Lydia Pietruszewski is cofounder and director of Pine Pals Fort and Nest, and director of the Bemidji Early Childhood Collaborative. She works to mitigate barriers to service availability and support legislation that would make child care more affordable for Minnesota parents. “In rural areas, we know that it takes all of us,” she says.

In 2018, she and her team began work with RCCIP and First Children’s Financing. She met with business owners, child care operators, economic development leaders, and others in the northern Minnesota area to talk about child care issues that have plagued the community for years.

One of the biggest issues facing their community was the lack of availability of infant and toddler capacity in existing center-based and family child care settings.

Pietruszewski pivoted her business plan for Pine Pals Fort to accommodate more room for infant and toddler slots, but the capacity was still not enough.

She submitted a proposal for a call to providers to operate Pine Pals Nest in 2024 alongside Sanford Health Care. All slots are dedicated to infants and toddlers, open to both Sanford employees and other residents.

Sanford physical therapist Molly Brenner says this opportunity meant she did not have to quit her job. She notes another benefit: “You’re dealing with your own health and mental health issues, and it’s just another added stress — to not really know who will be watching them.”

Pietruszewski continues to advocate for child care reform and opportunities in her area. “These local creative solutions and partnerships are awesome, but they’re just a [temporary solution]. What we need is to transform the child care system into something that is a thriving career for the people doing it, and accessible and affordable for more families. That drives the entire economy. If we don’t have it, parents can’t go to work.”