By Audrey Posten
A new Clayton County Childcare Solutions Fund aims to enhance wages for providers and increase the current and future childcare labor pool in Clayton County through training and partnerships.
It’s one of a set of three goals developed based on findings from a 2023 childcare market analysis of Clayton County, spearheaded by the Clayton County Foundation for the Future.
According to Tierney Hoefer, a parent, Garnavillo Daycare board vice president and Clayton Ridge teacher who chairs the Childcare Strategic Committee, findings revealed a shortage of over 1,000 childcare seats in Clayton County alone—a need straining the local labor force where the number of families with all parents in the workforce has increased.
Goals include increasing the number of regulated childcare spaces in Clayton County by a minimum of 48 spaces by 2029 and increasing awareness of the need for regulated childcare overall by engaging local employers and community partners in childcare solutions.
The coalition hopes focusing on the labor pool will help with that.
“If you don’t have the staff, you don’t have the spaces,” explained Tracy Kregel, a member of the Childcare Solutions Subcommittee. “Parents are trying to find a job here and they’re trying to find childcare, but there’s no place for them to go. Some wait lists are over nine months. That’s difficult. That puts a lot of strain on our families to do that.”
Kregel said the Clayton County Childcare Solutions Fund looks to address turnover in the childcare field.
“They’re not paid the greatest and I don’t know if some of them are offered benefits either, so it’s hard to compete with other employers who can pay higher. We are trying to come up with a way we could reward employees who like spending time with kids and want to make a career out of childcare and early education,” she added. “We’re just trying to figure out how can we keep the good staff who want to stay in their role. So that’s how we came up with this.”
The program is designed to enhance wages and retain quality staff by incentivizing licensed childcare centers and registered in-home providers through the Iowa Quality for Kids, or IQ4K, program. It’s a voluntary quality rating and improvement system through the state that takes into account nutrition, physical activity, professional development, leadership and administration, family and community partners, environment, teaching staff qualifications and teaching and learning.
“So there’s already oversight in place for the daycares to meet certain benchmarks in each of those levels—levels one through five,” Kregel said.
Yearly fund payouts to employers would depend on their IQ4K level achieved, with the intent of improving quality of care, professional development and staff retention. The higher the level maintained, the greater the potential award.
The Childcare Solutions Action Plan states there could be a max $4,000 per provider for staff higher education for providers at level 0. At level one, childcare centers can earn $5,400 and in-home providers $1,350 annually if the level is maintained. Those totals increase to $10,800 and $2,700, respectively, for level two, then $16,200 and $4,050 for level three.
“Some daycare centers do not have a rating, so they would not be eligible to receive from the Childcare Solutions Fund,” Hoefer said. “That was one stipulation our team has really put on this. We want to show they are putting in the work and they’re doing the heavy lifting to assure we’re providing high quality levels of care with higher levels of training. There’s also a lot more paperwork and procedures that have to be followed in order to be IQ4K rated.”
Within Clayton County, the Garnavillo Community Daycare and Dr. Clifford C. Smith Childcare Center in McGregor are level one rated, while Kids Kampus Community Childcare in Guttenberg is level two and Little Bulldog Childcare in Monona is level three. Licensed in-home provider Sarah Flores, located in Postville, is at level four.
Elkader Childcare and Learning Center, Berry Tender Child Care in Strawberry Point, Kinderwood CCC in Edgewood and Wanda Lacy’s licensed in-home daycare in Guttenberg are currently not rated.
Other providers could become eligible as they become registered and meet rating levels.
The Clayton County Childcare Solutions Fund aims to raise $41,850 for year one, fiscal year 2026-2027, through support from the Clayton County Board of Supervisors ($18,600), HAWC Partnerships for Children ($3,100), Clayton County Foundation for the Future ($1,550) and multiple cities who have a participating program. This includes $2,400 asks for McGregor and Garnavillo, $4,800 from Guttenberg, $7,200 from Monona and $1,800 from Postville.
Coalition members have been approaching city councils ahead of the upcoming budget season.
“We have asked each community for a different amount. Some of the amounts are also zero,” Hoefer said. Elkader, Strawberry Point, Edgewood and Luana, for example, have not received funding requests.
“In the future, we might be going to other city councils just to educate them about the program. That’s a committee discussion to see when and how much is an appropriate amount to go to those areas and see if they can support,” Kregel noted.
The committee hopes these community partners will support the fund through the initial few years while an endowment is established and begins to grow, taking over payouts.
“While we are also working on these first three years, we’ll be building that endowment fund where we go talk to individuals and businesses and tell them what we hope to gain by this project and hope they would like to support it and put money into the endowment fund that will eventually take over the payouts,” Kregel said. “It’s not like we’re gonna keep coming back to the community year after year after year for the ask. It’s just to get that endowment fund up to what it needs to be to do that payout. So there is an end in sight. That way we can make it sustainable, and it could help the childcare centers and in-home providers for years to come.”
She added that funding allocated for each daycare, particularly the first year, will likely be fluid depending on funding support from partners. The committee will continue to investigate other funding opportunities too.
“Every little bit’s going to help,” she said. “It’s definitely a marathon, not a sprint. It’s going to be a long process and a lot of education along the way.”
Since learning about the concept in August and September, participating childcare centers have been excited, according to Kregel.
“They like to know that there’s going to be support in the community to help them, because they all feel the pressure. They all feel the stress of trying to pay their staff a fair wage, but they can’t increase the cost for the families because the families are stretched thin as well. It’s a delicate balance for them. I think this extra support would help boost their morale and their staff,” she said
