By Victoria Lim for WorkingNation.
Broadcast version by Joe Ulery for Indiana News Service reporting for the WorkingNation-Public News Service Collaboration

A new program in Northeast Indiana is trying to ease the burden of childcare. It’s not just an issue for Noble County’s 47,000 rural residents. As WorkingNation has previously reported, the effect from the pandemic lingers, especially for women. More than 100,000 Americans miss work because of childcare problems, and the childcare sector itself has a workforce shortage.

Noble County has just launched the Tri-Share Program. Modeled after an initiative in Michigan, it’s aimed at reducing parents’ out-of-pocket childcare costs.

“A large part of our employment base is manufacturing,” says Jenna Anderson, Thrive by 5 Early Childhood Coalition coordinator. “Our childcare costs are lower than a lot of areas across the country, but it is still a struggle for many of our residents to afford the costs.

“And those costs that parents are paying often don’t cover the true cost to the childcare for providing the care. One of the local programs was losing $13 per day per child, and another has said their costs only cover 80% of their expenses. That’s not sustainable.”

The Tri-Share Program is a quick, short-term solution to address affordability. As the name suggests, it engages three parties – the parents, their employers, and the government, in this case, Noble County. Anderson reached out to the Noble County Commissioners, who provided seed funding of $50,000. Then, she connected with other stakeholders.

Supporting Employee Childcare Needs

Nate Lowe was convinced. Just about a year into his role as the superintendent for the West Noble School Corporation, he sees how challenging it is to fill critical roles like assistants who can earn up to $16 an hour working with applied skills or functioning skills students. Openings can barely attract one or two applicants.

“What [employees] are telling me is that [the Tri-Share Program] helps them to be here,” Lowe says. “If you’re at a licensed childcare program with multiple people and one of them is sick, you can still drop your child off.

“If you just have friends or family watching your child and they’re sick, then you have to stay home. The immediate effect is our employees are here more and I think the background effect is they’re happier to be here because they know we’re helping them financially in this way. It’s a little more money in their pockets and certainly every little bit helps, and they can be on the clock on more often.”

Lowe heard about the Tri-Share Program from an instructional aide who works at one of his high schools, Alicia Squire. She experienced the very scenario Lowe described.

“My babysitter was my husband’s uncle. He decided he needed to get a regular job because the economy is bad and they weren’t making it. I called a local daycare…and started there within a couple weeks. It was really expensive. I was paying the uncle $50 a week, and daycare is $120 a week.

“I don’t make a lot of money and my husband had a big job change…and took a huge pay cut,” Squire explains. “That was pretty rough. So, $120 a week was pretty hard. It wasn’t even worth it to work at that point.”

The daycare mentioned the program to Squire – who mentioned it to Lowe. He lobbied his school board which agreed to designate $5,000 of this school year’s budget to help their employees. He says while this can help individual employees, it ultimately helps to serve the broader student population.

“This is serving our kids well,” Lowe says. “We are fully staffed, where sometimes it’s one assistant-to-three students, or one-to-two. Some students need one-on-one attention, and if that person is not at work [because of childcare issues], we’re not serving kids like we’re supposed to.”

Squire says splitting the cost of childcare with her employer and the county enables her to have enough money for her kids’ – ages four and six – swim lessons, school lunches, and cheerleading.

“It puts more food in the house, more gas in the car because the cost of gas has gone up,” she says. “Thank God for Tri-Share. I would’ve had to stay home, which is not a bad idea, but I just love what I do.”

Possible Program Expansion

“Employers are truly beginning to understand that a lack of childcare is affecting their hiring needs,” Anderson says. “I am currently working with an employer who is developing childcare within their business because they lost two employees to a lack of childcare and were unable to hire two replacements for them also due to lack of childcare. While the Tri-Share Program right now isn’t addressing the larger issue of capacity, it can help employers retain staff by contributing to their childcare costs, and perhaps recruit employees from other places that might not be offering support through the Tri-Share Program.”

There’s an income limit families must meet or fall below to qualify. So far, four families are part of the Tri-Share Program. Since county funds are used, the program is currently limited to families who live in Noble County. But because the county is relatively small and has employees who qualify based on income and live outside of Noble County, Anderson says she is working closely with the Northeast Indiana Early Childhood Coalition to expand the program to all of Northeast Indiana.

“This is a big burden for families, especially single parents who don’t have the option to not work. However, many families, in order to be stable in this economy, need to be a two-parent working household,” says Anderson.

“Still, the costs of childcare place a big burden on them, financially. The community’s wellbeing is at stake, as well. We already have employers who cannot fill open jobs, and parents who cannot get into the workforce – even though they want to – because they can’t find childcare at all, let alone quality and affordable childcare,” she says. “I think the fact that we are supporting any families is a success. It’s certainly considered a success to those families.”


Victoria Lim wrote this article for WorkingNation.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.


get more stories like this via email

Coaches in the Renton School District, just south of Seattle, are organizing with the American Federation of Teachers to fight for what they say are "fair wages" in their first union contract.

Buddy Ryan, head boys track and field coach at Hazen High School, said Renton coaches get paid much less compared with neighboring school districts, which contributes to a 45% turnover rate in coaches from year to year.

"I'm not expecting to go buy a new car off a season of coaching, but I'm not expecting to make minimum wage to be responsible for all these kids," he said. "I think the reality is, a fair wage for a fair day's work is what everybody looks for."

Renton School District has proposed a 2.5% wage increase, far below what the coaches asked for. AFT has said the district has the funds to pay coaches fairly. The district did not respond to a request for comment.

Ryan said the low pay and high turnover rate costs the district more money in training and degrades the quality of the sports programs.

"And then what's the cost to the kids that get a different coach every year? Well, you know what ends up happening? These parents get tired of it and they take their kids to private schools, or they move and transfer them to other schools," he said.

Ryan noted that sports, along with other extracurriculars such as band, are what motivate many kids to keep their grades up in order to participate. He said the district should want to keep the programs strong.

"It's just like when you're a kid at dinner," he said, "and your parents say, 'You've got to eat your vegetables or you don't get dessert.' Well, that dessert is the after-school activities."

Nevada groups concerned about affordability, clean air and health care are speaking out against the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" recently signed by President Donald Trump.

The new law extends tax cuts from 2017, funded partially by huge cuts to Medicaid and SNAP food benefits.

Dr. Joanne Leovy, steering committee chair for the Nevada Clinicians for Climate Action, noted it also ends the tax credit for electric vehicles on Sept. 30, which drives up the price of an EV by $7,500 while promoting the sales of gas-powered vehicles.

"This bill will dump an extra 2.1 billion tons of climate pollution into the atmosphere over the next decade," Leovy pointed out. "Increasing greenhouse gas emissions by about 7% over prior projections; the equivalent of adding more than 400,000 cars to the road."

The new law also cuts tax credits for rooftop solar and energy efficient home upgrades. Backers said the savings were necessary to fund other administration priorities, such as increased funding for immigration enforcement.

Yolanda Kemp, a member of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 4041, said she worries about job losses in the public sector.

"When states, cities, towns, and schools lose essential federal funding, they will be forced to make cuts to their budgets as well, putting all public services and jobs at risk of being cut," Kemp stressed. "And let me tell you, the 'Big, Beautiful Bill' that is supposed to help hardworking Americans is nothing more than another billionaire giveaway paid for by us."

The change to Medicaid and SNAP are not immediate but will be phased in mostly in 2027 and 2028.


get more stories like this via email

More than 1,100 caregivers at Portland's Providence St. Vincent Medical Center have voted to unionize, joining the Service Employees International Union Local 49.

Hospital staffers, including certified nursing assistants, cooks, lab assistants, pharmacy techs, environmental workers and patient representatives, will soon begin collective bargaining with management over a new work contract.

Finn McCool, senior food service attendant at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, said changes to working conditions in the hospital were a major driver to organize.

"There's a lot that makes St. Vincent a great place to work, but we've also seen just tons of changes over the years around staffing and benefits," McCool explained. "My fellow caregivers really knew that jobs were only going to get harder."

The St. Vincent caregivers will join thousands of other unionized workers at Providence hospitals in Oregon, Washington state and other parts of the country. Providence officials released a statement, recognizing the union and saying they were prepared to work with it toward a new contract.

McCool noted the company made several changes to staffing and work policies without feedback from its employees, with changes to the employees' health care benefits causing a major upheaval.

"It's been a recent change to our health care plan with Aetna switching over, and that was probably a very large reason why a lot of us decided to vote yes," McCool pointed out. "We had our own internal health care system. We changed to a different thing. Co-pays changed. Things were definitely a lot harder with increased deductibles."

McCool stressed political uncertainty, particularly in the government's health care policies, was also a significant concern.

"We're seeing a lot of changes going on with the government with cuts, especially right now," McCool observed. "What threatens us is cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Our CEO said, 'These cuts are threatening the hospital.'"