In The Great North, We've Seen Firsthand That We Need Universal Child Care [OPINION]

By Chelsea Moeller, Minnesota Reformer

April 28, 2026

In our northern Minnesota communities, we’re committed to building the infrastructure that we need — schools, health care, roads, businesses and more — so that we can grow and thrive. We may live in smaller communities, but our needs and hopes for the future are the same.

But we can’t do any of it without affordable, available child care.

In March, we invited state legislators to Thief River Falls and Bemidji to talk about why access to high-quality child care is an integral part of a community’s infrastructure, especially in rural Minnesota.

Reps. Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn and Pete Johnson visited Discovery Place Early Learning Center in Thief River Falls, and were then joined by Rep. Jamie Long for a visit to Pine Pals Intergenerational Learning Center in Bemidji and a panel discussion with community members.

They heard from a child care provider who struggles to find staff because Walmart and DigiKey — the thriving electronics company — pay much better than she can. They heard from teachers who couldn’t afford to make payments on the student loans they took out to be qualified for their position. They heard from teachers who were turned down for auto loans because they didn’t make enough money at the job they are hoping to drive to everyday.

They heard from families who were making impossible choices: where they could live, who could be in the workforce, and how to pay the bills when so much of their income is tied to child care costs. They heard from employers who are increasingly hearing from their workers that access to child care is impacting their ability to accept jobs and continue to work at them.

Discovery Place is able to stay open because of investments from local businesses, and Pine Pals benefits from a rent-free agreement with GoldPine Home and Sanford Health in Bemidji. These are excellent solutions for these centers, but they aren’t sustainable or scalable. Without strong, continuous state investment, child care centers and family child care providers will continue to close their doors.

High-quality child care is expensive for good reason — it’s people-intensive work. At first, the answer seems simple. Why not just increase ratios of teacher to children to increase profits? It’s currently one teacher for every four infants, for instance. Kotyza-Witthuhn, who co-chairs the House Children and Families Finance and Policy Committee neatly laid out the dilemma: “How many infants can one person carry out of a burning building?” When you consider that scenario, four seems like too many.

It’s also people-intensive work because child care centers are open for 11-12 hours a day. That means that at least a teacher and an assistant are required so that those ratios can be maintained, including during teachers’ necessary breaks.

So what’s the answer to the child care conundrum, wherein families cannot afford child care, teachers cannot earn living wages, and employers in rural communities cannot attract workers because there isn’t enough child care?

We need universal child care that supports both families and providers. For families, tuition would be subsidized by the state to be free or low cost to every family. For providers, we would support teachers’ thriving wages so they can afford to stay in the profession that they love and in the region they want to call home.

This is the only solution that ensures that every child across the state gets high quality child care.

We don’t treat roads or health care or schools as optional amenities, so why would we treat child care as an afterthought, especially when we can’t have those other necessities without it?

Getting to universal child care for every Minnesotan will not be easy, but it is necessary. For folks who live up here in the great north woods, we shouldn’t have to choose between living in a place we love or living in a place where we can find child care. If we want our current businesses to stay, new startups to join them, and people to work in these thriving communities, we need to invest in child care.

The Minnesota Reformer is an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to keeping Minnesotans informed and unearthing stories other outlets can’t or won’t tell..