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St. Paul voters soon will decide whether to raise property taxes to support child care for the city’s youngest lower-income kids. Though that’s certainly a needed, worthy endeavor, doing it through the city is not the most effective way to make it happen.
The Nov. 5 ballot question will ask Capitol City citizens to approve increasing those taxes by $2 million a year, compounding annually, until $20 million a year is levied in year 10. Those funds would subsidize families and supplement existing state, federal, public school and nonprofit child care assistance programs.
To do that, the city would create and staff a new social service division to administer the program for babies and preschoolers. City workers shouldn’t start from scratch to take this on. It would be more practical to expand existing, proven programs to cover care for more of the city’s children from infancy to age 4.
To be sure, low-income families need the help. According to Child Care Aware of Minnesota, the median monthly cost for child care in Ramsey County is $1,085, or more than $13,000 annually. And research has shown that investing in the youngest among us brings societal and economic dividends when well-educated kids become contributing adults.
That’s why the emphasis should be placed on expanding programs such as Head Start and other county, state and federal programs that would open up more slots for preschoolers.
Since 2017, advocates including Council Member Rebecca Noecker have been working to provide city support for early education. The effort was spearheaded by the St. Paul All Ready for Kindergarten coalition, or SPARK, with the goal of helping 5,000 St. Paul families pay for the rising costs of child care. Noecker has said it is designed to start small and grow over time, and acknowledges that there are greater funding needs than the levy would initially cover.
