Childcare Innovations from the 7th District

SUSAN LONGWORTH: All right. I think we're ready to get started for our second panel. Welcome back. Thank you to everyone who's staying with us for this second part of our day.

My name is Susan Longworth. I'm a Policy Advisor here at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in the Community Development Policy and Engagement Department. And I have the distinct pleasure of moderating what I'm calling our innovation panel. In my thinking, this is a great balance with the panel that you just heard prior to the break and all of the data and wonderful research that we learned about, because we'll be hearing from people who are essentially living the data or putting the data into action every single day to meet the need for childcare in their communities.

I'm going to briefly introduce our amazing panelists to frame out their unique perspectives on this topic. Their bios are on the event website. I encourage you to learn more about them there.

I'm also going to be asking them to each provide a more depth description of their work. Their words are much better than mine. And then we're going to have a conversation, a really sort of just a dialogue about what their expertise and what they're learning.

We have a bunch of questions teed up, but I also invite you, again, to scan the QR code and submit your own questions. I'm going to try and leave a time for this. I have lots and lots of questions, and I know they are not a shy group, so we're going to have-- [LAUGHTER] but we'll keep an eye on the time and make it work.

So quickly, introductions-- to my immediate right is Mary Janssen, who is Regional Director for the Childcare Resource and Referral Network of Northeast Iowa, I believe. That might be incorrect. I looked up Cedar Falls, and I'm like, it's Northeast Iowa.

Mary is what I would describe as a connector between communities and families and the resources they need to meet their childcare needs. There are many facets to how she does this, and I will let her share all of those, but all of which I believe also are grounded in her early experiences as an early childhood teacher. And that's the thread that continues throughout your experiences.

Next, we have Shannon Garrett. Shannon Garrett wins the prize for the most acronyms in her bio, so I'm going to try to spell those out. But Michigan loves its acronyms. So Shannon Garrett is the Michigan Tri-Share, or MI TriShare Senior Program Advisor for the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education Advancement and Potential, which they refer to as my MiLEAP, which is a wonderful acronym.

Shannon, I would say, is a champion for women's leadership and economic security issues, which is such an interesting perspective given the labor force participation data that we just heard about. So we'll look forward to putting that into some context. I'm looking forward to learning more about the MI Tri-Share program, and we'll flag that we also have an article written by my colleague Heidi Rehm on the website, our Spotlight on Childcare in the Labor Force website, where all of the work that we're talking about today-- you can find it there and read more. So I'll repeatedly point you in that direction.

Next, we have Amandula Anderson, who is the Executive Director for the Indiana Region, which also includes Kentucky, for IFF, which is a regional Community Development Finance Institution, or a CDFI, as we fondly refer them to them, which has a 30-year legacy of investing in childcare facilities. And you can also read more about that on our Childcare in the Labor Force website. Amandula brings a facilities financing perspective to this conversation as IFF strives to solve the financing puzzle faced by so many nonprofits as they work to reach their full potential as community asset. And childcare centers are obviously an integral part of that community asset ecosystem, and I'm excited to learn more from Amandula.

And finally, I'm pleased to introduce Bela Moté, who's the chief executive officer of the Carole Robertson Center here in Chicago. The Carole Robinson Center's reached children in more than 30 of Chicago's 77 communities and some of our most disadvantaged communities, providing a spectrum of care from infancy through teenage years. So you have children that are with you all the way through. I love that idea. I'll let Bela describe the essential work she leads wearing many hats, creating opportunities not only for the children under her care, but giving thought to how do you create quality job opportunities for the essential childcare workforce, and some really interesting things going on there.

So as you've heard described earlier-- I'm being attacked by my wire, so I'll put that right there-- we in the Community Development Department and really across the Research Department here at the Fed are constantly in contact with our communities, reaching out to understand what challenges folks are facing in their communities. And I always frame it as trying to understand how people are experiencing the economy. As President Goolsbee explained in his opening, this is this listening that caused us to create this Spotlight on Childcare in the Labor Force.

So for this conversation, how I'm going to frame things out is that we're going to have a few different question sets, if you will. I'm going to ask you a couple of introductory questions, the get-to-know-you questions. Then we're going to get into some numbers because we have a room full of numbers people. And we'll both look at the money kind of numbers, and we're going to look at the data kind of numbers. So Robin teed up some of those questions, and so we are going to get to those.

And then we are also going to-- so we're going to talk about the data, how you use it in your work, and, again, what questions it answers for you and what questions it doesn't. And then we're going to round out of some lessons learned and things you would like to share going forward. And again, if we have some time, we'll do the Q&A. So please continue to use that QR code and submit those questions.

All right. To get us started-- that's enough talking for me. So to get us started, I'm going to ask you to each help us understand more about the challenge of access to childcare as it shows up in communities and what you, through your work, are doing to address it. So, Mary, kick us off, and then we'll just go straight down the line.

MARY JANSSEN: Just like Susan said, I'm Mary Janssen. I'm the Regional Director for Iowa Childcare Resource and Referral. I would say, you're going to hear me talk a lot today about the access to childcare when it comes to that business community. Several years ago, we were introduced to the childcare crisis two different ways.

One was through our parent referral office, which we intake calls from families at our office to take parents or take calls from parents-- excuse me-- when they're looking for childcare. And so those calls come in. And my team was starting to tell me, when the community of Dubuque calls me, I really start to get nervous. And so that was one way that we found it.

And then the other way was really when an HR director came to my doorstep and really just said, hey, I'm losing five staff a month due to childcare, and how can you help us? And how can we retain those folks? But it was a ticket of $20,000 a month in turnover cost. And so that was just one way that we really started to address it.

I will also say that my career started in high school when I worked for a tiny childcare center in Ackley, Iowa, where those women taught me all about childcare, but also is where my passion sprung. And a high school teacher said, this is where you need to go. And so then that led me down the road to Iowa Childcare Resource Referral and also a childcare center director.

I proudly say, I've worked in all aspects of childcare, including I have been a cook when our cook would call in sick. And that's not a job I want to go back to at all. But I really pride myself-- so when I do my job daily, I think back to those days, and how I had my feet on the ground, and, when I would teach children, just the family needs. And I feel like it just keeps me grounded in what I need to do for the state.

SHANNON GARRETT: Great. Thank you. Well, my name is Shannon Garrett. Again, I'm the Senior Program Advisor for the MI Tri-Share Childcare Program. We do love our acronyms, and we love pronouncing the MI is "my," so you'll hear that a lot. I do not come from the childcare sector background. I also don't have children myself. But as Susan mentioned, I come from a background and experience in women's leadership and women's economic security, and in particular, identifying what are the challenges and barriers for women achieving their ambitions.

So immediately prior to this position, I was the Chief Strategy Officer at the Michigan Women's Commission, which is based in our Labor Department in Michigan. And in 2019 and early 2020, we were going around the state when the governor had asked us-- she was newly in office and had asked us to go around the state to find out what were the challenges Michigan women were facing. And no matter where we went in the state, childcare was always right up there, one or two.

Then the pandemic happened, which stopped our conversations, but also really put that spotlight on childcare as an issue. And so we did some work with the governor, trying to do some surveys virtually and focus groups to find out how families were handling childcare during the pandemic. And at the same time, there was coalitions happening around the state, talking about different ways to address this issue. And this concept bubbled up and was introduced in the Michigan legislature of a Tri-Share program.

So it was included as a pilot project in fiscal year '21, and we're now moving into an ongoing project or program. And what the MI Tri-Share Childcare Program is, is a public/private cost-sharing program through the state of Michigan, where an employer signs up to participate. If they have eligible employees, those employees get their childcare costs split three ways evenly between the employer, the employee, and the state of Michigan.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: So it's lowering the cost of childcare by 66% for a child that's participating. And in order to be eligible for participating as an employee, you have to have a household income of between 200% and 325%, which is really that ALICE population. I'm not sure if everyone knows the Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed population. So we're really trying to help that population in particular, at this moment, access more affordable childcare.

In Michigan, our childcare scholarship or childcare subsidy goes up to 200%. So we pick up from there. And yeah, we'll get into a lot more of the details as we move down the line. And I could talk about this all day. Time to do that. All right, Amandula.

AMANDULA ANDERSON: Yeah, we all can. Thanks, Shannon and Mary, for your introduction. So again, my name is Amandula Anderson. I'm the Executive Director for our Indiana region, which includes Kentucky, for IFF. IFF is a community development finance institution. It basically means we're a nonprofit bank that works specifically on helping nonprofits access capital and real estate consulting to do real estate work.

Every single nonprofit has to live somewhere. And so there's always a decision that needs to be made about, what does that facility look like? And how am I going to pay for it? And so we really sit at the intersection of facilities and finance.

IFF has had a long history-- we'll talk more about that in a moment-- of being engaged and involved in childcare, not just in the state of Michigan, but some wonderful work we're doing with the-- I always say MCF, MCMF-Caring For Michigan's Futures. [LAUGHTER] The MF part just really gets me every time. I love it. But we have been working across the Midwest to support nonprofits.

When I was thinking about my introduction and where is my intersection between childcare and what matters to me, I first will say, I'm a mom, a mom of five. I have had and used every single form of childcare, from grandparent care to center care to home-based care. And every time, I had the privilege to think about, what was the best center or space for that individual kid? And so that's my first.

My second intersection is that when my mom moved back from Wyoming to Indianapolis, she married an Army man and moved back to Indianapolis. She actually had a childcare center in our home and then went to a center and created a center with a good friend. And so I've had the experience of having my mom run a center. So I've been on that side.

And then the last I'll say is that part of my work and my work history is I worked at United Way, so I know ALICE very well, unfortunately or fortunately. And in the Central Indiana United Way, we received a Social Innovation Fund grant during the Obama administration to study the two-generational approach to implementing work with families and children at the same time. So if you think about it, there is always services that are for kids specifically.

Let's make sure kid has somewhere to go during the day. And there are services on the other end for a parent, maybe for job recruitment or trainings. But what if you supported a family as a unit? What would the trajectory of both of those individuals be?

The kids were actually more ready to start kindergarten, we were able to assess. The family-- the parent was actually more able to have educational attainment as well as higher wages. And the parent and kid as a unit felt more comfortable in their space of being a family. They created social capital. They didn't have sketchy Uncle Jim getting them off the bus.

They actually knew who their neighbors were. All of these things-- really, when you embed services and programming into families, you see how much more quickly a family can prosper individually. And so when I think about my intersection with childcare and why it's so important, it's personal, but it's also partly because I've seen that it works.

BELA MOTÉ: Well, thank you all for your great introductions. Hello again. My name is Bela Moté.

I'm the CEO of the Carole Robertson Center for Learning, which is an early childhood and youth development organization here in Chicago, but we don't think of ourselves as only Chicago-based. So I think our intersections are many in the world of early childhood childcare, head start, early head start, family childcare. I can get more into it.

But the reason I say that is because we think about the implications of direct service and how that then informs policy systems and the work that's needed from grass tops and grass roots to come together. And so Carole Robertson Center has essentially three strands of work. We're direct service. We provide direct community-based advocacy to amplify the voices of the families in the workforce that are either the beneficiaries of the system or that are not served well by the systems in early childhood. And the last is how our learning evaluation, and data systems, and continuous improvement efforts inform what we do on the ground, but equally important, how that informs change and transformation.

So my work, similar to a lot of what these lovely women have talked about, I feel like I was born into early childhood. My mother, when we immigrated from East Africa to Chicago, did what a lot of immigrants do, was to try to figure out what she was going to do to bring income in the house. And so she started what we would call a license-exempt family childcare in our home. And Malveeka was the person that, on the block, was known by everybody. So I literally feel like I was born into it.

And then I went to pursue a career in it, partly because there was so much science when I graduated from undergrad around the brain and how young children's brains actually develop and what they deserve from adults-- all of us in this room-- the workforce, and the systems to make sure that they get to kindergarten readiness, that they get to third grade reading and beyond. So those intersections have to come together in really meaningful ways.

But the opposite of that is the destruction that happens when a family is destabilized because they no longer have childcare. They might not have childcare based on what we saw in the data that there's a closure. They might not have childcare because they don't qualify for that public assistance, or they can no longer afford it. So we have to balance those worlds, and we have to think about the trade-offs and whose backs those trade-offs come on. And so I think what Carole Robertson Center is able to do is to spotlight the reality of the need and the opportunity, while also shining a light on what those possible innovations and solutions might be.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Wonderful. Thank you. I think one thing that has struck us throughout-- I'll speak for myself-- throughout our exploration into childcare and the labor force is the extent-- and this is going to be a naive statement and probably not the last one I'll make-- but the extent to which this is not a new issue, that this is perhaps something that's had a bright light shone on it since the pandemic.

But as you've all described, you've devoted your careers to various facets of it. And I wonder-- before we get into the numbers-- if you could each talk about-- I was thinking how to phrase this-- as just the change that's occurring right now and what's motivating people to change. What is the moment that we have right now? And how are communities or organizations thinking differently about it?

Amandula, for example, what is that moment that happens when you're talking with a potential borrower that makes them make that commitment to pursue financing? Shannon, you're on the front lines with the Michigan Tri-Share Program. What is that moment where a business owner says, yes, I'm going to make this investment? And it's clearly a significant investment for them to pick up one third of these costs. So maybe with that, Amandula, can I start with you? I hope that's not a curve ball, but I think you got it.

AMANDULA ANDERSON: I thought we were going to go in order, but that's OK. I'm just kidding. [LAUGHTER]

SUSAN LONGWORTH: It's after lunch. I got to make sure we--

AMANDULA ANDERSON: Spice it up. So IFF has actually been doing flexible capital loans to nonprofits since 1988. We have invested nearly $100 million. And what that means is we've given loans to nonprofits throughout the Midwest, specifically childcare centers, nearly $100 million to be able to do facilities projects, like you. And I think that's pretty incredible because, oftentimes, we assume that nonprofits cannot handle capital, and childcare centers with their very low overhead are not able to afford debt in order to make their projects work.

And what we found is that if you provide real estate consulting and support to help them understand the financial feasibility of their work, similar to what Dan's doing and Shannon's-- or Mary's doing in Iowa, when you start to create those programs where you're really taking a hands-on approach to nonprofits to help them understand how to address their needs, they actually know their personal situation. And so for us, I think the aha moments are when we can tell a client no because being a friend, being a partner, being a trusted advisor, if you can actually pull the data and show them why something won't work, you're actually tooling them with the resources to make it happen.

And so for me, that's the aha moment. It's really hard for some of our project managers to say no. They will work on a pro forma until the end-- like, no ends. And I'll be like, the answer's no. It's OK to say no so that we can help them find solutions instead of going into debt that doesn't work for them.

So I think that's part of just coming from the real estate consulting side what I've learned. We also don't see a lot of delinquencies, or we've never foreclosed on an organization that we've worked with. And that's because we walk alongside with them.

They're not like us. The other CDFIs, they're not like us. We actually step in, and we're different.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Shannon, aha moments?

SHANNON GARRETT: Yeah. Well, I really think the pandemic was really what got us to this moment. Being in the Labor Department, they were hearing from business owners. I think at the time that the pilot program was introduced, we had a Republican legislature and a Democratic governor who were really coming together to try to find a solution because everyone was hearing from business owners about not getting people back to work, primarily women not coming back to work. And so I think it was really a coming together of all these pieces to have one type of solution.

There's obviously a whole range of things that are needed, but this was one way that we could ask for investment from private entities and employers without requiring them to do it. So it's not a tax, it's not anything you have to pay into. It's flexible to their budget. And so being able to go to an employer and say, help them understand about how many employees might be eligible for the program to be able to help them work with their budget, if they're going to offer this program to their employees, they have to guarantee that they're paying a full one third for that employee for a full year or actually two years because that's when we do the evaluations. And so they might not be able to cover everybody at that rate. And so helping them figure out how many childcare slots would that cover and how do you want to put that together. And so I think it's really the moment is the intensity that business or employers are feeling at the moment, attracting, keeping, and retaining their employees.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Thank you. Shannon-- Mary, I'm sorry. I wanted to ask you about-- you work with a lot of communities. We talked about the Cedar Valley Kids, but also just with a lot of communities across Iowa. Often, these are smaller communities. What brings them to the table? And these are often problems that communities know exist. Like you said, these communities, small businesses, they know themselves. But what is that moment that brings them to the table and says, this is something we're ready to take on?

MARY JANSSEN: I think the-- in my introduction, I forgot one part of my world that I do consultation for Levi Architecture. And what we do is we go into communities, and we support them when they're looking at opening a childcare center. Or maybe they're an existing childcare center, and they are possibly facing closure, too, because the budget, it's not adding up. So I did forget that part in my introduction.

But the aha moment for us and leading into this question is the business community got involved. I've worked in childcare for 20-ish years. They all blend together. And never have I ever seen the business community this much involved.

And I think it's when we started to just dig deep into their recruitment, retention, their turnover, we started hearing the stories. And their HR departments were saying, I can't get workers. I can't get people to come. Or there's an issue where I'm offering a job to somebody, but they're not able to take the job because there's not childcare.

So once we have that business community at the table is really when we started to see activity. And we got the attention of the government. We got the attention of our governor in Iowa.

We had a childcare task force in 2021, and I sat on it-- 100 days where we looked at solutions. And a lot of it was focused around that business community and what we could do to support them. And so I think that's what's really exciting.

And until then, I was not as-- I think it's helped me build relationships because what it helps me do is go in and talk about, what is childcare? And we talk about childcare centers a lot, but there's also a whole population of child development homes, nonregistered homes. Who are they? What are you doing when you're looking for childcare? So that we can help educate their employees while we're also helping develop solutions as well.

BELA MOTÉ: Susan, can I add something? Because I think you're hitting on something really important. I think there are very few silver linings from COVID, but one of the ones that stands out to me is this idea of the intersections between nonprofit, government, public/private partnerships really having to come together to innovate and creatively solve for something because everybody's pain point was the same. So I think that oftentimes, in our work, we think about everyone's starting point is different.

You feel something a little bit differently than I do. But when you are all trying to figure out how to wrestle with childcare and you acknowledge that there is a workforce behind the workforce, it changes the conversation. All of a sudden, the providers become an equal partner in talking about a solution. The government wants to solve this because it has to get people back in the economy moving and the business sector.

So I think that that is something that I charge all of us in this room and beyond to keep thinking about, is how do we sustain and endure? And we're humans, and we like to be creatures of habit. When we find ourselves-- and our memories are short-- that we hold on to the importance of the various stakeholders investing in these innovations and solutions and actually flooding a system like the early care and education system in ways that we hadn't before. So I just wanted to build on what you shared.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Yeah, that's perfect because I also wanted to ask you about-- one thing we talked about in our pre-conversations was around some of the observations you had about your own workforce during COVID and how you responded to their needs. And so I'm wondering if we could dig into that a little bit.

BELA MOTÉ: Sure, absolutely. And this is something people always ask-- as the CEO, what's one of the last things you think about? What's the first thing that you think about? And obviously, the health and wellbeing of our children is first and foremost. But the other piece of that is the health and wellbeing of our workforce. And so at Carole Robertson Center, I think a couple of things-- just for those of you who are getting to know us-- we serve the most vulnerable, under-resourced communities in the city of Chicago.

So that is our mission. And the way that we're funded is that we have a lot of public resources that come in, and then we raise private dollars. So we consider ourselves a public/private partnership. The base of our funding is early-head-start and head-start funding. We layer that with childcare funding, and then we layer the childcare funding with any state pre-K programs, zero to three programs.

And so when we think about our workforce, we have a deep, deep commitment to hire from the communities that we serve. So you heard that we're in 30-plus communities in the city of Chicago, most of whom have been marginalized and under-resourced for decades, and decades, and decades. And the traumas, the realities of our families who access our programs are also some of the same realities of our workforce.

And so we know that there is a direct correlation between how a teacher comes to the work in their classroom, or as a home visitor, as a family childcare, and their level of stress, their level of trauma, their level of food insecurity-- all of that comes through in that classroom. And the most important relationship for that child are the adults in that classroom. And so we have to pay very, very close attention to the wellbeing of our workforce.

And so you think about that. I think it was, like, $14.60 or $15.60 is the average hourly. We're adding a layer of stress in terms of the economic stability of the workforce who supports the workforce. And so we have to really think about, what are we asking folks to do? And how are we supporting them when they're actual constraints? So we've done some really innovative things around the wellbeing aspect along with the compensation and benefits.

The other thing that has been a not-so-great aha moment is that we have a lot of our workforce who don't think about five, ten, 15 years in the future because they're so worried about tomorrow. And we have to move so that they can think about five, ten, 15 years from tomorrow. So more to come on that, but it's something. I wake up thinking about, is the wellbeing of our workforce and the implications of quality and impact if they're not taken care of, so to speak.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: And I appreciate you laying out that challenge to broaden our thinking from just compensation to really a quality job and a career. And so those are things-- yes, we'll come back to that. But you also did a great job of teeing up and segueing us into some numbers conversations. And specifically, we'll start with a little bit of a financing discussion, and then we'll get into a data conversation.

So, Bela, I'm going to stay with you and certainly invite anyone else to jump in, but I'm going to start with you is one thing that we heard a lot about-- and President Goolsbee even alluded to it in his opening remarks-- is just the really challenging nature of the childcare business model. And just how does this work from a day-to-day basis? And so I'm wondering if you could provide us with some insights into the operations. And you cited some sources, but any other detail that you could provide there, just how does this all come together? And then we'll get into the facilities.

BELA MOTÉ: I'm going to take a deep breath.

[LAUGHTER]

First, I think sometimes the field has an identity crisis. So I want to lay out, one minute, I will refer to myself as a provider. The next minute, I'll refer to myself as a community-based organization.

I might refer to myself as an employer. And so I think we have to think about which identity we carry and why. But at the heart of it, Carole Robertson Center is an employer of about 400 individuals that help to move the economy at the community level, at the city level, at the state level, and certainly at the national level.

And so this business model is probably one of the most complex business models that you can imagine. It's also the one that has-- the nature of the way that the revenue works, it creates a scarcity mindset. There is never enough. We heard today about parents can only-- the market can only bear this amount for a family to pay, but yet the cost of quality and care costs this much.

So at Carole Robertson Center, because we are a nonprofit and because our mission is to serve those who are most under resourced, we really get funded through public funding. No one public funding stream is enough to get to the level of quality and impact our children and our families deserve. You think about your own children. What keeps you going at work is knowing that they're safe, they're thriving, they're learning. But if any of those pieces were to change, you're not productive in your work.

So we layer multiple funding streams to get us to as close as we can get to the actual cost, and then we raise private dollars. And sometimes, we have really generous and partners who get it. And other times, there's a little bit of convincing.

The brain science goes a long way in that conversation. And some of the great work from economists helps with that, too. So I would just say, carry that in your back pocket if you haven't already.

But 90% of our revenue that comes in goes to salaries. It goes directly out. The remaining 10% is for things like the consumables that go into the classrooms, the experiences. So there's no real margin of profitability for a nonprofit. Some years, you fare a little bit better in the way that you think about it.

I would just say that the complexity of public dollars, the rigor, and the compliance pieces of it can make the administrative burden so very complex. And I think that that's what the state of Illinois right now is trying to do by creating a single agency is to reduce that administrative burden and then also reduce the pain points and navigation complexities for our families. But we have a long way to go.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: A lot to be done. And we'll come back to-- I keep saying we're going to come back. So this is a conversation that's never going to end, but we'll keep going.

So, Amandula, you work on the facilities side of this. And frequently, we talk about capital stacks and all of these different pieces that come together. I'm sure no project is the same, but from a CDFI standpoint, walk us through everything that needs to line up and pencil out before that first brick gets laid.

AMANDULA ANDERSON: We don't have all afternoon. But I think I would start with saying, oftentimes, folks who may be listening in or who are creating suggestions don't know the impact of our decisions. So one great example is in 1992, the state of Illinois required that there be a water sprinkler system put in all childcare facilities-- or facilities.

And this was such a heavy burden for childcare centers that-- and there was no capital. Banks were not lending to childcare centers for leasehold for properties they didn't own. And so they had no collateral to hold onto.

We were able to lean in because we had resources. We had investments from our balance sheet to be able to provide capital and loans to those childcare centers. And so I think that, for us, when we think about financing, part of our goal is always to be at the table before someone's making a decision about what a project or a policy may impact centers in general because that was a great decision and well needed. That's important for buildings and for safety. But what was the after effect on those decisions that have happened to communities? And who has to then brunt those resources?

So I think that's just when you say, like, the aha moments or the catalyst to reasons why things start to peek up. That was a moment in the state of Illinois where IFF, who was four years old at the time-- so we were young-- was able to step in and be an avenue for capital for nonprofits, specifically for facilities. I would say that there's a couple of different ways nonprofits-- and I keep using the word nonprofits and childcare centers interchangeably.

It doesn't mean you have to be a nonprofit to carry a childcare center, but you are a nonprofit. You do not have a lot of overhead. You have a lot of overhead. You're doing 90% salaries. You do not have a lot of wiggle room to do any extras or luxuries for the work that you're doing.

And so I think part of it for us is always, one, trying to be a trusted advisor and fully understanding what state of their organization is in. We'll talk about this a little bit more later. But when you talk about, yeah, we can pour as many resources into capital buildings.

But if they don't have childcare workers, then those are classrooms that are closed. So then there's not the capacity there to actually still meet. It's not just there's not enough seats. There's also not enough open workers to actually fill those seats. And so-- sidebar.

But I think that it's really important for us that we work one-on-one with childcare providers to help understand their financial situations, and that we have compassionate lenders who understand what this looks like. We don't require an appraisal, which is pretty important for a nonprofit and a childcare center. What that looks like is that most nonprofits and centers cannot get the appraised value in order for them to buy the property and renovate it. And so that's a huge barrier that we have taken out of the system for facilities.

I'd say, the last piece-- and one I'd welcome in my colleagues to share more-- is that it's really, really relationshipbased, and fully understanding where someone stands, and being open to listen. If you can get that transparency very early in a relationship, they're willing to tell you the things that are wrong or that aren't going well, so you can help create solutions and put them in a better footing. And so that's one of the things I really pride myself with IFF and our team is we really care about the relationship almost as much as we care about the funding because we know that if we're able to have a clear understanding of where they stand, we're able to then bring that capital and help create solutions, and find other resources, or whatever that stacks up to be.

There's underwriting, and there's performance, and there's debt-to-service ratios, and there's all that kind of stuff too. But it really comes down to, this is a community need, and we want to lean in as much as possible. And that means we're going to have to be transformational in how we do this work.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Wonderful. Shannon, from the Michigan Tri-Share Program, it sounds complex to me. And I was just wondering if you could talk about the financing and how that all fits together, especially during the pilot phase, during those early days when you were waiting for that early buy-in.

SHANNON GARRETT: Yeah. Before I get into that, though, I will mention, based on helping the sector out, one of the great side-effect benefits that we've found from the MI Tri-Share Program is that the childcare providers are starting to participate as employers. So when they have a family that comes to them because that family's employer is paying for one third and the provider hears about what that is, they're like, hey, can we do that? So they're able to offer that as a benefit to their employees as well. While we were coming at it from a more economic general economy workforce perspective, it did have that added benefit of helping the sector specifically.

But our funding largely comes from the state of Michigan. In the pilot phase, in the fiscal year '21, we were included as a $1.1 million pilot program. It became popular pretty quickly among other types of funders. We did have the WK Kellogg Foundation come in, as well as the Ballmer Group, to help supplement the childcare dollars going into the areas that are their footprint, but also to help us do some of the other pieces of it, like doing thirdparty evaluations, helping us start up some of our internal programming around it. There weren't a lot of administrative dollars that we were allowed to use out of that first 1.1, so having the private foundations come in was really helpful.

And then year over year, the legislature and the governor have supported it, and it's increased. And we are included as our own line item now in the MiLEAP budget. Just passed the FY25 budget in Michigan, and we are now going to be funded at $3.4 million to continue growing and expanding this program. We are in a moment of transition at the moment of going from pilot to this ongoing program. So we expect to see it really taking off in 2025.

AMANDULA ANDERSON: Can I add, too, so CDFIs are funded. And that's because it reminded me, like, where does money come to CDFIs? Where do we get the capital to invest in these types of projects? So they can come from the state of Michigan. We have amazing facilities program that we're working with $59 million from the state of Michigan through their ARPA dollars to do childcare facilities improvements.

We also work with a lot of philanthropies-- so the Kresges, the Kellogg. I started hearing the same names. The Greater Milwaukee Foundation is also a good partner.

And then local municipalities-- the city of Cleveland has PRE4CLE. There's stuff happening in Saint Louis and Kansas City. And so it's really a conglomerate of folks that have come together.

I will say, though, as you start to hear us talk about who's funding this work, there's a thread. There's some of the similar organizations that are doing that. And what makes them special? Start to think about that. What makes these types of these foundations different? And how might you think about the intersections of your work as well with them?

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Wonderful, yeah. I'm going to ask you to jump in about the Cedar Valley Kids, and then I believe Austin has a question. Did you-- OK. So let us finish. I don't want to hear about just the landscape of funding that came together to make that happen, a couple of lessons learned along the way. We can get to those later, but it takes a village to start a childcare center.

MARY JANSSEN: It really does. And our ideas and our project actually started in 2017. Locally, we knew in the Cedar Valley, which is Waterloo and Cedar Falls, Iowa, that we had a 2,500 gap of spaces needed for children that needed care. And so we really started diving deep, like I talked about a little bit earlier. We worked alongside of those businesses. We brought them to the table.

We did a workforce survey. And then COVID hit, and we thought we were on the way to open this new childcare center. We thought we were going-- we really were on a great path, and then this pandemic hit.

But in the end, it worked out to be the perfect storm, is what I would call it. So at the time of COVID, Iowa, just like every state, received federal relief dollars, and we received more money, I think, if you're involved at the state level, you can say than we ever probably thought we ever would receive. But I will say, Iowa did a really nice job, and they filtered that money back down to those providers. So they did stabilization grants. We have a CCA, Child Care Assistance Co-Pilot Project right now, which pays for childcare for our childcare staff.

But then back up to our project, which is Cedar Valley Kids, we were looking at doing that perfect business model. And prior to COVID, what did we need? We needed land, and we needed money. And we needed about $2.5 million. Easy, right? I mean, we should be able to find that.

But we were really struggling. We were diving into that capital campaign. That is a huge piece, and that's what we see these nonprofits do a lot. And we were just trying to understand and how we would move forward to our next step.

Once COVID hit and the relief dollars came, I will say, when Iowa released all these dollars, what they did was they saw all these communities that were trying to put up childcare centers. And so we just broke ground on Monday for our childcare center. You saw the article that was just released from the Federal Reserve Bank a few weeks ago-- perfect timing, as soon as we break ground.

But our facility will be open in 2025-- so next year. But that funding came from the federal relief dollars. So we received a business partnership grant for a little over $2 million. But because we had that business partner, that's where the government saw that partnership.

So our partner is the hospital, UnityPoint in Waterloo, Cedar Falls. It's one of the largest employers. But also, we received land from a local person, a community member that was looking to give land. So it was just really, like I talked about, that perfect storm after COVID.

And I always like to say, even though that was a lot of money that came down to the states, I really appreciate how our state divided it. And it really has solved has solved a lot of our solutions-- our problems, I should say.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: That's wonderful. Did you have a question? Should be on, I believe.

AUDIENCE: [TAPS MIC] If it's not the question time, I can wait. I was just--

SUSAN LONGWORTH: It's always the question time.

AUDIENCE: It's always the question time. OK. Mary, I loved-- it turns out, we're going to come full circle because one of the ways that we singled this out as a target issue of interest for the 7th District was I went to Iowa and brought a whole team, and we met with Governor Reynolds, who you said you got on people's radar screen by highlighting the interest of the business community in the topic of childcare.

That was Governor Reynolds-- one of her main things was coming from you, was, look, the business community says this is really important for labor force participation. And that got us thinking about it. When we delved deeper, and I started asking some of our own Board of Directors here at Chicago Fed, why don't you-- you're complaining you can't hire people. Why don't you offer childcare?

And one of the CEOs said, we've looked into that multiple times. But there's a massive regulatory thing. We would do it if it would help us attract, but there are a bunch of rules of the training, and the background checks, and what the qualifications for the teachers, what our liability is. If we have that on site and something were to go wrong, it would cease to be an attracting of employees, and it would be an albatross around our neck. That was the place where it went wrong.

You're the innovation panel. Are there any innovations that you've heard of or thought about that would facilitate? So this CEO said, what we end up doing is basically just giving a voucher, or we have a benefit. But that just increases the demand. So it actually drives up the price of health care for everybody else. It's not that we're going to supply it because there are just too many rules. Is there any way to break out of that? Or is that just going to be with us forever?

MARY JANSSEN: You want me to start?

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Sure.

AMANDULA ANDERSON: You have so much to say.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: You started. We have half an hour.

MARY JANSSEN: Yes. How much time do I have? So I think, yes, there are solutions. And that is one piece. Earlier, when my colleagues up here were talking about the childcare business model, ultimately the childcare business model is broken.

There's one income-- besides if you're a specialized program that has multiple funders-- one source of revenue that comes into that program. It's your parent fees. So that's one piece. So when a business sees the pro forma, they're like, goodbye. I'm out.

Two, the other piece is regulations. And I have a colleague here in the room and a dear friend who's an architect and has understood those childcare regulations, and that's when we go into communities. We're that perfect blend where we come in and we say, OK, here's what you're going to need in a facility, but then here's also that pro forma and that program piece. So what we've really looked at is that business partnership.

So if a business-- and we hear it all the time. I don't want to run a childcare center. I already have enough things to worry about. So then what we really do is connect them with current programs in town. Are they looking at expanding?

Is there any opportunity for you to either reserve spaces so that their current facilities have spaces for you? Or is there an opportunity for you to open up a center together? You're maybe owning the property, or maybe you're-and there are so many examples I could share with you. But you could also be paying for the director and the assistant director.

So when you're recruiting and retaining those folks, you're giving them their benefits, but yet you're just employing them. You don't have to worry about the program side of it. You're going to have that third party take care of it.

So there's always those. And we've seen in Iowa couple of things. One is actually the agency that I'm housed through-- Childcare Resource and Referral-- we're contracted through the state to be in a nonprofit. So I'm actually housed in a disability agency in Waterloo. We have a childcare center in partnership with our local community college.

We opened in 2019. It's also known as one of my babies, my projects that I really wanted to see that business partnership. How could we do this? They built the building. They built it, they own it. They provide security for us.

They provide so many pieces. But EPI, the Exceptional Persons Incorporated is our full name-- we employ the childcare folks. So all of those employees are our employees. And the families understand that partnership. But it's really that perfect blend of a partnership.

The other is Cedar Valley Kids. It would be also in partnership with Unity Point. They're going to own the facility. They've received the match alongside of the city to fund the $2 million grant. So there's all these types of partnerships.

But then the ultimate thing that they're doing, because I'm the childcare center former director, they're employing the director and the assistant director. So those two ladies get hospital benefits. They're hospital employees.

They're paid much above what a director would start in the state of Iowa. And finding a director at that rate was much easier. So again, there's another example.

My last example-- and then I'll let my friends go-- is VGM, which is a large company in Waterloo, Iowa. And they just opened a childcare center on their campus, but the childcare center is run by a third party in our community. So they, again, are providing that building, but everything is operated through that third party, a local childcare center.

And I think in the next five years, we can really see, how did these partnerships work? And I can say, for EPI's childcare center, five years in, we're still open. We're doing great. We survived COVID. That's number one. But also, in five years, how much more can we build on those partnerships, too, and support both sides and both needs as well?

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Anybody else want to jump in?

AMANDULA ANDERSON: I can add a couple real quick. I think that the third-party provider operator is a good one. If you're not a baker, why would you hire a sous chef to be your baker? Their true need is not to be something you're not. So as an employer, bring in the folks who actually know how to do the work, and then give them low-cost facilities so that they can actually do it.

So an example is in Rensselaer, Indiana, which is off of 65. It's a small rural community. They worked with us to do a childcare feasibility study, which led to us then working with them to find a facility. We partnered with the Franciscan Health Center.

They had an old office building, a primary care provider office that was in the front of their hospital that we've been able to work with them to retrofit into a childcare center from zero to five years old. They're giving them that property at cost, so they're basically paying for utilities. But that's an innovative way of thinking about, I don't need to do this. If I can just break even as a business with what we have in real estate, how much more could we do or provide?

I think the other piece I will add is that, oftentimes, businesses will say, well, I can subsidize my employees. We see this a lot with economic development. When new corporations come to communities, they're like, oh, well, we'll subsidize the 10 families in our company that are going to need childcare. Likely, one, they won't need childcare cost subsidies. Secondly is, what about the Starbucks worker who's actually caring for your employees when they're riding in to work? That person actually needs childcare.

Businesses need to stop thinking so solely about their personal employees and expand more to, what does the community need, and what is the ecosystem need for a healthy community for our employees to come into? And then if they start doing that, then they're investing their dollars differently. It's not about dollar-for-dollar because actually it's not more money. It doesn't give childcare centers more money if you're subsidizing your employees. So actually think about how you think more broadly about that. And then I'll just add, foundations and local cities really have to think about, what incentives can you be providing to businesses to actually set the impetus for them to do something?

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Thank you. I know there's a lot of economists in the room, so let's talk about some data. I can see them all sit up straight.

They're like, ah, this is why I'm here. So first of all, I just want to give you each-- and this is a popcorn round. I'd invite anyone to-- I may call on you if we get quiet.

I don't think that's going to happen. But I want to talk about the presentations we just heard and invite you just to respond. What surprised you? What resonated with you? What felt a little discordant? Open up to anyone who wants to react.

BELA MOTÉ: So dare I say, there weren't too many surprises. I think, when you're living and breathing in the work, you know the reality of it. I think what's important is that each of the numbers that we saw have lots of stories behind them. And it's a wonderful opportunity to uplift those stories and see how we arrived at those numbers.

What I will say is, I think that the data provides a path forward, and we have to really think about-- one thing we haven't yet talked about, which I know is on the agenda, but I'm going to preview it here, is that it is really a cumulative effect. It's like Jenga. One thing gets pulled out, the entire thing collapses.

So we've talked a lot about childcare centers, the bricks-and-mortar pieces of it. We heard somebody earlier talk about the classroom that has all of the furnishings in it, and the light is off. There's a workforce that we don't have that we can't get fast enough, even though more women are entering the workforce with children age five and under.

So we have to think and concentrate on that part of it to get to these other pieces that the data is telling us. And I think that sometimes we're driving in reverse and not really focus on where we need to go on behalf of America's children. And that, to me, I think, is part of it.

We've known that there are childcare deserts. We've known that. They've just gotten worse since COVID. And so what can we do with the data that actually changes policy and increases investment? But just because you build a building does not mean you're going to have your workforce lined up to be in it.

And so I think we have to look at the intersections. And then Jenga is the best visual I can think of. You're going to develop a system that's a house of cards. If we're not laying the foundation. And the foundation has to include the people who are actually the experts in caring for and educating our youngest children.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: So before we move on, I'm going to add a question. I'm going to layer a question on top of this and then ask you to answer it, and then I'll ask Amandula to answer both of them. And that is, what questions should we be asking? If you say, all right, I'm going to develop a research agenda, so to speak, what would be on that list? So, Bela, I don't know if you want to add to what you just said.

BELA MOTÉ: Oh, I have so many things that I-- [LAUGHTER] I would research. But I think one of the most fundamental questions is, what is the true cost? What is it going to cost to provide high-quality early care and education city by city, state by state, and as a nation? In Illinois, we know that number. It's sobering, right? I'm sure you've crunched those numbers.

And so we need more to figure out the mechanics of getting us closer to it, and then really thinking about what the market can-- what it bears today and what it needs to bear tomorrow to get to a thriving economy and having our workforce in early childhood make thriving wages, not just livable wages.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Before we move on, Governor Bowman, you have a question.

AUDIENCE: Yes. Thank you so much, Susan. And, wow, thank you to these deep-thinking and experienced panelists. But being from rural Kansas, and I had young children at the time that I was living there and had the benefit of a really phenomenal childcare opportunity, but what I find-- and maybe you can help me think about this too, or we can discuss opportunities in rural areas, but there's sometimes, in snapshots in time, there's great childcare options. And then, all of a sudden, those are no longer in existence, and then there's a desert. So how do you think about the durability of providing consistent childcare through generational changes or just reproduction changes or population changes?

SHANNON GARRETT: Yeah, I think, coming from the background of women's economic security and all of these, it's a dominated workforce dominated by women. And I think, in addition to the hard numbers, we need to start actually talking to the providers. Why do you do this? Why did you start this? Because I think a lot of times, we're going to see-- especially with some of the home-based, is that I dropped out of the workforce to take care of my kids, so I figured I would take care of other people's kids too.

And then that only lasts so long. So why does the recidivism happen? And why do people drop in and out? So I appreciate the hard data, of course. But I think if we start having more nuanced conversations to really find out what that is, and what do you need? And we're doing a lot of that work through these stakeholder coalitions and things like that. But now that we have business, and employers, and government all at the table together, I think it's an important time to be asking those questions directly of the providers.

BELA MOTÉ: Yeah, if I may, just to build on that, I think the other reality-- and this has come up-- this is a heavy, heavily regulated system we're in. And it has to be. They're kids.

And so the endurance that you need to keep up with that-- and then you layer, if you're getting a certain type of funding, you have to be compliant with that funding and you're regulated by that funding. So I think that we have found in Illinois and in Chicago the rigor that's required. A private childcare or nonprofit might ask, is it worth it? Is it really worth it for us to be in this?

And one thing that I didn't share is that Carole Robertson Center has a network of 23 family childcare providers that are part of our network, and we fund them through early-head-start and head-start funding. And we are working very closely with them on their-- from their PNLs to really looking at how they budget to, where is the profitability? And so sometimes, you have-- and earlier, I shared this. My mom did it because she was a stay-at- home mom, and the kids in the neighborhood started coming. She wasn't thinking about it from, hey, this is my livelihood.

I need to actually put pen to paper and budget. Many of the providers that we talk to that are within our network started on a similar path. And so I think we have a responsibility at Carole Robertson Center and beyond to ensure that that business acumen is in place and that you're working alongside them in partnership, not in gotcha mode, to actually help them figure out how to be sustainable, especially in rural communities, where you're driving not three miles, sometimes you're driving 20 miles to access your care, right? So just building on that reality.

MARY JANSSEN: And I think if I want to add a big piece of managing a childcare program, whether they're a home or a center, is the program itself and the business-- the management side of it. And I use myself for an example. Graduated from college, I was a preschool teacher in college, graduated.

I got offered the center director's job at a current childcare center, 300 kids. I was 23 years old. I was not taught in college how to manage 20-some-year-olds not coming to work because they made poor decisions the night before.

[LAUGHTER]

I was not taught-- it's honest. I was not taught how to talk to parents about paying their bill. And I think, in Iowa, we're really working hard at that, how can we professionalize our folks? But and also give them more management training as well.

And how can they-- because the program will never survive unless they have strong leadership. And that's when that door will stay open, when everything is hoping, attempting to run smoothly. But I think it falls back into that owner, the child development home or that center director and those teachers and those classrooms, how can we build them even more to build the program?

BELA MOTÉ: Can I just-- I have so many thoughts on this one. I'm sorry. One thing-- I think you're hitting on what I think is, in some ways, the silver bullet that we keep missing, which is that layer of mid-management that we don't invest in.

Every working paper that you see, we talk about the recruitment, the retention, what do we have to do with our teachers, and absolutely. But that site director is the ambassador of quality. They're the culture setter in that organization. They are the first people that a family meets. When they churn, it can have devastating, devastating effects.

And my story is very similar to your story. I started off as a preschool Montessori teacher because I needed to start paying my college loan. and then was like, hey, I was pretty good at it, became a center director, became a curriculum specialist. Nowhere in that was there actually an investment to build my business acumen.

My father was an accountant, so it made it a little bit easier. But all of those things-- and so I think when we think about the ecosystem and what are the inputs and what are the outcomes that we want, we have to pay attention to that middle tier. And I think there's an opportunity for all of us to do a little bit more research on that to really think about the cost when you don't invest in that middle tier and the cost of quality and impact that you're losing on the other side when you're churning.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: What is that full spectrum of childcare expertise that's needed?

BELA MOTÉ: That's right.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Amandula, I know you're--

AMANDULA ANDERSON: Well, I was just going to add, I think one piece is thinking about the size of the center. One center will not fill the needs of any community, right? And so oftentimes, especially during COVID, what we found in Indianapolis was that centers that had less than 70 children were the ones that shuttered because they didn't have the volume needed in order to be able to still provide the level of care for them. And so there probably is some science and art mixed in with, what's the number of students that actually makes a high-quality center so that you can do the management, you can provide insurance, you can start to do some of those things that really help you to maybe grow into another center or sustain over time?

The other thing I'll say is that, your question leading into this was like, what's a question you'd want, or what types of research? And I think, for me, I really want to hear from the families. I saw a reel the other day, so I must have been talking about childcare. And so Instagram had this reel that came up, and it was like, you'll know when I stop paying for preschool.

And then these images were like, new car, fancy watches, a new house. That is about how you feel. You feel like you have come up, like you've made it come up. It quickly goes away after you learn that kids are very expensive.

But I think that the reason I bring it up is because families are the best experts in telling you what they need. And if we don't center around their voices, I think we miss something in the conversation about care and why employers-- because HR cares about HR. They care about the company. They care about you, but they care about production. But if you start talking to families specifically and understand what their needs are, the responses will more align with the community that you're trying to reach.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Thank you. So I'm going to keep-- briefly, we can start to move quickly. I was worried that we'd have too much time. We're not going to have enough time, so let's keep moving through. But I want to stay one more minute on the data question.

This is a naive statement. It's my second one. I think I get three per panel, so this is only number two. So this one is, in talking to each of you, I've been struck by the extent to which data and data collection informs your activities and informs your decisions and that childcare is a data-driven business. So I'm just wondering again-Mary, if we can start with you and just go down the line-- what's the data that you collect? And how does it inform your decisions?

MARY JANSSEN: No, so in Iowa, Iowa Childcare Resource Referral is really the main data hub for all things childcare. If you go to our website, you can pull every county in Iowa and how many spaces, how many children. You can pull, how many of them participate in our quality rating improvement systems, and you can just see everything. So that's been a huge drive for us is that we hold that information. But we also then work close with the childcare programs to say, hey, why is that data important?

The other pieces is-- I talked about early on in my introduction-- that we also do child care referrals through our agency. So my office actually houses the statewide office. And what we do is we take those calls from those families. But in turn, we have to have the data to give back to those families of how many-- you need child care in Waterloo, Iowa. Well, our system then pulls who has vacancies, where they are, all of that.

So it's so important. So we really work hard at it, but it's really hard because I know, as a former center director, you're just trying to survive the day. I really don't have time to give childcare resource referral my vacancy updates. But I did it because I knew that was almost my free marketing tool to get families in the door as well.

The other piece that I was doing, along with our federal relief dollars, which is very exciting, and we're one of the first states to roll this out, is we will-- we hope in a month. I hope, in a month, I can do a presentation to my friends at the Federal Reserve Bank of our supply-and-demand dashboards. And so that's going to be able to show you the supply and demand in each community and where the vacancies are, how many children.

We're also trying to incorporate staff vacancies. So where are the programs that have vacancies within? That's a big goal, I will tell you. We've just added it into our database to pull that from programs. But eventually, we would love those supply-and-demand dashboards to show that. And it can also just show how many programs are hiring currently, or how many staff do they have? So that's a big piece.

The other dashboard that we're rolling out that I'm very excited about is the route to work, and we're actually calling it something else. Governor Reynolds asked that we put Iowa in the name, which we were like, oh, that's really a great idea. Let's do that.

So we're actually coming out with a new name. But what will be able to happen is I can enter my home address to my work address, and a map will pop up of child care programs along the way. And it will even go to Google where it will show the Google Map, and here comes the picture of the front door. And then it will tell you that that program, Mary's Childcare, has two vacancies in the two-year-old classroom, one vacancy in the three-year-old classroom. You can schedule a visit.

You can schedule a tour. It is really cool. It's going to be really cool. And it's going to change our conversations with businesses because we're going to be able to go in there.

But also, think of HR departments when they're hiring. They can give them the resources, but also give them that link for that route to work. So that's soon to come out, and we can't wait to share it with everyone as well.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Thank you.

SHANNON GARRETT: That's great. Well, in Michigan, in our department, we have some of those larger dashboards about availability and things like that. But particular to the MI Tri-Share Program, when we started this off as a pilot, we have regional facilitator hubs around the state that are really the ones that are out there recruiting businesses to be a part of the program and then connecting them with providers and all of that kind of information. So it was really a true pilot where everybody was doing their own thing, and we didn't necessarily collect data to the extent that we probably could have or should have, other than how many employers, how many employees, how many children.

But we're right now at the tail end of going through a third-party evaluation-- very comprehensive evaluation of the program across all 12 of our hubs. And we're hoping that that's going to help inform us on what type of data we should be collecting and how that would be useful. So who is this program actually serving? Who is it missing? How do we get to them? Because most of what we have right now is anecdotal stories that we're getting from the employers, the employees of the providers, so yeah.

AMANDULA ANDERSON: I'll add in that-- so at IFF, we do a lot of community needs assessments, demand analysis for communities. So we are very concentrated on-- we've had 30 years of experience of providing care and supports for childcare providers, and so we have that data that we collect. But we also go deeper with communities to help them understand, what specifically are your needs? The type of datas could be like, the type of care it is. What kind of care do you have in your community? Is it home care? Is it faith-based care? Is it centered care?

The number of kids that are currently being seen, the number of kids based on equity and their racial status. We also look at the-- I was going to say, CCDF, which is Child Care Development Funds, and what's that availability?

And what's the reimbursement rate? Because it shifts and changes throughout the year or every couple of years. And so knowing that is really critical, especially when you're talking to a childcare provider about what they can claim.

And then we also look at incomes of communities as well, too. But it's all part of really being concentrated on, how do we help you think about approaching this work? And partnering to get that data from partners throughout the state to help us get it.

BELA MOTÉ: So I'm so glad for this question because I'm a data geek, and I love everything data. So I'll break it down in a couple of different ways, but I'm going to caveat it that we don't collect data that ever feels to our families, or our workforce, or to ourselves in a way that we're doing to, but it's rather doing with, and there's a real focus purpose on why we're collecting it. So our data is-- you can imagine, with our public funding streams and the way that we consider our responsibility, we have an entire learning evaluation, scaling, and dissemination department.

Within that department, they focus very much on the quality and the impact side of it. So how are children doing? Are they hitting the academic and social emotional development milestones? So there's a whole host of assessments and data that we collect around that, not only for our directly operated programs, but also our family childcare networks and other partners in the community.

Then there's data on our enrollment. If I were to text my chief programs and impact officer, she could break down for me exactly which classrooms have openings, which funding streams those openings are. And we check that as the Office of the CEO on a weekly basis.

Why? Because we want to make sure that there is never a gap in the services that we're able to provide for our families. And so we have a lot of families that are employed/underemployed that we also collect data on, and that allows us to provide those supports.

What I'm excited about-- we need to have a conversation offline on this-- is the state is in a really important position, and they're looking at this development of a new early childhood agency. And data is one of those key things. And so how does an organization like Carole Robertson Center take the tools that we're using and start to inform systems? And what does that data system at the state level look like? There have been some fits and starts at the Chicago level as well to get to those childcare deserts and unduplicated numbers. But I think, with all that's happening on the state level, it's an exciting time in Illinois.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Wonderful. OK, so in our final minute, I'm going to ask just very quickly-- and it's the magic wand question of, if you had a magic wand, what would you wave it at? Who would you hit with it? Just however you'd want to use that magic tool. And so, Mary, I'll start with you.

MARY JANSSEN: OK, so mine's a really big wand, and I have a couple of things. One, it would be-- I talked to you guys about how the model is broken for childcare and the revenue. I really think that we, somehow, in the perfect world, could we figure out how to bring in revenue to the child care programs based on the number of kids that they care for?

Much like our school districts, they are given money for each child that they care for. We talk about how they're so heavily regulated in the state, just in all of us. In all states, we have heavy regulations.

But in turn, there's no really incentive for these programs to do it. They do it for the kids and the families. That's why they do it.

So I would love to figure out-- and it doesn't necessarily mean that it's the government funding it. It means there's a type of revenue stream that could come in. And if I care for 20 kids, I receive a certain amount per child.

My other magic wand, really quick, is I would love to-- and I believe it goes with my number one-- professionalize the workforce. When I graduated from college with my BA, I received-- I had a teaching license. I was a teacher. I was respected because I had that. I really have a hard time that our childcare workers are not in that bracket.

Many of them have degrees. Many of them have done that. But I think we really need to work hard in each state to professionalize that workforce. One, pay them more. Two, but just also recognize them as that professional.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Yeah, great point.

SHANNON GARRETT: Yeah, no, mine's just a simple--

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Do you want share your magic wand?

SHANNON GARRETT: --magic wand of unlimited access to affordable quality childcare. I mean, I think it's as basic as that. And not only in the sense that we're normally thinking about it, but also second and third shifts and all of those non-emergent or other needs that we have that really aren't filled. So just an unlimited supply is what I would do.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Amandula?

AMANDULA ANDERSON: I would love for us to have a more cohesive childcare policy across the country that is an understanding of the need, but also a willingness-- not that we need to have state or federally run child care centers because that would be a cluster. But if we could have more policy that would actually really align with the need in childcare and a line item that constantly goes into that, no matter of the income. And I would say, the last piece would be that employers, funders, investors would continue to pour capital into childcare centers. These are the people of our future. That five-year-old will one day likely be running your corporation. How much more prepared will they be if you invest in them?

BELA MOTÉ: So I'm sharing everybody's magic wand. I will just end with my magic wand is that the data is clear. It has been for decades. Actually, let's get on the stage the next time saying that we did it and the innovations that came because we did it.

SUSAN LONGWORTH: Thank you. If I had a magic wand, I'd get us another hour, but I don't.

[LAUGHTER]

So please join me in thanking this amazing panel.

[APPLAUSE]

MARY JANSSEN: Thank you.

AMANDULA ANDERSON: Thank you.

MARY JANSSEN: That was Amazing.