Child Care Meeting | Video

Julie Leonardi | 1/4/2013

Child care workers and concerned parents got together Thursday night to talk about the issues Minot daycare centers are facing. The meeting was conducted by three child care center employees that presented the problems they are facing through a Power Point presentation and urged parents to voice their concerns too.

The problem is just too many children and not enough employees. Lavonne Beyerle, ABC Daycare, told the audience about after having a job posted in the newspaper for two weeks, the only person who responded was a convicted felon. "We used to make jokes that, well, if they have blood, and they`re breathing, and they can rap their arms around a kid, they`re hired, well, I can`t!"

Beyerle said she wants her children to see the same loving faces day to day.

The daycare centers are all at capacity and are losing employees and space because they can`t afford them, "It breaks my heart that we don`t have the facilities. But I want mine to be a quality facility. I don`t want to just say, I`m in childcare. I want to have the best."

The only option is to raise the rates, but the parents simply cannot afford it. One parent in the crowd spoke up, "If they raise the rates, my husband and I make middle class income, we can’t afford that. If they raise the rates, we need to decide if we want to feed our children healthy food, or feed them macaroni and cheese from a cheap box."

District legislators attended the meeting and were asked to help, "How are they going to help with this childcare crisis so that we have good people helping to raise our children to be good north Dakotans?"

Beyerle preached to the crowd, "We need a bill and we asked you guys here so that you could help us, walk us through this, we don`t know anything, I haven`t ever put together a bill and watched it go all the way through. We want to be here. We are there for you. We want to love your babies. We have to ban together. It`s going to take all of us, to solve this problem.”

The meeting closed with a question and answer session, which turned into parents voicing their strong opinions, and some even getting applause after they finished speaking.

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