At least two new childcare programs are coming to northern Michigan this fall, but they may only make a small dent in the region’s growing childcare crisis.

According to Mary Manner, who serves as a coordinator for the Great Start Collaborative of Traverse Bay, 20-30 percent of the local childcare programs that were operating before March are unlikely to reopen. Some, she says, closed down during the stay-at-home order and are now trying to reopen but can’t find the staff to do so. Others, like Munson, are no longer offering care for non-employee families.

A pair of new programs are helping to fill the void. Old Mission Peninsula School (OMPS) was previously the home of a daycare program run by Traverse City’s Angel Care Preschool & Child Care, but that program announced in February that it would need to close due to staffing shortages. Now, OMPS is launching its own preschool program on-site as a replacement. In Kingsley, meanwhile, the Kingsley Children’s Center (KCC) is preparing to expand its offerings to include year-round preschool/daycare and infant/toddler care. Previously, KCC only served preschool-aged kids, and only during the school year.

Those two programs will add a small number of slots to the region’s childcare bandwidth: 16 for preschool-aged kids at OMPS and eight for infant/toddler care at KCC, plus summertime options for KCC families that previously had to find other care programs during the warmer months. Both programs filled up almost instantly.

“Basically within hours, the day that I posted we were opening [the infant/toddler care program], I was pretty much full,” says Jenasie Schopieray, the owner and director of KCC. “That’s how needed childcare is in our region.” She adds that, every day, KCC families drive their kids to the center from as far north as Traverse City and as far south as Manton. “Parents are looking for childcare wherever they can get it.”

The Great Start Collaborative, in collaboration with local organizations like Traverse Connect, is working to add more capacity to northern Michigan’s childcare ecosystem. One option is bringing all-new programs to the region. Manner says there is a feasibility study in the works, launched by real estate cooperative Commongrounds, that is assessing the possibility of bringing the Wildflower Schools program to the area. According to the Wildflower Schools website, the program is “an ecosystem of decentralized Montessori micro-schools” that work by “blurring the boundaries between home-schooling and institutional schooling.” Most Wildflower Schools have one or two classrooms and serve a small number of kids in the 3-10 age range. Each school is autonomous and is led by a teacher-leader who can curate care and curriculum strategies based on the needs of children and their families.

The other option is the legislative path. Manner says that both State Representative Jack O’Malley and State Senator Curt VanderWall are working on legislation that could affect childcare statewide. So far, O’Malley has introduced three childcare bills. The first would increase ratios for in-home daycare, so that providers could have a ratio of seven kids to one adult, versus the current 6-1 ratio. Other bills would allow daycare centers to care for 3-5 kids before school hours and give childcare providers more time to comply with new requirements from the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA). VanderWall hasn’t unveiled his bill yet, but Manner understands it “would address making childcare more affordable to working families in the state.” Manner adds that there are currently waivers or exemptions in place that allow people to start working for daycare centers without all of the required credentials, so long as they enter training programs and start working toward those credentials.

Manner says these efforts could help expand staffing and capacity for childcare, but notes there needs to be a balance between ramping up quantity and retaining standards for quality. “This isn't about just creating slots. They have to be quality slots, because poor early care harms children.”

Part of the quality assurance process for childcare is an in-depth licensing and inspection process – something that both OMPS and KCC are in the process of completing. Aubrey Henschell, early childcare program director and lead teacher for the new OMPS preschool program, says the school has gotten a lot of help through that process from local Great Start coordinators. And while COVID-19 has posed even more obstacles to offering a safe environment for children, Henschell says OMPS is uniquely suited to the task, thanks in part to its spacious property. During the milder weather months, Henschell says the plan is to use a designated outdoor area on the OMPS property “to bring everything that we would typically have in the classroom outside.”

Even beyond daycare closures and extra safety protections, though, Manner says COVID-19 poses huge challenges for local childcare, due simply to the uncertainty about what might happen with schools this fall and beyond.

“We just don't have a system to handle school-aged children,” Manner tells The Ticker. “Our childcare in the region is really birth to the start of kindergarten. Once kids are in kindergarten, we have before and after-school programs but there's not a full-day childcare option. I think parents are getting worried about what they're going to do with kids who are under high school age [if in-person school can’t resume or proves unsafe].”

Great Start Collaborative is working with 5 to One – an organization that provides early childhood resources to Antrim, Benzie, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, and Leelanau counties – to help families create “pandemic pods.” That model would see families joining together for school-aged childcare, supervision, and education, in the event that parents have to go back to work and kids aren’t able to go back to school. “We’ve seen [the pods] be a successful model in other places, but it’s a challenge for families to form those relationships with a few other families and work out the details. We're hoping that we can support families doing that,” Manner says.

“I feel like [COVID-19] might be a big opportunity to really understand how important childcare is,” adds Manner. “We need to realize that if we want to have a skilled, capable workforce, families and working parents need high-quality, affordable childcare for their kids. We just need to accept childcare as part of the infrastructure. The same way that we have roads and sewers and water distribution lines, we need childcare.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Munson Healthcare was no longer serving non-employee families with its childcare services. While the daycare services at Munson Medical Center in Traverse City are employee-only, Munson does offer child development programs at Paul Oliver Memorial Hospital in Frankfort and Kalkaska Memorial Health Center that are open to the public.