After digging into detailed budget papers and talking to key players in developing budget
options for the Legislature, it looks like $5.84 million may be available for increasing child care payment rates under the Wisconsin Shares program. The final negotiations of the Joint Finance Committee as they completed their work on the budget included more funding than most child care advocates thought. The good news is that the rates are no longer frozen at 2006 levels, and there is movement toward a rate increase. That’s something to cheer about; $5.8 million is a lot of money, though there’s no guarantee that it will actually be used for this purpose.
“Advocating for Every Wisconsin Family”
In October of 2013, Kids Forward (then the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families) released the Race to Equity Report documenting dramatic disparities in well-being between African Americans and whites in Dane County and across the state of Wisconsin. It was...
