Lori Erickson was thrilled when state lawmakers last year agreed to fund another 5,200 seats of free, voluntary pre-kindergarten in Minnesota. That commitment allowed the St. Paul Public Schools to roughly triple pre-K slots this fall to 1,500.
“We are very proud of having our pre-K classrooms within an elementary setting,” said Erickson, the district’s assistant director for pre-K programs. “It allows families to enter at (age) 4 and stay through that entire elementary school through fifth grade. So it’s a great landing spot and a great place to become a part of a community.”
Voluntary pre-K is essentially free preschool for 4-year-olds. With the funding, schools can add a new grade level to an existing elementary school. The 5,200 new slots put the total at 12,360 available seats statewide, about a 75 percent increase.
The National Institute for Early Child Research applauded the new funding last year, saying it could lift Minnesota out of the bottom half of their state rankings. The nonprofit group currently puts Minnesota 37th among states for preschool access.
The new opportunity, though, comes with a cost for private child care and preschool operators who worry the state’s big bet on publicly funded preschool could put them out of business.
‘You can’t compete with free’
Advocates of the expanded pre-K believe the programs are more complimentary than competitive with private child care. The opportunities open for free pre-K and private child care let families tap what works best for them, Erickson said.
“We function within a school system,” she said. “We are September to June. That doesn’t work for all families. We are 7:30 (a.m.) to 2:00 (p.m.). That doesn't work for all families.”
Some Minnesota private child care operators, though, don’t believe it will work that way.
“You can’t compete with free,” said Ifrah Nur, director of South Metro Child Care in Bloomington.
Nur said she’s already had trouble enrolling preschool age students and she’s worried about losing more students to the state’s free pre-K expansion.
“Child care programs are struggling because most of our revenue comes from the preschool age group, and we can't seem to get enough enrolled because they have these things that they're attending,” Nur said.
The cost of infant and toddler care far exceeds the cost of pre-school care, which means tuition from those older students help the businesses to break even or make a profit. Losing those students means a serious hit to revenue.
In northwestern Minnesota, Ashley Egerdahl said she’s losing half of her preschool students to free or low-cost programs.
“It’s like a double edged sword,” said Egerdahl, who oversees Pine Pals IL Childcare and Preschool in Bemidji. “I’m glad it’s an option, but it makes it harder for private companies like ours to stay afloat” in a “a market system that’s failing for child care centers.”
Rising costs and staffing shortfalls that reach back to the COVID-19 pandemic continue to make it hard to stay in the child care business, Egerdahl said. Her center is looking for ways to compensate for the loss in enrollment, but it’s not easy. She’s had parents ask if they can do after school care or take kids on nonschool days.
“We would love to take as many kiddos as we could if we have the room,” she said. “But the reality is, when a kid leaves our program, we're going to try to fill that spot so we can’t just be a backup day care.”
Lawmakers who oversaw the $38 million funding boost last year to add pre-K slots say they understood the challenges private child care businesses would face from the state expanding free pre-K, but they see the expansion as part of a larger plan to support the entire system.
“It’s a reason to make an investment in all the parts of the system,” said Rep. Dave Pinto, DFL-St. Paul. “And that is, in fact, something that we've done over the last couple of years, and we did in the budget two years ago.”
In 2023, the state made a landmark investment in early education, agreeing to spend $315 million on programs to boost wages for child care providers and improve the Child Care Assistance Program for families.
“There’s a lot more that needs to happen,” said Pinto. Expanding voluntary pre-K “is just one part of a much broader set of investments that we’ve made, and many more investments that need to be made if, in fact, we’re going to have the kind of care and learning that that kids deserve and that we know we all benefit from.”
