A New Way to Bridge the Child Care Gap

Photo courtesy of Whitney Brey.

If you’re a working parent of a kiddo age 0 to 5, what do you do for child care? There aren’t many options in Houghton County. And what if the child care center you are using shuts down? 

Whitney Brey and some of the other 15 parents left in the lurch when Right Start Kids Academy closed last summer decided to take the bull by the horns and establish their own child care center. 

“There are major gaps in child care,” says Brey, a physician’s assistant at Upper Great Lakes Family Health Center in Calumet. “I’ve had to bring my children to the clinic with me in order to work.”

Their new center, a nonprofit called Bridging Gaps Child Care, opened for applications on Feb. 20 and plans to have children start attending on March 6. 

Keweenaw Family Resource Center Documents Need

The Keweenaw Family Resource Center (KFRC) confirms that the need is enormous. KFRC collected data during a Copper Country Great Start Collaborative rural child care innovation study conducted last summer with Children’s First Finance, a national nonprofit whose mission is “to grow the supply and business sustainability of excellent child care.”

The study looked at child care needs, surveyed parents, employers and child care providers, and took a deep dive into licensing issues.

“We found a significant gap in child care for infants to five-year-olds,” says Iola Brubaker, director of the KFRC.  “We found 1,302 families with all parents working who needed child care for their infants and toddlers and only 300 child care slots that operated on a 12-month calendar.”

That leaves up to 1,002 families who can’t find child care. There are probably another 350–500 slots that operate only during the school year, Brubaker notes.

Many of the child care centers in the county have income or other requirements that eliminate them as options for middle-income working parents. 

BHK focuses on low-income families and high-risk children; Michigan Tech’s Little Huskies caters to children of university employees or students and is open shorter hours, and Saints Peter & Paul doesn’t take infants, Brey points out. 

“BHK is a wonderful, effective program, but it can take only a few families over the poverty level, and they have to have other risk factors,” Brubaker says. 

Child Care Affects the Economy

Child care is important for more than the parents of preschool children. Its availability affects businesses seeking to hire working parents and the economic development of the whole community.

“Access to quality child care and early education is vital to individual productivity and regional economic growth,” says Brubaker.

“There is a direct connection between child care and the local economy,” she said. “Without adequate supply of good quality child care, local employees and employers alike lose out.”

There are only nine licensed home-based child care providers and five group child care providers in Houghton County, Brubaker says. The availability of child care even impacts parents’ decision to have a child, she points out.

“We planned our pregnancy based on an infant opening,” says one local parent.

Another had to leave her profession entirely because she could not find quality child care. 

A Complicated Process

That’s the problem that Brey and her fellow parents wanted to address. It hasn’t been an easy path. First, they had to find a site for their center.  Luckily, they discovered that Glad Tidings Church in Hancock had the perfect space, one that the church formerly used for homeschooling. 

Then there were the licensing requirements, so many of them: fire inspection, electrical inspection, health inspection, mechanical inspection and finally, a state licensing inspection. They made it through all those inspections and are about to get a six-month license. After six months, the center will have to undergo another inspection, followed—hopefully—by a two-year license. 

The new child care center is licensed for 32 children ages 0-5 including slots for eight infants from six weeks to 30 months old. Infant care is especially problematic in Houghton County. Almost no child care centers take infants, Brey explains. 

Bridging Gaps Child Care has hired a director—Alexi Geshel—and two lead teachers. They need two more lead teachers and two assistants before they can operate at full capacity, Brey says.  

Editor’s Note: Alexi Geshel is the sister of Copper Beacon board secretary Dillon Geshel.

"We really, really have a lack of child care centers in our area,” says Geshel. “There aren't a lot of options, especially for parents with infants or parents who make too much to qualify for BHK.” 

Waiting lists for existing centers are very long, she adds

Geshel worked as a teacher at BHK Great Start for seven years and then at Right Start Kids Academy for five years, until it shut down.  Since she worked at Right Start, she knows the parents and their kids.

“I have a great relationship with the current board at Bridging Gaps,” she says. 

Bridging Gaps Child Care Center, at Glad Tidings Church in Hancock.
Photo courtesy of Whitney Brey.

Geshel is looking forward to heading the new child care center.

“It’s larger than any child care centers I have worked for before,” she explains. “I’m excited to work with more kids and more staff.” 

Bridging Gaps will be open from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., to provide care for children whose parents work early or late. 

Funding Challenges

A child care business is expensive to start, and the first year may not—or the center may never—have a positive cash flow, Brubaker explains. Bridging Gaps Child Care got a $10,000 pre-licensing grant from the state. Another state grant will be available once they are in operation. 

“You can’t get most grants until you are open, and you can’t open until you get grants,” Brey notes. 

Most organizations that offer funding want preferential acceptance for their employees’ children.

“We can’t do that because we are a nonprofit,” Brey says.

Brey has opened businesses in the past.

“I saw this as a challenge, but nothing that couldn’t be accomplished,” she says.  “We have board members who are experts in many different fields: a professor, a pharmacist, a physician’s assistant, a businesswoman. But none of us had ever opened a day care center.  We have very intelligent people on our board, but the hoops we had to jump through were just incredible. Such a learning curve.”

Bridging Gaps Child Care will charge $265 a week for infants and $250 a week for toddlers.  Brey knows they may not break even for some time. Meanwhile, the center will depend on grants and other funding sources.  

Last week, they participated as the designated charity for a “chuck a puck” fundraiser at a hockey game between the Calumet Wolverines and the Portage Lake Pioneers. Bridging Gaps Child Care received 50 percent of the proceeds. 

“We may not have made much, but it was great to be chosen as the designated charity, and it helped get the word out in the community,” Brey says.