Minnesota Babies
LexpectoPatronum
member
Frustrated....
LexpectoPatronum
member
I guess I'm mostly just venting. I'm really frustrated by how high day care costs are in Minnesota. It causes so much unnecessary stress ... and now with the whole unionizing day care workers ... Just going to make it worse. Not really sure what the point of this post is ... just ... you know. Looking for someone else who cares, haha.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Frustrated....
my read shelf:
I read an interesting article from MPR about this issue and it addressed that. The fact that childcare is so expensive, and the workers aren't paid very well at all, and the standards in general aren't very high, but in order to fix it the cost would need to go up, but it's already so high...
The main point of the article that I took away was how the old welfare system was designed to basically pay women to stay home and care for their kids, but now women are expected to work, thus expected to pay for child care. It's a huge problem with no solution.
And, although I do feel bad that they are getting paid less than minimum wage ... In order to afford day care in my area AND afford to actually get to work in the first place, one would need to make at least $300/week AFTER taxes... so about 12.50/hour. So that's just enough money to afford to pay someone else to watch your child and get to work to make enough money to pay the person who watches your child.
Now I'm just ranting for no reason. It's essentially an unsolvable problem unless magic money shows up from somewhere.
For the first year in FOREVER our DCP isn't raising rates this year. We're lucky enough to be able to afford PT but there's no way we could ever afford full-time. It works out to roughly $8.50/hr. for PT, and that's only ONE child... Granted the rate drops considerably once they've reached post potty training, but still!
The sad part is that the teachers at the center we're at are making a living wage (and if they have kids that need DCP it's included as a benefit), if the unionization goes through their costs are the ones that will go up. The DCP can only raise rates to a certain level before parents have to say they simply can't afford it which will hurt the workers even more because numbers will drop and staffing will have to correspond..