Why small Wisconsin school districts are building daycare centers

Amidst a childcare crisis across Wisconsin, public school superintendents don’t want their students open-enrolling to bigger districts with more childcare options available. They want young families to move into town for jobs, build a connection with the school, and stay.

Lincoln School District Superintendent Drew Semingson was at a recent conference in Wisconsin about education. The speaker posed a question to the superintendents there, which resulted in a surprising show of hands.

“He asked, ‘How many school districts are looking at starting childcare?’ and more than 50% of the hands went up,” Semingson said.

Semingson’s district is in rural Jackson County and comprises Alma Center, Humbird, and Merrillan, each having about 500 people.

He said it’s tough for small districts to compete with larger counterparts right now: “Small towns are jostling and fighting over these young families to move into our communities.”

In thinking through the problem, Semingson realized that his district might have to get into the childcare business.

School districts running daycares?

There’s only one main licensed daycare in the Alma Center-Humbird-Merrillan area, and at capacity, it’s serving fewer than 40 kids.

The superintendent said that’s not going to cut it. 

“If we don’t step up to try to solve this, it’s going to be very hard with the current realities of running a small business for the private sector to do so,” said Semingson.

“Each day more people show up in a school than anywhere else in a small town—so we are the heartbeat of the community and we need to support that community.”

That’s why voters in the district will see a referendum question on their November ballot asking to borrow about $2.9 million dollars. The district wants to add on to the elementary school in Merrillan—for a childcare center.

Keeping kids in the district

“We’re trying to come at this and bring a solution that every small town is facing right now, which is demographics changing,” Semingson explained. “Over the last five years, we’re down around 50 kids, and if each kid is worth about $11,500 in state funding, you can see where that really starts to tank a budget.”

Semingson said they’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of kids open-enroll into the district from neighboring communities, but they also lose kids to other districts—and that is much more costly.

“Thankfully we have open enrollment which is helping,” Semingson said. “We have a net positive 100 open-enrolled kids, but the funding formula isn’t quite the same so we receive less funds for an open-enrolled student, and that’s part of the reason our budget is in a situation where we also need to go to an operating referendum.” 

The $3 million dollar operating referendum—asking voters to raise property taxes $745,000 a year for four years—will be on the ballot alongside the $2.9 million capital referendum for the childcare center. Operating referendums are becoming a common occurrence around Wisconsin because last year’s boost in state funding, while welcomed, fell short of what schools needed for revenue simply to continue current operations. State aid has not kept up with inflation for the past 16 years.

“That’s a short term solution, but a long-term solution is the childcare center,” Semingson said.

Here’s some creative problem-solving

This long-term solution included some creative thinking to fund about half the construction of a childcare center, rather than putting it all on property taxpayers. The district also applied for and is likely to receive a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant. The center will be designed to serve as a storm or emergency shelter, to be used if the community needs a place to go. The district anticipates about $3 million in FEMA funding.

“They really like a grant application like ours that says the secondary purpose is solving a crisis in our community, which is childcare,” Semingson said. “It’s not for a gym, it’s not for a fitness center—it’s for childcare.”

Why a childcare center makes sense

About 30 minutes away, Kristin Elvaker has been the program director at the Blair-Taylor Child Care Center since the school district opened it in 2021.

“We’ve seen families move to the area, or they’re living in another area, and they drive their kids here and they say, ‘Let’s just move there because we have a spot for the kiddos to go,’” said Elvaker. “It just helps your whole community thrive.”

“From the moment we started accepting enrollments, we’ve had a waitlist.”

She can’t say enough about the advantages. 

“Our employees are district employees—that helps retain and recruit staff members,” Elvaker said. “Just the benefits of being in the school are just amazing—the food service, the maintenance–everything’s already here.”

“The cost savings to help run the business—it just makes so much sense.”

Semingson adds there’s another perk for staff: “We’re like a lot of small schools—we’re struggling to find teachers right now. Anything we can do to make it more appealing for teachers—to drop their kids off at the school building, where they go to work—we think that’s what every parent would love.”

The goal is to open the childcare center in November 2026. 

“So many stand to benefit,”Semingson said. “We’re willing to do the work for it, if the community will support us on this.”

“I think in the long run it’s going to revitalize growth within all of the communities in the Lincoln School District. We think it’s the right thing to do for our community.”