This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

Shelley Peel moved into Apple Creek Place in Appleton, Wisconsin nine months ago.

Apple Creek Place advertises itself as a facility with 22 beds and care options tailored to those who are physically disabled and those with dementia or Alzheimer’s. But Peel said that’s not her experience.

Peel, 61, said she’s lucky if she can get a shower once a week. Someone is scheduled to help her go from her wheelchair to the bathroom for a shower every Monday and Thursday, but usually a staff member is not around to assist, she told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.

“They’re supposed to help me a lot more than they do,” Peel said.

It’s a problem the new owners of Apple Creek say has been fixed. Cornerstone Management took over Apple Creek Place in December, a couple months after Peel became a resident in September, and were able to fill all the job vacancies, said Rebecca Rutgers, a spokesperson for Cornerstone.

Peel disagrees. Between showering, cleaning her room and the bathroom, and the laundry not getting done, Peel said she regularly goes without getting everyday chores done because staff is not around. Sometimes it’s taken between 30 and 45 minutes for someone to come when she calls for help, she said.

“I can ask and beg and plead until I’m blue in the face,” she said. “They say, ‘We don’t have time. We’re understaffed.’”

Many residents are struggling to get their needs met at other senior living facilities, as well, according to state health inspection reports. The staffing shortage has turned into a crisis around the region, leading to dangerous conditions at several nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Complaints coming in to the state Department of Health Services about the conditions at senior living centers are surging to numbers not seen in recent years, as residents sometimes go without medications, basic care, or are under the care of staff members who are not trained to provide support to such vulnerable people.

Without staff, residents don’t get showers, medications, help with transfers, everyday care

After receiving two complaints regarding the provider, DHS inspected one of Apple Creek Place’s buildings in November — prior to the ownership change — and found 18 deficiencies. Peel said she contacted Appleton police about her experiences but has not filed any official complaints with DHS.

DHS inspectors found that three caregivers were not trained in fire safety and first aid, and gave residents medicine without proper training in administering them. Two of them were not trained on how to respond to “challenging behaviors,” including residents who wander outside the building, and suicide prevention, according to the report.

Two residents’ records showed they missed doses of regular medications, according to the report.

Inspectors also noted there were not enough employees at the facility to take care of all the residents in the building, with sometimes just one caregiver in the building to take care of everyone.

Since the DHS inspection in November, Apple Creek Place isn’t facing any of the problems cited by DHS, Rutgers said. Part of that is because the facility has a full staff now, she said. Nursing homes are required to report their staffing numbers to the federal government but assisted living do not share the same guidelines. As of July 5, Cornerstone’s careers site did not have any current job openings at Apple Creek Place.

“Things are going much much better,” Rutgers said. “Staffing levels are improving.”

Still, Peel said it sometimes can take up to an hour for someone to check on her after she uses her call alert necklace because all the employees are taking care of other residents.

“One time it was almost two hours,” Peel said. “I peed my pants. I was so scared.”

The incidents are becoming more frequent in nursing homes and assisted living centers all around the state and advocates are saying it’s only going to get worse.

Melanie Cairns, an attorney with Disability Rights Wisconsin, said the number of complaints about similar concerns is on the rise in senior care facilities, and increasing in their level of severity. This includes resident abuse, neglect, and serious rights violations, she said. 

Disability Rights Wisconsin has noticed growing concerns about delays in getting medications, not enough available staff trained to administer meds, less assistance, or delays with daily living tasks such as showering, toileting and meals. Residents are also not getting help with transfers or lifts. 

“Many of those, if not all, are directly related to staffing shortages,” Cairns said.

At Century Oaks of Appleton, an assisted living center at 2300 E. Glenhurst Lane, one resident died from injuries sustained in a fall while trying to get out of bed, according to a DHS report in April.

On Dec. 15, the resident fell while trying to get out of bed to go to the bathroom around 5 a.m., the report said. The resident was taken to the ER and was diagnosed with a humerus fracture from the fall. The resident died five days later due to the fracture, according to the report.

Family members told inspectors that the resident pressed the call light, but no one came to the room for over 15 minutes so the resident decided to move to the bathroom alone. The resident’s care plan required staff help the resident with toileting and getting in and out of bed overnight when they were groggy and unsteady.

Caregivers told DHS the buildings were often short-staffed and some residents missed doses of meds because no one was available to provide them. In October, a resident was not given pain meds and an order for an X-ray was delayed while the resident was in hospice care.

“Evidence demonstrates that (the resident) was not attended to and (the resident) was in pain for a number of days leading up to (the resident’s) death,” the report said.

Century Oaks did not respond to a request for an interview.

Complaints on the rise but inspections remain backlogged

The complaints against senior care facilities are rising to numbers not seen in recent years. In 2022, there were 2,284 complaints at assisted living facilities in the state — which include adult family homes, community-based residential facilities, and residential care apartment complexes, according to data obtained from DHS.

That’s a 17% increase in the number of complaints from 2021. DHS received 1,923 complaints toward assisted living facilities in 2021 and 1,820 complaints in 2020. In 2019, the state received 1,626 complaints. Every year, most of the assisted living complaints were against community-based residential facilities.

Concerns have also been surging against nursing homes. Layered with vacant positions for inspectors and nurses, the complaints are adding to a backlog of inspections and more detrimental conditions.

To combat the years of inadequate levels nationwide, President Joe Biden is expected to announce a federal minimum staffing requirement for nursing homes this summer, but some advocates say it may not be a practical way to solving the crisis.

Meeting a more extensive daily staffing requirement will become more challenging if the number of vacancies stay the same, said Renee Eastman, the vice president of financial and regulatory services at LeadingAge Wisconsin, a statewide association of nursing homes and other long-term care providers. It may only lead to more providers ending new admissions or closing altogether if they can’t meet the mandate.

“That mandate won’t magically come with any additional qualified bodies,” Eastman said.

“When nursing facilities take fewer admissions that generally means people are waiting in the hospital longer, which creates a bottleneck for people in communities who need acute care and also creates a bottleneck for family caregivers are who seeking to admit someone from the community,” Eastman added.

Senior care not on the mend after COVID-19 pandemic

While other health care sectors are further on the road to recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic, long-term care facilities are struggling to compete.

The pandemic exacerbated many of the problems impacting senior care, but facilities were having trouble finding stability and adequate staffing levels even before 2020. Mike Pochowski, the president and CEO of the Wisconsin Assisted Living Association, said the caregiver crisis in senior care facilities has only continued to worsen.

Inflation and rising costs have made the situation more urgent after the pandemic, Pochowski said.

Certified nursing assistants and caregiver job vacancies reached nearly 30% for assisted living and nursing home providers in 2022 — more than double the shortage in 2016, according to the latest Long-Term Care Workforce Crisis report from a coalition of long-term care associations including the Wisconsin Health Care Association/Wisconsin Center for Assisted Living, Wisconsin Assisted Living Association, LeadingAge Wisconsin, and Disability Service Provider Network.

More than 25% of caregiver positions were empty in community-based residential facilities, according to the report.

“When you talk about the activities and services that a direct support professional provides, it is a very difficult job providing the most personal care to our most vulnerable people,” said Lisa Davidson, CEO of the Disability Service Provider Network in Wisconsin.

The low wages and loss of caregivers have caused facilities to close or discharge residents living on Medicaid to reduce costs.

When providers are required to close, it limits options for Wisconsin’s aging population to find a new place to live. 

According to DHS, the closures are on the rise. In 2019, 109 assisted living facilities closed statewide. In 2020, 116 more providers closed, and between January and September 2021, 156 closed.

The number of nursing homes is shrinking statewide, too. Between 2016 and April 2021, 42 nursing homes closed, according to LeadingAge Wisconsin.

“Because of that, we’re unable to care for as many people as we would like to,” Pochowski said.

Funding continues to fall short

Because long-term care is not covered by Medicare, individuals often have to go through all of their savings to pay for care before they become eligible for help. In Wisconsin, Family Care is a state Medicaid program created in 1999 for the elderly and adults with disabilities. After a resident’s financial resources run out, Family Care kicks in to cover the costs of the facility.

As Wisconsin ages, the demand for long-term care options will only become more pressing as the “Silver Tsunami” moves into community living centers or nursing homes. If conditions don’t improve, the region’s elderly will only become in even more danger.

But Medicaid reimbursements to providers, historically, are too low to support the costs of an assisted living facility or nursing home, leading some to discharge Medicaid residents because keeping them is no longer financially possible.

In Green Bay, the average cost of an assisted-living room is $4,450 per month and $9,824 for a private nursing home, according to the American Association of Retired Persons. In Appleton, it’s about $5,137 per month for residence at assisted living and $9,581 for a private nursing home.

At Agape, a residential support service based in Appleton for individuals with developmental disabilities, their properties are facing a shortage of about 45 caregivers, said Agape CEO Dan Witt. With the aid of direct care workforce funding, Agape was able to increase pay from $9 to $14 or $15 for staff, Witt said, but it’s still low in comparison.

“If you compare that to what say a high school student is able to earn in retail or fast food — $14 or $15 isn’t really that competitive and our caregivers have far more responsibility than what a high school student would have,” Witt said.

The Joint Finance Committee took up the Family Care budget June 15 and boosted Family Care funding to provide wage increases to caregivers. Gov. Tony Evers signed the two-year state budget Thursday, and it’s a step in the right direction, Wisconsin long-term care associations said.

“As Wisconsin’s workforce crisis continues many assisted living facilities face significant staffing and financial challenges,” Pochowski said in a news release. “These investments are necessary to maintain quality care and services to elderly individuals and those with disabilities.”

The issue of senior care only becomes more critical as Wisconsin gets older. Brown County’s population of residents who were 65 and older passed 44,000 in 2022 out of the county’s over 270,000 residents — increasing roughly 50% from 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In Outagamie County, the number of residents over 65 reached nearly 32,000 people in 2022.

By 2030, one in four Wisconsinites are expected to be of retirement age.

Baby boomers are aging across the state and birth rates remain low. The state Department of Administration expects the population of 65-plus Wisconsinites to grow by nearly 500,000 by 2040 and comprise nearly a quarter of the total population, up from 14% in 2010.

“Where are the caregivers going to come from to support the needs of baby boomers such as myself?” Witt said. “This could become a catastrophic shortage when the baby boomers’ needs for long term care expand exponentially.”

Complaints surge at short-staffed Wisconsin senior living facilities. Residents go without medication and basic care is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

Nicole Klug, a foster care case manager in Green Bay, has never been able to shake the memory of the teenage girl tossed from county to county in the wake of her parents’ deaths, or the boy who entered her agency still high after being removed from his drug-ridden home.

What they needed was trauma-informed support that offered a path forward; what they got was a cycle of foster homes, the path forward harder to find by the day.

Klug, who works at Foundations Health & Wholeness, said that despite their obvious need, youths in out-of-home care — the term for court-monitored placement and services for children removed from their homes — are the least likely to gain access to mental and behavioral health treatment. Under Wisconsin’s parental consent laws, foster parents can take youths to a primary care doctor for routine visits and to a dentist for cleanings, but they can’t get them counseling to help them unpack the trauma from their upbringing, home removal and foster placement. Case workers like Klug see that as a deterrent to prospects for real behavioral change.

A recent report from the American Academy of Pediatrics drove that point home, saying mental and behavioral health represents the largest unmet need for children and teens in foster care.

“Many children have been cared for by a variety of adults, even prior to foster care, and may not have experienced the predictable nurturance necessary for healthy development,” the report reads. “The emotional trauma of removal from all that is familiar and placement in foster care is emotionally traumatizing for all but the youngest infants. This is compounded by the ongoing separation, losses, and uncertainty that are endemic to foster care.”

As of Dec. 31, 2021, the latest comprehensive year of data available from the state Department of Children and Families (DCF), about 7,000 Wisconsin children have been placed in out-of-home care, roughly 0.5% of all children living in the state. More than 80% of those children enter out-of-home care with a significant mental health challenge.

Additionally, a little less than 1,500 have documented disabilities, with emotional dysregulation accounting for about 80% of all types of determined disabilities — by far the largest condition. Emotional dysregulation is a core trait of ADHD and can involve angry outbursts, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, and other self-damaging behaviors.

But even if a child enters out-of-home free of a mental health condition, the rupture of removal is its own disorienting condition.

“What’s important to remember is that 80% of kids, that’s when they enter care,” said Katie Szerkins, foster care therapist at Foundations. “When you’re removed from your biological parents, that is the most traumatic thing a child can experience, and that alone generates a potential mental health need.” 

Szerkins has a license to foster children through Outagamie County and has observed too many times the fallout of not getting young people the care they need. Since 2016, she’s fostered about 50 children and teenagers and adopted two infants, Layla and Myles, giving her six children.

For Szerkins, the problem of mental health access never changes with her foster children, but the pain points differ every time. Scoring a therapy appointment for her kids requires consent from an absentee or incarcerated parent or an overworked county officer, which can take anywhere from a few months to a year — especially if a child is a ward of the state.

‘What they went through couldn’t wait three years’

Jessica Passamoni worked various roles as a caseworker with the idea of becoming a foster parent.

It felt like a natural progression to her. She’d seen enough children wade in and out of the system. She and her husband Shane knew they could provide a safe and healthy home. They had the means, the knowledge and the heart.

Children in the system, she said, “are no different than your own child. They have just experienced things that no kid should ever have to experience.”

The Passamonis, who live in Green Bay, have fostered three children in five years. In September, they adopted their first two foster children, a brother and sister now 12 and 13, who had been with them for more than two years. Recently, a 9-year-old came under their care.

Prior to living with them, the brother and sister lived with an aunt and uncle about two hours away in Langlade County. In their Green Bay home, the kids familiarized themselves with their new living quarters, bonded with the Passamonis, and tried new things like rollerblading, football and chalk-drawing on the sidewalk.

But the children weren’t used to traditional family structures. The girl had been parentalized, Jessica Passamoni said, a phenomenon in which a child is forced to act as a parent in the family, often because of parental neglect or abandonment. She struggled with the idea that she was a young girl in need of care, and also had trouble trusting how the Passamonis took care of her younger brother.

The children needed mental health services, and fast.

Jessica Passamoni started with the county as the point of contact for the children’s parents. At the same time, due to COVID-19 restrictions, the Passamonis had to advocate for the children’s ability to both navigate and benefit from virtual technology. There were certain rules about tele-health not being an appropriate route until the client was at least 13.

“Many would say, ‘Oh, once they turn 13, they can see a provider,'” Jessica Passamoni said. “But what they went through couldn’t wait three years.”

After coordinating with the county, Jessica Passamoni was able to turn a three-year wait into a three-month wait. By July 2020, both children could incorporate tele-health into their weekly schedules, where they learned new ways of coping with their pasts and adjusting to a pleasantly undramatic life with the Passamonis.

“The resiliency that we saw in them — in our youngest’s desire to be a kid and let his sister be a kid — thinking back, it was just remarkable to watch them learn how to be kids again,” Jessica Passamoni said.

A vicious cycle that begins with a flawed system

Under state law, children don’t have a say in their own mental health care, which may make sense in a traditional family system where at least one parent is in the child’s life. Those conditions break down quickly when a child is removed from parental care.

They can only obtain psychological care in emergency situations. In Brown County, for example, youth accounted for 88% of those placed in emergency psychiatric beds in 2018. 

Further, not enough counselors are equipped to work with this specialty population, Szerkins said.

It’s hard to say how stark the need for mental health services is. There’s about a yearlong waitlist for a psychological evaluation from Brown County mental health services, which doesn’t require the presence of a biological parent or legal guardian. The alternative, however, going down the street to a local hospital or agency for more expedited service, requires not just the consent of a biological parent or legal guardian, but their physical presence in the room during the evaluation, Klug said.

“The biological parents are MIA, have not been in the child’s life for years or they are incarcerated,” Klug said. 

Last year, 406 children entered out-of-home care as the result of a parent being incarcerated, according to DCF.

Bridget Wirtz, foster care coordinator for Outagamie County Department of Health and Human Services, said if parents can be found, she has encouraged foster parents to have frank conversations with them about why counseling or mental health treatment is needed.

Still, sometimes parents will refuse to give consent, Wirtz said. When that happens, foster parents have to figure out alternatives.

Thinking outside the box became Szerkins’ modus operandi. When she first started taking care of a very thin 6-year-old girl, she was mortified to discover the girl ate out of the garbage. It was what she knew, and no amount of encouraging her to eat from the cupboards and fridge worked. The girl always gravitated to the garbage and when Szerkins attempted to hide the garbage, the girl became anxious, at a loss for how to function.

Therapy for such behavior would have required weeks to months of phone calls and scheduling and waiting, but the child, due to her fragile mental and physical state, needed care immediately. Szerkins bought a fresh garbage pail and filled it with healthy snacks, fruits and vegetables.

“If she’s going to eat from the garbage can, then at least we know it’s not dangerous items being thrown in the garbage can like soup can lids,” Szerkins said. “Gradually, we took away the garbage can from her room … when she knew she was going to have food in our home.”

For Charlotte and Alec, adoption meant a clean slate

When her two children came into the Passamonis’ care, it felt like “they had been there forever,” she said. The children seamlessly merged with the family routine and got along well with the Passamonis’ son, Coltyn.

Two years in, the Passamonis realized they couldn’t let them go. They loved these children and wanted to turn their family of three into a family of five. Much to the children’s delight, the Passamonis started the adoption process. Coltyn happily went from the only child to the middle child.

In the car after a particularly grueling court hearing that involved the presence of the biological parents, the children asked Jessica Passamoni if adoption meant they could change their names.

“I thought they were just talking about their middle and last names,” Jessica Passamoni said. “And they said, ‘No, our first names, too.'”

Jessica Passamoni described an evening where both kids brainstormed names they liked on a whiteboard. They’d star certain names, look them up online, cross out others and imagine themselves enveloped by this new name, one that didn’t call up the ugliness of their past.

After spending her whole life passing through the foster care system with her little brother, the 13-year-old girl legally changed her name to Charlotte. The 12-year-old changed his name to Alec.

Alec picked his name because it was a special family name. Charlotte picked hers because it meant “free.”

“When families think of foster care, they think of this big scary child in their home, worries that they’re going to disrupt everything that they have going on. And that could not be further from the truth,” Jessica Passamoni said.

“It’s so important that we take a step back and say, ‘This kid might have behaviors,’ or ‘This kid might experience A, B, C or D,'” she said. “But let’s think about where that came from and help that child through that.”

Wisconsin foster children often need mental health care to thrive. Why is it hard to help them? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

Shannon Pikka loves the work-life balance of her job in construction. She left an office job in insurance and now enjoys being up early and working with her hands as part of a drywall finishing crew. The single mother’s workday ends around 3 p.m. — just in time to greet her two children from school.

“Kids are coming home at that time, and we got the whole evening now together,” Pikka said. “Our job should not dictate our lifestyle.”

Despite changing careers nearly four years ago, she’s still earning apprentice wages due to setbacks during the pandemic when her youngest was in third grade and schools switched to distance learning. 

“I would be a journeywoman right now had I had a babysitting option so I could have still shown up for work and gained all those hours in the year — so that set me back,” the De Pere, Wisconsin resident said. 

The difference is a full $9 an hour. As it is, she’s making just shy of $27 an hour. But with two school-aged kids in her household, paying all of the bills is a stretch. Pikka gets no child support, and she relies on her parents who live nearby to provide child care for the days she needs to be at a remote jobsite for days or even weeks at a time.

“I’m just trying to make ends meet,” she said. 

But government statistics show many in the community earn a lot less than she does. 

The state Department of Workforce Development estimates that two adults working full-time earning $25.20 an hour each is just enough to be self-sufficient in a household with two children when factoring in the cost of housing, transportation, food and child care. 

The average wage in Green Bay, according to the most recent federal Bureau of Labor Statistics report, was $26.29 in 2022. But the median earnings were $21.84 an hour, meaning that half of workers earn less than that.

In other words, many workers supporting families in northeast Wisconsin are just squeaking by, especially at a time when the cost of living is increasing in Wisconsin and across the nation. 

“Self-sufficiency is attainable for the majority of full-time workers if children are not involved,” wrote DWD spokesperson Jennifer Sereno. “However, the situation rapidly changes when just one child is brought into the picture, let alone multiple.”

That’s because the cost of child care can rival tuition at a state university, the Wisconsin Policy Forum wrote in a recent report. A state survey of child-care facilities found the annual median cost for school-aged children starts at around $10,000 but can be as much as $40,000 a year for high-quality infant care in urban areas like Green Bay and Oshkosh. 

Earnings too high to qualify for benefits

Pikka’s household has no second income, yet she is still well above the level to qualify for many public assistance programs.

Her story represents a growing segment of Wisconsin’s working population: those earning too much to qualify for most public assistance programs but too little to afford anything but basic necessities. United Way studies this group of people known as ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. Its latest report shows 23% of Wisconsinites fit into this category.

Help such as food assistance through the state’s FoodShare program, subsidized child care under the Wisconsin Shares program care and BadgerCare Plus health insurance are not available to many such families, including Pikka’s. 

“These are people who are working,” said Trisha Witt, who works in advocacy for United Way Fox Cities in Appleton. “They’re earning more than the federal poverty level but less than Wisconsin’s basic cost of living.”

When you add in the 11% of people living below the poverty line, the percentage of Wisconsinites struggling financially is 34%, according to the United Way report.

In northeast Wisconsin, the figures are similar, except in urban areas, where the numbers are starker. In Oshkosh, for example 41% of residents are either below poverty or not making enough for basic needs. 

Barriers to prosperity

It’s not due to a lack of employment. Official unemployment is at record lows with federal agencies reporting Wisconsin at a record 2.4% in April. Northeast Wisconsin was hovering at 2% or less. 

But while very few able-bodied adults are outside of the workforce, lack of affordable child care and transportation can keep people from working and meeting their basic needs. 

“No matter what the economic conditions are like,” said Ryan Long, a regional economist for the state Department of Workforce Development in Green Bay, “we know for certain that there are going to be folks who face barriers to work.”

On paper, Pikka has been relatively successful. For 15 years she sold insurance but entered the trades after becoming disillusioned with a desk job. But a string of abusive partners who ended up incarcerated or moving out of state has left her the sole breadwinner for her family.

Her life had been full of hardship from when she was left at a hospital in Colombia where she was born and never picked up. Pikka spent the next three years in an overcrowded South American orphanage where she said she suffered physical abuse.

“I have scars on my body because the nuns could not control the orphanage, so they beat us up,” she said. 

At age 4, a pair of school teachers adopted her and raised her in northeast Wisconsin. If it wasn’t for her parents helping with child care, Pikka said she could never maintain her higher paying career in construction.

“I wouldn’t be able to do it,” she said. “I’d have to go back to my office job.” 

The dearth of affordable child care in Wisconsin is well-documented. The staff shortage in day care centers itself has a ripple effect. On paper, there are roughly 37,500 slots for children in the 19 counties in northeast Wisconsin. But a survey last year of 1,173 child care centers in Wisconsin found nearly half were below capacity. 

“It is important to note that this is licensed capacity and providers may not be using all slots due to staffing shortages, low enrollment, or other factors,” wrote Gina Paige, a spokesperson for the state Department of Children and Families, which licenses day care facilities.

Hot housing market constrained by supply, rising interest rates

Affordable housing is another key to family sustainability. But a shortage of supply has driven up rental prices across the board.

“It doesn’t really matter what the availability of jobs is like if young folks are getting priced out of certain areas because housing is too expensive,” Long said.

Real estate data show that housing prices across the state continue to rise even as sales slump due to constrained supply and rising interest rates that have added to the cost of borrowing.

In April 2023, the median house in northeast Wisconsin cost $260,000. That’s $23,000 less than the statewide median. But the median cost rose 7% across the region in the previous year, similar to the increase statewide. 

All this happened while real estate transactions slumped after interest rates spiked from historic lows at below 3% to around 6.6% for a fixed 30-year loan in May. 

The numbers are stark: There were more than 1,500 residential home sales in June 2022, just as the Fed hiked interest rates for a third time in response to inflation fears. Ten months later in April of this year, the region saw half as many closed deals at 777.

Property owners who are locked in with relatively low interest rates are less likely to list their homes now because they’d pay higher rates on their next property, said real estate broker Kevin Jones, co-owner of Adashun Jones in Fond du Lac.

“There are more people pursuing the few properties that are on the market,” he said.

Houses harder to find, more expensive to rent

The region has already faced supply constraints as Baby Boomers live longer and stay put, leaving fewer properties for younger aspiring homeowners.

“We have healthy Baby Boomers — I’m one of them — who are staying in their homes longer, and millennials who are clamoring to find homes and are at a disadvantage because they increasingly have to rely on borrowed money,” Marquette University economics professor David Clark said at a recent economics forum.

He said many millennials of child-bearing age — those born in the 1980s and ‘90s — “kind of got dealt a bad hand” coming out of the Great Recession with a weak labor market and so “logically and rationally stayed out of the market” during the time when working Americans would purchase first homes.

Jones, the real estate broker and Fox Valley landlord, said the rental housing market is also hot with rents increasing by 10% to 20% annually. 

“I think it’s because a lot of the rentals have been consolidated into a small group of investors — that’s one side of the story,” he said. “And the other side is there’s just not enough homes and developments that are being created.”

In 2022, the National Low Income Housing Coalition — an advocacy group — listed the fair market price for a two-bedroom unit in northeast Wisconsin at between $757 in rural counties to $889 in the Oshkosh area . The study, citing U.S. Census figures, also found the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in counties across northeast Wisconsin — for that matter, across the entire state — is higher than the recommended 30% of the average income renters in those counties make. 

Home ownership remains elusive for Pikka. For three years, she has rented a two-bedroom apartment for $875 in De Pere where she enjoys living despite the higher housing prices compared to neighboring Green Bay. Once she works enough hours for journeyman wages, she said she’ll try to buy something.

But Pikka, who is 41, said that’s at least three years away. In the meantime she is pursuing another dream. Pikka would like to visit Colombia with her kids to reconnect with her birth parents.

This story is part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab’s series, Families Matter, covering issues important to families in the region. The lab is a local news collaboration in northeast Wisconsin made up of six news organizations: the Green Bay Press-Gazette, Appleton Post-Crescent, FoxValley365, The Press Times, Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Watch. The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Journalism Department is an educational partner. Microsoft is providing financial support to the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation and Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region to fund the initiative. The mission of the lab is to “collaborate to identify and fill information gaps to help residents explore ways to improve their communities and lives — and strengthen democracy.”

Rising cost of living in northeast Wisconsin has many working families treading water  is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

As early as kindergarten, Robin Pierre started to notice that her daughter, Hattie, was falling behind. She wasn’t able to read the books they were sending home, despite being in a charter school known for its focus on literacy. 

Hattie started working with a reading interventionist during kindergarten and throughout first grade. But then her behavior started to escalate. She’d hide under desks and run out of the classroom. She was moved to another charter school for second grade, one focused on play-based learning and field trips in hopes that environment would better suit her.

All this time, Hattie’s trouble reading persisted. Pierre asked to have her evaluated for special education. 

Hattie was assessed; but when Pierre asked questions about dyslexia, she said the school told her they don’t acknowledge dyslexia without a diagnosis, and that could only come from brain imaging. 

“It was a fight at first,” Pierre said.

Dyslexia looks different for each person who has it. It’s a neurobiological learning disability that can make it difficult for people to decode words and read fluently. People with dyslexia may struggle with spelling and reading comprehension as a result of their challenge matching letters to their corresponding sounds. 

The International Dyslexia Association estimates that as many as one in five people could have symptoms of dyslexia, ranging in severity.

Often, people assume that dyslexia is just mixing up letters such as “b” and “d.” It can be that for some people — Pierre said Hattie experienced that — but it’s not the only symptom. For example, people with dyslexia might struggle with slow, choppy reading, memorization or even constantly confuse left and right. It ranges on a spectrum from mild to severe.

For Hattie, reading was “labor-intensive.” She’d often read a sentence three times before she’d actually comprehend what it said. The first few reads were spent trying to identify the sounds for each letter and then trying to put them all together more smoothly, so she could get to the point of comprehension.

Currently, Wisconsin does not require students to be screened specifically for dyslexia, but the state passed legislation three years ago to create an informational guidebook on dyslexia and related conditions to be shared on the state Department of Public Instruction and all school district websites.

In the years since the guidebook was created, Wisconsin and the rest of the country has turned up the volume on a discussion about literacy after standardized test scores have shown significant declines in language arts during the pandemic. 

But those conversations usually don’t include students with dyslexia. Families are often left on their own to get their children tested, diagnosed and supported through outside tutoring. And local tutoring agencies are feeling the burden of an increased need to support these students, who are now often even further behind because of the pandemic.  

“It’s something the public school should have done; they should have been able to teach her how to read,” Pierre said.

What Wisconsin school districts do to support students with dyslexia

By state law, schools are required to screen students in 4K through second grade annually for “literacy fundamentals.” This includes letter sound knowledge and something called phonemic awareness — the ability to identify individual sounds within a word — which are generally two areas of difficulty for students with dyslexia. 

DPI told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin these requirements are “generally agreed upon to be components of screening for dyslexia.” If a screening indicates they needs more testing, there are additional screening options listed in the state’s guidebook that parents and teachers can consider.

In 2021, Republican lawmakers proposed tripling the number of literacy tests for young students to boost low proficiency rates, but Gov. Tony Evers vetoed the bill, saying it lacked evidence and funding. 

The state may mandate early screening, but district by district, the overall approach to literacy can look different. 

The Menasha Joint School District is focused on being “diagnostic” with students, said Renae Braun, a literacy coach.

It does this by screening students in kindergarten through eighth grade three times a year. Those screenings look at students’ comprehension, fluency and knowledge of phonics. Through those, the district identifies a student’s strengths and areas of concern. 

For students behind grade level or who show other challenges on those screenings, the district creates an individual plan — called a Response to Intervention plan — to help them catch up. It focuses on strengthening areas of concern.

There isn’t one method that works for teaching literacy to all students. But Braun said students with dyslexia need explicit teaching and multiple modalities — a combination of visual, auditory and tactile.

“We do dipstick check-ins every two weeks or every week to make sure the plan is accelerating or growing our students,” she said. 

Both Menasha and Kimberly school districts see teacher expertise as vital to teaching students who struggle with literacy, whether it’s diagnosed dyslexia or other challenges.

The Kimberly Area School District added a phonological interventionist to its staff in August 2022. The role was designed to be “an in-house expert on decoding and fluency,” according to Holly Prast, assistant superintendent. 

This interventionist is trained in a specific dyslexia intervention, among other reading interventions, and works with students directly, Prast said. They also collaborate with teachers to provide new strategies to support students who are struggling.

Many districts have hired reading interventionists to support students through pandemic-induced learning loss, but Prast said Kimberly decided to add a phonological interventionist independently of that.

Carrie Willer, director of elementary education for the Appleton Area School District, echoed the need for a variety of teaching methods to support students. The number of students in any given classroom is the number of different learning styles teachers need to work with, she explained. 

“You need a full bag of tricks and a full bag of tools to meet each of those students,” she said. 

Appleton has interventionists, teachers trained in a one-on-one reading recovery program and other methods of support, including small group work and collaboration with parents.

Still, fewer than half of Appleton students are reading at or above grade level. 

A recent audit of the district’s English language arts curriculum showed a need for more emphasis on phonics and letter sound awareness — strategies that would better support students with dyslexia in the classroom. 

Many families with students with dyslexia have to turn to outside tutoring

When Hattie eventually qualified for special education, the district focused only on her ADHD diagnosis. So, not only did Pierre pay out of pocket for neurological exams, but she had to fight to get the district to even recognize the dyslexia diagnosis in her individual education plan.

It was around then that Pierre found Dyslexia Reading Connection, a nonprofit tutoring organization based in Appleton. That was four years ago, and Hattie has gone twice a week ever since — even through the summers. 

DRC has been around for almost 20 years, but there’s been increased demand since the pandemic, said Kimberly Stevens, executive director. Earlier this year, there were 50 students on the waitlist — five times as many as the organization had pre-COVID. And Stevens said new students are coming in for consultations every week.

Today, Hattie is caught up to grade level and has even become “quite an avid reader,” Pierre said. She credits that success more to the tutoring she paid for from DRC than what the public schools provided.

“I didn’t think this day would come,” she said.

When asked how often Dyslexia Reading Connection is screening students for dyslexia, Stevens said, “constantly.” It tries to keep screenings to about five students a week since the Appleton-based nonprofit is already tutoring more than 110 students online and in person. 

But it’s not just an increase in the number of students. Stevens said students are coming in further and further behind. Before the pandemic, students would come to DRC a year and nine months behind, on average. Now, it’s not uncommon for students to be three or even four years behind where they should be. 

“Parents are desperate to get their kids the right interventions,” Stevens told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.

While DRC can’t offer a medical diagnosis, the screening it offers is about an hour long and can usually tell with a high degree of certainty whether the student has dyslexia, Stevens said. After the screening results are explained to the parents, it’s up to them whether they want to move forward with tutoring. It’s first come, first served, since there’s a waitlist, but a family’s scheduling availability may be considered.

On average, students spend four years with DRC working through 10 levels of tutoring that will bring them up to a 10th-grade reading level.

The tutoring starts by breaking language into its smallest parts: individual vowels and consonants. As the levels progress, students move on to syllables, prefixes and suffixes, vowel placement in a word and even influences from foreign languages such as Latin and Greek root words. 

Karrie Brass, a tutor at DRC, said her husband, who has dyslexia, uses a car engine analogy to explain it: The brains of students without dyslexia works like driving an automatic transmission when learning to read, spell and write. They don’t need to work through every step of processing language. Most of it happens under the hood without conscious thought. 

But for students with dyslexia, their brains are more like driving a car with a manual transmission. They need to shift gears, understand the specifics of how letters make sounds and work through each step of the process; otherwise, it won’t be a smooth ride.

Life after high school for students with dyslexia

Hattie is still making her way through middle school, but Pierre said Hattie has dreams of going to college one day.

And she’s not alone.

Take, for example, Meghan Molthen.

A freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Molthen was diagnosed with dyslexia the summer before sixth grade. She struggled to spell simple words and saw her classmates read at much higher levels than her, but she didn’t understand why until she got her diagnosis. 

Figuring out that she had dyslexia helped give shape to the reason why she was struggling, but it didn’t fix everything. Molthen went to school in Fort Atkinson before moving to Pulaski her sophomore year, so she experienced two districts and their approaches to supporting her dyslexia. 

Although a diagnosis made accessing certain supports simpler, Molthen said there were still challenges because the school systems didn’t understand “how to fully accommodate students with learning disabilities.”

When she toured UW-Oshkosh in summer 2021, she asked the admissions office about accommodations for students with learning disabilities. They told her about a program called Project Success. 

Project Success is a remedial program for students with dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities at the school. It starts with a six-week summer program focused on phonics and teaching students the relationship between letters and sounds. 

Director Jayme Reichenberger said the program has a reading and writing component, but it also supports students in other ways through the transition from high school to college. By completing the summer program, students can earn up to six credits, which can be a helpful GPA cushion for those early, stressful semesters of college. 

Students also learn about what laws protect their accommodations and what services are available to them. Reichenberger said many students come in not really understanding their diagnosis. They might have attended meetings during their K-12 education, but a lot of them didn’t put a name to their disability. 

It’s not uncommon for Reichenberger to hear students say that their dyslexia was essentially ignored, so she said they try hard to actually say the word “dyslexia.” There are even campus events where students will write messages like “Say dyslexia” on the sidewalk. 

“When a disability is hidden, it’s easy to stereotype and have misconceptions about it,” Reichenberger said.

For Molthen, the program gave her agency over her learning disability. She had a hard time even talking about her dyslexia before, but Project Success taught her how to see it as a benefit. 

“I’m so thankful I have it,” she said of her dyslexia. “It pushes me to be a better person.”

One in 5 could have dyslexia, but Wisconsin students, parents feel school support falls short is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

Wisconsin’s child care crisis affects you, even if you don’t know it.

Perhaps the only expense greater than the cost to sustainably fund our child care system, however, would be the price we’d pay if we don’t. The Council for a Strong America estimates the child care crisis already costs Wisconsin families, businesses and governments a combined $1.9 billion every year.

Nearly nine in 10 working parents say child care costs them time and productivity at work, which may mean more work for others or jobs that don’t get done. Lost wages and fewer sales mean less tax revenue for local, state and federal governments. 

Wisconsin’s broken child care system must be fixed for the sake of families, businesses, workers and the state’s general economic prosperity. 

“An investment in (the child care) industry is an investment in all industries across Wisconsin because parents work in every industry,” said Ruth Schmidt, Wisconsin Early Childhood Association’s executive director. 

There is no single solution that will address the shortage of care, centers’ high operating costs, workers’ very low wages and the exorbitant prices families pay for care.

Instead, industry experts and child care providers say effectively address industry needs requires government, employers and families to collaborate.  

“It’s like a three-legged stool,” said Julie Stoffel, owner and administrator of Cradle to Crayons Learning Center in Kimberly. “If you take one of those legs out, it’s not going to stand up. It’s not going to be good.” 

The USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin, in collaboration with the NEW News Lab, talked to early childhood education experts, child care providers and parents to identify the gaps and discuss possible solutions to close them. Here’s what we found:

Child Care Counts sparked optimism — but its funding was just cut

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the state created Child Care Counts to provide monthly stabilization payments to qualified child care businesses. The funding may have served as hope that Wisconsin was finally beginning to realize how essential child care is and the importance of the job done by early childhood educators.

“Everybody is expecting child care will continue to limp along as it has historically done,” Schmidt said. “What’s changed is the industry had a taste of what it’s like to be supported.”

Child Care Counts monthly payments helped about 3,000 child care businesses stay open. For the first time, many providers had a stable revenue source outside of the cost parents pay for care. In some cases, it allowed for wage increases (although child care is still a notoriously underpaid profession), long put-off updates and even prevented substantial tuition increases.

“For us, Child Care Counts has been able to make us stable in the sense that I don’t worry about how I’m going to make ends meet because I know we’re going to be supported … but I am still conscious of every penny that is spent,” Renae Henning, administrator at Community Care Preschool and Child Care in Beaver Dam, told The Post-Crescent.

Child Care Counts funding is set to run out by 2024 — and recently, the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families announced the total monthly amount will be cut in half beginning with the May 2023 payment. 

Six in 10 operators said if support ends they’ll have to raise tuition; one in three will cut wages, according to a survey of 1,173 Wisconsin centers.

Corrine Hendrickson, a licensed family child care provider in New Glarus and co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed, said the grassroots group’s research found many Wisconsin providers may have to increase their rates by 20%-40% to make up in lost revenue if Child Care Counts is not included in the state budget. With DCF’s recent announcement, rate increases may occur sooner, but by how much remains to be seen. 

Advocates such as Hendrickson recognize Child Care Counts’ continuation is essential, but warn that it merely stabilizes the industry. For child care businesses to thrive, additional investment and structural changes are needed, she said. 

So, what can Wisconsin governments do to make an impact?

Wisconsin can sustainably fund child care programs shown to help families, businesses and child care centers with special attention to the full cost to provide care.

The Partner Up grant program, administered by the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, helps businesses cover the true cost of child care and provides some families with relief from high costs. Partner Up dollars, in combination with Child Care Counts stabilization payments, helped many child care centers increase wages, renovate classrooms and complete necessary updates. 

However, Child Care Counts and Partner Up largely rely on one-time dollars, leaving states like Wisconsin searching for a sustainable level and method of support. Some states have taken action to find long-term dollars for child care programs. In New Mexico, legislators amended the state constitution to tap existing education funding sources for early childhood education funding. The move should make care more affordable and support the state’s child care workforce. 

Communities across Wisconsin also have found effective ways to use one-time dollars to address their area’s child care needs.

The North Central Wisconsin Workforce Development Board used American Rescue Plan Act dollars to start new regulated family child care programs — meaning those that are within a provider’s home — and help existing programs add slots. The Worker Advancement Initiative Child Care Project, as it is called, helped add 93 new, regulated family child care slots in Adams, Wood, Portage, Marathon, Lincoln, Langlade, Forest, Vilas and Oneida counties.

The regional program awards an average of about $4,000 per child care business. The money helps operators overcome barriers to expansion, said Elsa Duranceau, the previous WAI grant coordinator who spearheaded the project.

The city of Green Bay and the Brown County United Way in March allocated $100,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funding to seed a similar program via Family and Childcare Resources of Northeast Wisconsin, a regional industry resource center.

‘We’re not just babysitters’: Early childhood educators need recognition, reasonable wages

Teachers need specialized education to provide high-quality child care that helps young children develop vital social, emotional and cognitive skills. It can take time and require on-site field work.

Child care providers said poverty-level wages and minimal benefits contribute to high staff turnover, which can affect availability and quality of care. 

“It’s unfortunate we can’t treat being an early childhood educator as a career choice anywhere in our country,” Schmidt said. “(Early childhood educators) often earn no benefits, no retirement savings. And they’re doing some of the hardest work at the most important time.”

When Vanessa Hanagan, a student in Fox Valley Technical College’s early childhood education program who also works at Apple Tree Connections Early Learning Center in Appleton, tells others about her career aspirations, she’s often told she’s “wasting (her) time and talent.” Her classmates agree it’s a frustratingly common response. 

“I think if society comes to realize that we’re not just ‘babysitters’ to your children, I think that could change so much (about) pay and benefits just based on how people see us,” said Ysa Villagomez, another early childhood education student at FVTC.

It may not change public perceptions, but higher education institutions have recognized the industry’s workforce struggles and found small changes can have a big impact.

Appleton-based Fox Valley Technical College during the pandemic revised its field experience criteria to allow students with enough credits to work at a local child care center, according to Kathy Meetz, chairperson of FVTC’s Early Childhood Education Department. Centers can then factor their student workers into their child-to-staff ratios.

So far, five Wisconsin technical college systems have also introduced early childhood educator apprenticeships. David Polk, director of Wisconsin’s Bureau of Apprenticeship standards, said the agency continues to gauge early results. In general, 80% of apprentices stay with their employer for at least five years, Polk said.

He expects the apprenticeship will gain momentum, and could serve as a solution for an industry currently grappling with turnover rates of over 40%.

“As we onboard more of these individuals, that helps the greater community because if we have more teachers — more apprentices in the classroom — those child care centers can take on more (children),” Polk said.

In addition to apprenticeships, state Rep. Joy Goeben, R-Hobart, a former home child care operator, said expanding child care courses to high schools, streamlining child care center startup and certification, and making it easier for teachers to meet continuing education requirements could help the industry.

“If you have to spend so many hours to get certified when you’re trying to work, that can get in the way,” Goeben said. “Where’s the time for that? What can we do to help this process? Child care workers have a lot of expectations on them.”

Businesses have several options to help. What’s important is they do something

The majority of business owners and working parents recognize child care challenges affect productivity and exacerbate workforce shortages. 

The question businesses face is how to effectively help their employees, and communities, when the options available can be overwhelming and their effects differ in each community. Actions can be small, like connecting workers with information about subsidies, resources and available care, or on something of a larger scale. 

Appleton-based U.S. Venture pays for employee subscriptions to Care.com, a website that connects families who need child, senior or pet care with available providers that have passed a background check. Lori Hoersch, U.S. Venture’s chief people officer, said it has been popular with employees.

“Providing our team members a free membership allowed them to have an additional option available without additional cost,” Hoersch said in an email. “Today, our team members are still juggling busy lives, and providing extra support to balance the demands of work and family is very important to us.”

Speaking with those in the industry can help employers understand their area’s particular child care issues — whether it’s a lack of centers, a lack of staffing limiting slots, lack of second-shift care or a mix of all — and therefore determine where to best focus their efforts.

“A lot of really important stakeholders need to be involved. There’s a great place for collaboration in communities,” said Anne Hedgepeth, Child Care Aware of America’s chief of policy and advocacy. “Employers can play a role as a resource and be a voice for why we need these supports overall.” 

Large employers might build on-site or near-site child care to help their employees, often by providing discounts and priority placement. When the center enrolls children from the broader community, benefits can reach outside just the company. But the construction of a new center may have unintended consequences on the existing child care landscape; many centers are limited in how many children they can serve because of staffing shortages.

“What we’re often concerned about is that when you stand up a new child care program, you’re going to be pulling staff from other child care programs. It’s basically shifting chairs on the Titanic,” Schmidt said.

More companies choose to give their workers monthly or annual stipends to help cover the cost of child care. Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry saw the connection between its worker retention and child care in early 2022 and has since provided employees with a $400 monthly stipend for care.  

However, employer-sponsored stipends do not target all facets of the child care crisis.

“While incredibly helpful to families and a welcome step in the right direction, employer-sponsored child care stipends alone do not net additional revenue for child care businesses and therefore do not fix the industry’s broken business model,” Schmidt said.

Should we approach funding child care like we do roads? 

Many in the child care industry fear that without immediate action, it faces imminent collapse. 

For the industry to thrive, not just scrape by, people need to reassess their perceptions of early childhood education. Advocates say the current system does not work — and all of Wisconsin pays for it.

The key lies in changing society’s perception — and the funding model — of child care from a service to a public good, like infrastructure, Hendrickson said. Between raising the future’s workforce to retaining the present-day ever-shrinking one, all benefit from a healthy child care system. 

“Child care is infrastructure, it is a core public service just like roads that we need to help the rest of society function properly,” said state Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, who is an advocate for state child care investments. 

Exactly how Wisconsin can make this shift remains to be seen. However, Hendrickson said two hallmarks must be present: it must consider the true cost of care, and be statewide as not to perpetuate inequities.

This story is part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab’s fourth series, “Families Matter,” covering issues important to families in the region. The lab is a local news collaboration in northeast Wisconsin made up of six news organizations: the Green Bay Press-Gazette, Appleton Post-Crescent, FoxValley365, The Press Times, Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Watch. The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Journalism Department is an educational partner. Microsoft is providing financial support to the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation and Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region to fund the initiative. The mission of the lab is to “collaborate to identify and fill information gaps to help residents explore ways to improve their communities and lives — and strengthen democracy.”

Madison Lammert covers child care and early education across Wisconsin as a Report for America corps member based at The Appleton Post-Crescent. To contact her, email mlammert@gannett.com or call 920-993-7108. Please consider supporting journalism that informs our democracy with a tax-deductible gift to Report for America.

Contact Jeff Bollier at (920) 431-8387 or jbollier@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JeffBollier.

Should Wisconsin fund child care like it does roads? Here are some solutions to the child care crisis is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

The old proverb says that “it takes a village to raise a child.”

Today, it takes the whole village, city or town — employers, families and government — to raise a child care center. 

Gabby Sorano needed support from all three to open the 35-slot Antigo Child Care Center last year in the city of 8,100 people 80 miles northwest of Green Bay.

Langlade County, where Antigo is located, is a child care desert: an area either without child care or where there’s fewer than one slot per three children. Langlade currently has one child care slot for every 4.3 children, the highest ratio in the 10-county North Central Wisconsin region.

Sorano was familiar with the region’s shortage after her son lost a spot during the pandemic. So when a child care center closed in Antigo, the former schoolteacher saw an opportunity to fill the gap.

To open, Sorano overcame pretty much every symptom of the early childhood education industry’s broken business model: low teacher salaries, space needs and costly building upgrades, regulatory reviews and inspections, and sky-high tuition fees that do not cover all of a center’s operating costs. 

Combined, she said, the hurdles can deter even the most passionate person from opening a center. Sorano’s idea needed a lot of community support before she could assure her family, children’s families, and the region’s employers that Antigo Child Care Center could survive long-term.

Fortunately, Langlade County was ready. According to Angie Close, executive director of the Langlade County Economic Development Corp., it only needed Sorano. 

“It definitely took collaboration and the right person. Gabby is the star,” Close said. “We were blessed to have Gabby come forward and take that leap.”

Here’s how the Antigo region rallied to support Sorano so she could open Antigo Child Care Center in July 2022. 

Antigo, Langlade already viewed child care as a workforce issue

Langlade County learned during the pandemic that a lack of adequate child care cost its economy about $15 million in 2019, Close said. The county formed a child care task force to foster community collaboration and to send the message that child care is a workforce issue.  

“Child care is such an important part of our talent attraction piece,” Close said. “Without child care, our workforce challenges will continue to grow.”

City agencies, county agencies, state grants and Childcaring Inc., central Wisconsin’s regional child care resource and referral agency, all provided necessary time, support and funding to help Sorano overcome some early hurdles. 

Sorano identified a building on Fifth Avenue, formerly used as a child care center, as a space for her new business. It turned out the building was owned by the Antigo Housing Authority, which agreed to renovate and remodel the space into classroom spaces for 35 children.  

“We wouldn’t have been able to afford that starting out,” Sorano said. 

Close and other city and county officials would also help Sorano apply for and secure a Main Street Bounceback Grant from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. to help with startup costs. The public also contributed $7,100 to a GoFundMe campaign for playground equipment. 

It was not enough. 

Family fees don’t cover the full cost of care

Everyone knows child care is expensive. Some might know that early childhood teachers could probably get paid more to work in a convenience store. 

What much of the public doesn’t know or notice is that family fees and subsidies that help low-income families afford child care do not come close to covering a center’s entire budget. 

“People don’t realize their family fees go toward so many things,” Sorano said. “There’s paying for staff, toys, food, maintenance, rent, utilities, consumable supplies and so many other things.”

This is where Sorano was stuck. Her business plan showed tuition and program grants covered only two-thirds of the center’s projected operating costs. The business plan left little room for better wages and benefits for teachers, a priority for Sorano. There was no room to raise the already-high fees families would be asked to pay. 

Close said it was an eye-opening moment.  

“I did not realize what the people who are taking care of your children are getting paid because that’s all the centers can afford to pay them,” Close said. “You can assume all you want, but when you get real data that show these numbers, it’s ‘Oh, my gosh.’”

Sorano, Close and others tried to think of another revenue stream Antigo Child Care Center could tap, some innovative way to plug the gap and provide the service everyone in Langlade County knew was needed. 

It turned out Sorano was not the only one looking to do more about the child care challenge. 

‘Getting anybody in the workforce helps the community as a whole’

The answer Sorano found was to offer local employers a tiered partnership opportunity. 

Here’s how it works: Local businesses can pay Antigo Child Care Center a monthly stipend that Sorano uses to boost teacher salaries and to pay for a variety of items outlined in the partnership agreement.

In exchange, the company’s workers get priority access to six, eight or 10 slots at ACCC, depending on the partnership level, and employees receive a weekly discount on care. Two organizations have signed up: Volm Companies Inc. and the Unified School District of Antigo.  

Volm, part of the Antigo business community since 1966, signed up for the six-slot tier. Linda Esker, Volm’s corporate human resources director, said it’s unclear whether the partnership directly resulted in retaining any of Volm’s roughly 550 employees. But she said Volm looked at other measures to gauge its importance and success.

“Our agreement with Gabby is really key to getting people into the workforce,” Esker said. “It could mean getting people into the workforce for Volm, which is the hope, but getting anybody in the workforce helps the community as a whole. I’m not as competitive with other employers if there are more people to draw from.”

Sorano said each partnership enables her to pay her teachers more, one of her biggest concerns about starting Antigo Child Care Center. She said she structured teacher contracts so that if partnerships are in place, teachers get paid a higher wage. She said the partnerships, and the business plan, are what sustains Antigo Child Care Center.

“I’m very thankful for these partnerships,” Sorano said.

The building blocks for growth

The community collaboration that helped Sorano launch Antigo Child Care Center has everyone involved thinking about what more they can do to address the region’s needs.

Volm’s operations run 24/7, but second- or third-shift child care is practically nonexistent in Antigo and many other Wisconsin cities. Additionally, Close and Sorano both noted many Langlade County residents live outside the Antigo area in smaller, rural communities that suffer from a severe shortage of child care.  

“This is a great step forward, but there’s a lot more work to do,” Esker said. “Part of it is providing care on an alternate schedule. It’s a struggle.”

Sorano focused on smaller growth, first. 

Antigo Child Care Center announced a summer program for school-age children, and about 40 kids have signed up so far. Sorano is also in discussions with the Antigo Housing Authority on additional building renovations that could enable it to add four more infant slots and four more toddler slots. 

“Everyone coming together is going to blossom and bloom into other things,” Sorano said. “When we have the support and financial stability, I feel comfortable opening a school-age summer program or expanding to the meet the need. Without the support of the community, there’s no way I feel like someone would want to take on something else.”

This story is part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab’s fourth series, “Families Matter,” covering issues important to families in the region. The lab is a local news collaboration in northeast Wisconsin made up of six news organizations: the Green Bay Press-Gazette, Appleton Post-Crescent, FoxValley365, The Press Times, Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Watch. The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Journalism Department is an educational partner. Microsoft is providing financial support to the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation and Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region to fund the initiative. The mission of the lab is to “collaborate to identify and fill information gaps to help residents explore ways to improve their communities and lives — and strengthen democracy.”Contact Jeff Bollier at (920) 431-8387 or jbollier@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JeffBollier.

It takes a village: How collaboration helped a small northern Wisconsin city add crucial child care is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

Wisconsin is defined by its families.

But all too often, families are defined by their struggles.

How often do you hear someone explain a core portion of their character and life’s trajectory by referencing something they or their parents had to overcome?

Whether it’s cost-of-living concerns, the cost of child care, the availability of needed resources or health care, or struggles to “break the cycles” of poverty, abuse or drug use, everyone has a backstory.

Those stories make us — and the state — who we are.

But families matter beyond just the walls of their home. They’re raising our next workforce, our next generation of teachers, leaders and neighbors.

And increasingly, they’re vanishing.

The national fertility rate has dropped to 1.7 (2.1 is considered necessary to sustain the country’s population) and almost half of nonparent adults told the Pew Research Center they likely wouldn’t have children.

This year, journalists of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab are exploring the hurdles families in the region face, what can be done to ease those pain points and why it matters to everyone.

The News Lab, presently in its fourth season, is composed of journalists at FoxValley365, the Green Bay Press-Gazette, The Post-Crescent in Appleton, The Press Times, Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Watch. The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Journalism Department is an educational partner, and Microsoft is providing financial support to the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation and Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region to fund the initiative.

The Lab’s mission is to “collaborate to identify and fill information gaps to help residents explore ways to improve their communities and lives — and strengthen democracy.”

“We appreciate the willingness of family members to share their struggles and triumphs, to strengthen the public’s understanding of core societal issues and support the exploration of solutions to improve the quality of residents’ lives,” said Andy Hall, coordinator of the NEW News Lab and executive director of Wisconsin Watch.

“Together, we will make Northeast Wisconsin, and the state, a better place to grow up in, and a better place to raise a family.”

Here’s what the News Lab has written about so far in our series on the challenges Northeast Wisconsin families face:

Child care cost, availability is major factor for parents

The series kicked off online March 29 with a report from The Post-Crescent reporter Madison Lammert and Green Bay Press-Gazette reporter Jeff Bollier addressing the shocking — to nonparents, at least — fact that some families have needed to plan conception around child care availability in their area. Some child care centers have waiting lists extending well into 2026.

“I don’t know anybody who has kids in daycare who isn’t always a little bit seething about (the cost of child care),” Tyler Sjostrom, a parent of two from Appleton, said. “If you get a group of parents together and somebody mentions daycare, it descends into chaos really quick.”

Christina Thor, Wisconsin director for the advocacy group 9to5 – National Association of Working Women, prefers to think about what Northeast Wisconsin would look like if it found ways to address families’ child care needs.

“We’d bloom,” Thor said. “I feel like our workforce would boom.”

When the pandemic ended, so did free school lunches for some students

Press-Gazette education reporter Danielle DuClos took a look at what free school lunches during the COVID-19 pandemic meant for families in the region, and what awaited them when things “returned to normal” after the federal funds dried up at the start of the 2022-23 school year.

“The access to food is always top of mind for anybody who works in food and nutrition in a school district, but I think what the last two years have shown us is that we can see kids and not ask questions about their eligibility,” said Caitlin Harrison, the president of the School Nutrition Association of Wisconsin and the director of food service at the Elmbrook School District. “… And that puts our staff in an incredibly difficult position to have to ask a kindergartner or first-grader, ‘Do you have lunch money?’ And I get a little emotional about it because it’s so upsetting that our employees would have to do that.”

Harrison was in the unfortunate position of having to deny a family access to the free and reduced-price school lunch program because its income was $5 over the cutoff.

“That’s heartbreaking, right? Because you know that they need it, but unfortunately there’s checks and balances and things that we have to follow to keep our programs sound,” she said.

Mental health care for kids suffers from high cost, low availability

Natalie Eilbert, the Press-Gazette’s mental health reporter, wrote about her conversation with Amy DeBroux, a mother and parent-peer advocate with NAMI Fox Valley and other advocates for student mental health. Parents must contend with both the cost of mental health care and the lack of trained providers.

Mental health disorders are the most expensive conditions to treat among children age 5 to 17, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which found in one study that having a mental health disorder added $2,874 a year to total health care costs. And a recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that, of the 100 million Americans that have some kind of health care debt, 20% is from mental health services.

Meanwhile, the American School Counselor Association recommends one school mental health counselor for every 250 students — a ratio that’s generally accepted across the country. The latest school-counselor-to-student ratio in Wisconsin, according to data from 2021-2022, was 378 to one.

“The challenge is getting into those appointments,” DeBroux said. “That’s the most frustrating part. If you tell a doctor your child has a heart murmur, there’s not going to be a yearlong wait time to get help.”

Volunteer clinic helps students get dental care

Access to dental care can be another issue for Northeast Wisconsin families. But an organization is making a difference in Calumet, Outagamie and Winnebago counties.

AnnMarie Hilton, The Post-Crescent’s education reporter, talked to the people behind Tri-County Dental, a volunteer-driven dental clinic started 20 years ago by four local dentists in response to a need for dental care, especially among lower-income families. 

Dental caries, the disease that causes tooth decay, is one of the most prevalent chronic diseases in children, affecting the permanent teeth of one in four preschoolers and one in six students ages 6 to 11, according to a December 2021 report from the National Institutes of Health. Poor oral health can lead to decay, oral pain, sleeping difficulties, speech problems, changes in behavior and difficulty eating. 

“When you talk about trying to set up children for success, they have to be in school, they have to learn and if you’re in pain because of tooth issues … that can impact a lot of things,” said Lisa Hintz, Tri-County’s community outreach director.

What’s next in our series?

A lot.

Topics already in the works include a follow-up on possible solutions to the child care hurdles brought up in the series’ kickoff, a closer look at the cost of living in the region and a series on “breaking the cycle” of generational issues that hold families back.

You can be part of it. If you have an issue you’d like NEW News Lab journalists to explore, please email us at families@wisconsinwatch.org or call 608-262-3642 and leave a message with your name, what you’re calling about and phone number.

Taima Kern is editor of The Post-Crescent in Appleton, and business editor of The Post-Crescent and the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Reach her at 920-907-7819 or tkern@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @TaimaKern.

Wisconsin families matter. Here’s how 6 newsrooms, 2 community foundations and Microsoft aim to help is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

Amy DeBroux described the 13 years of advocating for her daughter’s mental health as being at sea: periods of crisis followed by calm.

From 2005 to 2018, DeBroux spent hours discussing her daughter’s educational and mental health support needs. The scenes were familiar enough for DeBroux, thanks to her background in education. Normally, she would’ve sat on the same side of the table as the specialists, advocating for her students.

But the tables had quite literally turned.

Before she adopted her two children, DeBroux worked in Kaukauna and Appleton school districts, as well as a Connecticut school, for 10 years. Now, both her children needed behavioral health support, with one of her children specifically needing a tailored program following her autism diagnosis.

The team of educators — teachers, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, school psychologists — came with a list of suggestions for her child’s individualized education program, commonly referred to as an IEP. She absorbed the information as it was given, but still, she felt overwhelmed at times.

“Any parent who has a child with special needs goes through a grieving process. That vision you had for your child, what you thought your child would be, is now different,” DeBroux said. “When you actually go through that process, you’re asking so many questions: What are we going to have to do to help navigate things for our child? And how do I support myself supporting that person?”

Those questions are woven into a grim dynamic for thousands of Wisconsin families. At a time when studies indicate a desperate need for more mental health care services among Wisconsin’s children and adolescents, the number of providers is simply not where it needs to be.

As a result, the burden falls on parents and other family members, or on teachers and other school staff, none of whom likely have the necessary time or tools.

“If you have a cold, you go to the doctor right away. If you have a mental health issue, you have to fill out a form that says you’re not eating, that says you’re not sleeping. You have to wait six weeks or longer to get an appointment. And then you may get an appointment with someone who really doesn’t resonate with you,” said Linda Hall, director of Wisconsin Office of Children’s Mental Health.

The irony is that, due to a number of initiatives funded by federal pandemic relief funds, Wisconsin schools recently have increased the number of social workers, counselors and psychologists, according to the Wisconsin Office of Children’s Mental Health. The bad news? In all three categories, Wisconsin has remained far below the recommended ratios of students to mental health professionals.

The American School Counselor Association, for example, recommends one school mental health counselor for every 250 students — a ratio that is generally accepted across the country.

The latest school-counselor-to-student ratio in Wisconsin, according to data from 2021-2022, was 378 to one.

The result, for families like the DeBrouxes, is that half of Wisconsin parents had difficulty obtaining mental health services. And, perhaps no surprise, almost the same percentage of children ages 3 to 17 with mental health conditions did not receive treatment.

Further, the gains that were made with pandemic relief funds, Matt Kaemmerer, director of pupil services for Oshkosh School District said, are temporary. Grant funds cannot support the long-term hiring of mental health professionals.

“It’s really hard to hire permanent school staff members with that grant funding, because who’s going to want to come and work in the district when they don’t know if they’re going to have a position the following year?” said Kaemmerer.

Mental health conditions in children are among the most pervasive. They’re also the costliest to treat.

DeBroux threw herself into the ring to learn as much as she could about the needs of her young children. As an educator, not only had she encountered students in various developmental stages — a knowledge that helped her forge ahead — but she also understood the jargon associated with an IEP.

Perhaps most important of all, however, was the relatability of her circumstances: She met other harried parents in the middle of similar challenges with their children. 

Getting an intake and finding the right fit for a counselor proved difficult for DeBroux and her children, especially with such a slim selection of providers from which to choose in the first place. The wait times to see a pediatric psychiatrist, too, can stretch from six months to a year.

“The challenge is getting into those appointments,” DeBroux said. “That’s the most frustrating part. If you tell a doctor your child has a heart murmur, there’s not going to be a year-long wait time to get help.”

That tracks with recent data from the U.S. Department of Education in which 70% of public schools reported a dramatic jump in students seeking mental health services following the pandemic, despite nearly half of schools also saying they couldn’t effectively provide counseling support for these students. Additionally, 76% of public schools reported an increase in staff voicing concerns about their students’ showing symptoms of depression, anxiety and trauma.

For so many families, the pandemic exacerbated an already fragile situation, said Jessica Frain, school mental health consultant for the state Department of Public Instruction. Many children fell behind in school or experienced some form of stress at home. The pandemic shattered the comfort of daily routines.

But well before the pandemic, parents faced crushing medical bills following counseling sessions for their children.

Mental health disorders are the most expensive conditions to treat among children aged 5 to 17, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which found in one study that having a mental health disorder added $2,874 a year to total health care costs. And a recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that, of the 100 million Americans that have some kind of health care debt, 20% is owing to mental health services.

“There’s a lot of trial and error (with mental health services) and you have to set up lots of follow-up appointments,” said DeBroux. “That in itself can be very challenging for families who struggle with financial issues. It puts them at a greater disadvantage. Some parents, although they don’t like to, can do some services out of pocket, but obviously, that’s not ideal.”

Wisconsin children need someone trustworthy to listen to them, a difficult task for overworked educators

The alarming needs of youths were further driven home in the latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, which offered a distressing picture of what’s happening in high schools. The semi-annual state survey captures the health risks and mental health needs of students in grades 9 through 12.

In the most recent survey, from 2021, more than half of the students surveyed said they were anxious; one in three students said they felt sad or hopeless every day; one in four girls said they seriously considered suicide; and one in five students said they engaged in self-harm.

“Our kids are in trouble,” Hall said.

During the pandemic, the Wisconsin Office of Children’s Mental Health hosted a number of listening sessions to better understand what was lacking in students’ mental health. The prevailing response, according to Hall, boiled down to having a trustworthy adult with whom to have simple conversations.

That trustworthy adult, if it’s not a parent, often ends up being a teacher. But that can be an unfair load.

The overwhelming number of kids in crisis has challenged teachers’ more than ever to detect when a student needs mental health support.

Laura Jackson, executive director of student services for the Appleton School District, said the increased conversations about mental health awareness have been good, but it can leave school personnel with empathy fatigue — an inability to relate to, and care for, others as a result of emotional exhaustion and being overwhelmed by the needs.

“People in education care — that’s why they’re in this role. They care deeply about others and their success,” Jackson said. “But as people are struggling, that amount of care and compassion that you’re extending, is also exhausting.”

It matters where in Wisconsin your child experiences mental health conditions

Some schools are finding creative solutions to address the shortage of mental health care providers. Still others are falling behind.

Jennie Garceau, executive director of student services for the Howard-Suamico School District, said it has full-time counselors at every school, including elementary school, and its larger schools have multiple full-time counselors.

Through partnerships with Connections for Mental Wellness, a Brown County behavioral health initiative that serves as a consortium for public schools, the district can enlist the help of licensed counselors from nearby agencies to support students — regardless of insurance coverage — in elementary and middle schools with greater mental health needs, Garceau said.

Howard-Suamico has also introduced a new 24/7/365 resource called Care Solace, which operates similarly to school social workers: providing counseling care coordination services for students, staff, and families completely free of charge.

School social workers, who often coordinate with families to get students the right care, are often overtaxed as they spend their days playing phone tag with parents and health providers on top of responding to student needs, Garceau said.

That’s a sentiment that extends beyond Howard-Suamico. Hall said social workers across the state are bearing the brunt of shortages, and not just in their own field. In order to coordinate with families, the right counselor needs to be available, an effort that is only growing more cumbersome.

And while school districts like Howard-Suamico are finding numerous resources, it’s a completely different story for rural schools in the state.

Kimberley Welk, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Green Bay, works with eight rural school districts in northeastern Wisconsin, including Kiel, Manitowoc, Oconto, Lena, Gresham, Tigerton, Laona, and Goodman. She said that she’s never seen higher levels of trauma throughout every district she works in, on top of rampant levels of anxiety and depression.

Welk, who runs a school-based mental health program through her family therapist center, mixes telehealth and occasional on-site visits to schools to make up for what can be a two-hour drive.

Although Welk and her team of counselors can spot such red-flag behaviors and address them, educators are finding themselves awkwardly trying to balance teaching with emotional support at levels that are unheard of, she said.

It isn’t uncommon for schools to contract with mental health providers like Welk. The dearth of providers, however, means that some schools won’t match up with the requirements set by the provider, said Rebecca Rockhill, executive director of Connections for Mental Wellness.

Connections for Mental Wellness, for example, has counselors for outside agencies in all nine school districts in Brown County, but only 24 out of 86 public schools. That’s due to there being only eight mental health providers who have the capacity to work with students in a school-based setting.

Working with students who are uninsured or one-third of students who rely on Medicaid tends to be a “tremendous income drain” for providers, Rockhill said.

Training staff to be more aware of mental health needs requires additional resources.

That’s a problem for many rural districts. Fewer staff members at rural schools have the knowledge necessary to write grants toward mental health programs that can bring in support systems like Care Solace, Hall said, which further adds to barriers to a population already struggling with isolation.

Two agencies recently declined to return to school-based counseling at the start of the 2022 school year, a result of being financially constrained. Because of this last-minute change, Rockhill said those schools had to scramble to find other therapists. Students, meanwhile, lost providers with whom they’d established trust, a foremost staple of effective talk therapy.

“We are completely taxed providing for schools right now,” Rockhill said. “We just can’t get into another school.”

Solutions are slow, but schools and area specialists are getting creative

Owing to her personal history, DeBroux joined NAMI Fox Valley in 2018 — “NAMI” stands for National Alliance on Mental Illness — as a parent-peer advocate and is subcontracted to work with the Little Chute Area School District and Menasha Joint School District.

She works as an advocate for parents, using her lived experiences to be an empathetic listener and compiling resources for families.

She talks every day with parents, either getting new parents “plugged in” to the system or working with recurrent parents on what’s best for their children. Stigma comes up in certain communities, DeBroux said, and she’s found that the best way to address stigma is to walk parents through her own story. That’s the key principle of peer advocacy.

“Peer advocacy is a big piece of this: Being able to share some of your story, to let people know they’re not alone,” DeBroux said. “I wish there had been a parent advocate when my family was navigating some of those things, because it can be very isolating.”

Some silver linings are slowly revealing themselves.

Universities across the state are beginning the process of embedding their school psychology graduate students into local public schools. That’s the case for UW-Madison, which is using a new $6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to recruit and train 24 new school psychology graduate students, with an emphasis on students of color, into Madison’s public schools over the course of five years.

Elsewhere, the Medical College of Wisconsin is addressing the children and adolescent psychiatry shortage by extending its psychiatry fellowship program to University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, with the hope of embedding more new professionals in the region. According to Dr. Erica Arrington, the assistant professor and program director of the fellowship, about 80% of doctors-in-training will practice in the region within which they’re trained.

As it stands, one upshot of the pandemic is that young people have an increased sense of self-awareness, gratitude and resilience, according to a Wisconsin Voices study, conducted by the Wisconsin Institute for Public Policy and Service.

Frain and Liz Krubsack, another school mental health consultant for DPI, have been working to develop a comprehensive mental health program at schools across the state. One of the components they’re working to get into more schools is universal screenings for behavioral and mental health, which can help parents and educators identify health concerns early.

Therapy, Frain said, is only one piece of the puzzle. Educating teachers and staff on how to be more literate in the field of mental health is yet another piece, as is the emphasis on trauma-informed care.

Hall, meanwhile, emphasized the power of extracurricular activities, whether that means baseball or a book club, which contributes “very much” to mental well-being, she said.

And to address many of the Hispanic students in the state who tend to be family caregivers or work after school, Hall said more schools are adopting mid-day extracurriculars.

Hall said many educators and students are thinking creatively about how to cover ground that therapists cannot reach. These include mental health curriculums, capitalizing on the power of friends to get the right mental health resources, and arming peers, educators and staff with mental health training tools.

“Schools are a great place for us to work on (mental health) literacy. Kids are much less tied to stigma about mental health than their parents,” Hall said. “We have school staff and teachers saying, ‘This is even more important than academics right now and we would like the space to be able to work on this.'”

DeBroux emphasized the power of trust in working to address mental health in children and adolescents. It’s sometimes hard to know where to start, DeBroux said, and talking to other parents with similar life experiences empowered her to use her voice.

“A lot of times, for people who are struggling with behavioral and mental health challenges, it often feels like you are the only one who is going through this crisis,” DeBroux said. “It’s oftentimes a long, ongoing process. There’s no quick fix, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t hope for recovery and a good, healthy life.”

Natalie Eilbert covers mental health issues for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. She welcomes story tips and feedback. You can reach her at neilbert@gannett.com or view her Twitter profile at @natalie_eilbert. If you or someone you know is dealing with suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or text “Hopeline” to the National Crisis Text Line at 741-741.

Six-week waits, one counselor for eight rural districts: These are some of the hurdles facing youth mental health is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

Every week, Angela Price goes to the grocery store with a strict plan.

With her list, she strategically shops the isles at Walmart and Pick ’n Save, trying to make sure she’s getting the best deal on food for herself and her 11-year-old son, Oliver.

And every week, the price of food keeps going up.

“Grocery money, I think, is probably my biggest financial stress that I have right now,” Price said.

Like many parents, Price wakes up early during the week to make breakfast, prepare herself for work and get Oliver ready for school. She also packs him a lunch — something parents didn’t have to do a year ago.

In 2020, lunch was free for all students nationwide at schools that opted into a federal assistance program to offset some of the pressures of COVID-19.

At the beginning of the 2022-23 school year, that federal aid ended, and schools reverted back to the old system — a system that requires caregivers to fill out an annual form with their income to see if their child qualifies for a free or reduced price option.

Otherwise, kids may bring a lunch, pay for school lunch, or, in some cases, not eat.

And kids are going hungry. One Green Bay teacher said she notices more kids not eating at lunchtime because the universal free lunch program ended.

The end of the program left families struggling to feed their kids and school nutrition departments underfunded as they navigate higher food costs, supply chain issues and families who can’t pay.

About one in eight children face hunger in Wisconsin, according to Feeding America, and research shows that hunger can lead to lower academic performance and developmental delays.

That pandemic-era lunch program was a glimpse at a possible future for the American education system: feeding all kids at school for free, no matter their income.

Wisconsin might bring it back.

Having a low income doesn’t guarantee free lunch; even $5 can disqualify you

To qualify for free or reduced price school lunch, families have to apply every year and show that they make less than the annual or monthly income thresholds set by the federal government.

Even if a family makes just a few dollars more, their application is denied, meaning lots of families fall through the cracks.

Caitlin Harrison, the president of the School Nutrition Association of Wisconsin and the director of food service at the Elmbrook School District ― a district west of Milwaukee that serves Brookfield, Elm Grove and part of New Berlin ― had to deny a family at the beginning of the school year because they made $5 more than the cutoff.

“That’s heartbreaking, right? Because you know that they need it, but unfortunately there’s checks and balances and things that we have to follow to keep our programs sound,” she said.

Price makes about $300 more a month than the federal limit to qualify, so she didn’t apply because she knew she would be denied.

So, she just packs Oliver a lunch.

According to the federal guidelines, a family of two, like Price’s, would need to make less than $2,823 a month before taxes — $33,874 a year — to qualify for reduced lunches. To qualify for free lunches, that would be a gross monthly income of $1,984 or $23,803 annually.

While Price is a few hundred dollars over the income threshold, the price of groceries keeps going up. Food was 10% more expensive in January 2023 than it was in January 2022.

Price even considered getting another job to help compensate.

“I was like, ‘I’m going to have to get a second job just for food,’” she said. “I was at the point where it was all on credit cards, and I was racking up a lot of debt, and it was all groceries.”

Districts may feed kids who have no lunch money, but that may lead to negative account balances

So what happens when a child shows up in the lunch line, hasn’t qualified for free or reduced lunch but can’t pay? It’s up to the district to decide.

Districts can decide to not feed the child or to give them an alternative meal instead. Some districts — like Elmbrook, Appleton and Green Bay — feed kids anyway, even when that means their school meal accounts go negative.

The Green Bay School District’s negative lunch account balances totaled $343,208 at the end of the 2018-19 school year, the last full school year that wasn’t interrupted by the pandemic or supported by federal universal free school lunch.

As of the end of February, that negative balance has gone down to $90,000.

In Appleton, the district’s total negative lunch balance was $55,000 in 2019; at the end of the 2022 school year, it was down to $225.

The Sheboygan Area School District is participating in a program that provides free meals districtwide, and its negative balance as of February was $25,000.

Even where there is free lunch, the rules are strict and hard for kids to follow

Students can automatically qualify for free lunch if their family is also taking part in another assistance program such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

While universal free school lunch is not a reality for all students in Wisconsin, there is a federal program that gives specific schools that option. The Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, automatically gives all students a free breakfast and lunch at school if more than 40% of the student population receives some other state or federal assistance.

The Milwaukee Public School District and Sheboygan Area School District participate in the CEP program as do about half of the schools in the Green Bay School District.

Oliver goes to one of the CEP schools on Green Bay’s east side where breakfast and lunch is free.

But as Price put it, it’s hard to tell an 11-year-old how to work within the guidelines.

Meals are only free under the federal program if they are “complete.” Students must get three of the five lunch components ― a grain, protein, milk, fruit or vegetable ― for it to be reimbursed by the federal government. One of the components must be a fruit or vegetable.

If a child gets only part of that meal or adds other items, it isn’t covered by the federal program.

“At this point, I just got to pack the lunch. I’m broke either way. If he went and bought a la carte items I mean it’s like the same thing,” Price said. “I’m just going to pack him stuff and know that what he’s eating is healthy and that it’s the stuff that he’ll like and not be wasteful about.”

At East High School in Green Bay, María Abundíz Campos, a bilingual social worker, had a student who qualified for free lunch but kept getting charged.

She went through the lunch line with him to see why, and discovered he was getting more food than is covered by the free meal.

“My student was getting two slices of pizza or sometimes a slice of pizza and something else and something else and something else. And he told me ‘Well, I take more than one piece because this is not enough for me,’” she said. “And I felt terrible because I was like, ‘Well, (if) you’re going (to) be doing that, you have to pay.’”

Abundíz Campos keeps a basket of granola bars and other snacks for students in her office. Every day she fills it up ― sometimes twice ― because students are hungry.

School food service departments struggle to stay afloat, but universal free lunch could help solve that

The pandemic-era free lunch program not only fed kids for free, but it provided school nutrition departments with a more reliable funding source. Some food service departments are in the red by tens of thousands of dollars because of negative student meal balances.

Most food service departments are self-funded, meaning they make money based on how many meals are sold.

“We’re basically a large restaurant,” Harrison said. “There’s no guarantee that people are going to show up at breakfast or lunch. There’s no guarantee that you’re going to serve X amount of meals a day.”

When meals were free, schools were reimbursed for all meals they sold, not just those served to low-income students. This helped departments budget better and navigate supply chain challenges because they could afford to buy locally, Harrison said.

It was also a time when food service workers didn’t have to act as debt collectors.

“The access to food is always top of mind for anybody who works in food and nutrition in a school district, but I think what the last two years have shown us is that we can see kids and not ask questions about their eligibility,” Harrison said. “… And that puts our staff in an incredibly difficult position to have to ask a kindergartner or first-grader, ‘Do you have lunch money?’ And I get a little emotional about it because it’s so upsetting that our employees would have to do that.”

Wisconsin might join other states and bring back free meals

While free meals for all ended at the federal level, a few states — Colorado, California, Minnesota and Maine — have taken matters into their own hands and passed laws to fund free food for students at the state level.

Wisconsin has not, but that doesn’t mean it’s off the table.

Gov. Tony Evers is seeking $120 million in his state budget proposal to fund free breakfast and lunch for all Wisconsin students in public, private and charter schools, making up what isn’t covered by the federal government.

Rep. Kristina Shelton (D-Green Bay) has been working to get free school meals passed in Wisconsin for nearly two years. As a former physical education and health teacher, the issue is close to her heart.

During the Legislature’s last session, Shelton introduced a bill to provide free school meals, but it never got a committee hearing. Shelton is working alongside the Healthy School Meals for All coalition, a group of school and community advocates, to push for legislative action on free school meals.

Shelton “absolutely” plans to reintroduce the bill if Evers’ proposal is cut from the state budget, but her Republican colleagues might not be on board.

Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Green Bay) previously questioned the need for free school meals on social media.

“Well, the idea of free or reduced cost lunch is to help people who can’t afford it,” he told the Press-Gazette. “The person obligated to take care of you is your parents, and these sort of needs-based programs are supposed to be because of needs.”

Shelton thinks it’s possible there will be movement on free school meals this year, citing a “noticeable shift in the conversation” around school meals.

“Yes it’s good for kids, but it’s also good for working families. It’s good for farmers and growers, and it’s a local investment in local economies. Those messages were coming through,” she said.

This story is part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab’s fourth series, “Families Matter,” covering issues important to families in the region. This year, reporters from six news outlets — Green Bay Press-Gazette, Appleton Post-Crescent, Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR), Wisconsin Watch, The Press Times and FoxValley365 — will spotlight the daily struggles families face, dig up solutions and options, and explain why these topics impact not only families, but the whole state.

As one in eight kids go hungry and schools struggle to feed kids, Wisconsin has a chance to turn the tables is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

The idyllic American family conjures up images of a home in 1950s suburbia, a white picket fence, a golden retriever, and 2.5 kids.

The United States’ total fertility rate indicates that, for the U.S. to sustain its current population, women need to have an average of 2.1 children.

If that birthrate isn’t sustained, the country risks a shrinking workforce, economic decline and a dwindling tax base.

Those risks have turned into reality. 

The United States’ total fertility rate is now 1.7 kids and falling. Almost half of non-parent adults tell the Pew Research Center they will likely not have any children. 

Northeastern Wisconsin families understand why. They know the persistent struggle to afford everything from diapers to housing. It now costs $310,600 to raise a child from birth to age 18, a 9.1% increase from five years ago, according to The Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit public policy organization. 

One challenge has become particularly severe: Child care.

The Economic Policy Institute found that a year of infant care can cost Wisconsinites more than tuition at a public college. Families have started to plan pregnancies around the availability of care, as they encounter years-long wait lists at child care centers.

Missy Schmeling, executive director at Encompass Early Education and Care Inc., hears about families’ struggles when they visit one of Encompass’ seven Brown County locations in search of a slot. 

“We have families asking where the food pantries are, about transportation,” Schmeling said. “It’s an impossible burden on families. And another child will require more care.”

The NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab is launching its fourth series, “Families Matter,” covering issues important to families in the region. This year, reporters from six news outlets — Green Bay Press-Gazette, Appleton Post-Crescent, Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR), Wisconsin Watch, The Press Times and FoxValley365 — will spotlight the daily struggles families face, dig up solutions and options, and explain why these topics impact not only families, but the whole state. 

A ‘really tricky spot’: Child care imperative for many Wisconsinites

In more than 70% of Wisconsin households with children under 6, all available parents are in the workforce, according to Annie E. Casey Foundation data.

Without access to affordable child care, parents are forced to work less, ultimately earn less and risk deeper financial struggle.

“There’s this really tricky spot that I feel like a lot of millennials have found themselves in where you are making too much money for it to make sense for one of you to stay home, but not enough money to feel comfortable with how much money you have to put toward daycare,” said Christine Gunderson, a Green Bay mom whose infant is in full-time child care.

Child care issues may result in a parent moving from full-time work to part-time. A parent may have to sacrifice their career and earnings altogether. Others may find no feasible solution.

Plus, not just any care is acceptable.  

Experts say 85% to 90% of a child’s core brain development occurs before the age of 5, and quality child care teaches social emotional skills that are key for school readiness. High-quality early education is even linked to higher career earnings later in life, according to Alejandra Ros Pilarz, an early care and education researcher. 

‘It’s kind of wild it’s come to that’: Parents time pregnancies around child care

Tammy Dannhoff opened Kids Are Us Family Child Care in her Oshkosh home 34 years ago. Seeing families were timing pregnancies around child care providers’ openings, she added a “Baby Watch” section to her newsletter, to keep parents in the loop regarding openings. 

As of early 2023, her center’s next opening was in fall 2026.

Given the state of child care availability in Wisconsin, planning far in advance doesn’t seem so far-fetched. The Center for American Progress in 2018 estimated more than one in two Wisconsinites lived in a child care desert — an area where care is not available or the number of children exceeds the number of slots. Rural areas are worse: 70% of rural Wisconsin is a child care desert. Staffing shortages regularly exacerbate availability issues. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Brown County lost an estimated 600 child care slots to closures and providers opting to retire, according to Family and Childcare Resources of Wisconsin officials.

Lack of available care leads to massive waitlists. For example, Encompass had about 350 children on its waitlist in January. Some centers do not know when the next opening might be. 

Even if families get on waitlists as soon as they learn they’re pregnant, Wisconsin parents still might not be able to secure a slot at their first-choice facility. Some might still be without care by the time their child is born.

A friend told Green Bay’s Destiny Desotell to get on child care waitlists after she learned she was pregnant in May 2021. By that summer, she was on several wait lists and shocked when some centers told her it’d be years before they had an opening for an infant.

“Essentially, you have to be like ‘I think I am going to have a kid in two years, put me down on the waitlist now,’ because it’s a realistic expectation that it’s going to be a two-year wait,” Desotell said. 

Eventually, Desotell secured care for her infant, now 13 months old, at Encompass’ Bellin Health Center location in Allouez. Her child received priority placement because she works for Bellin as a cardiac sonographer. Even then, the spot was not open until a month after Desotell returned from maternity leave, forcing her to bridge the gap with a licensed, in-home provider and help from her family.

Abby Funseth of New Glarus timed the conception of her second child, who is now 7 months old, around a child care opening. To even consider having another child, she said she needed to know she had care lined up first. 

The Funseths were given a two-month window if they wanted their second child to make it into an opening at Corrine’s Little Explorers. They met that timetable, but that might not be possible for every family.

“The entire … trajectory of our family planning came down to child care and its lack of availability,” Funseth said. “You put pressure on this timeframe to conceive a child, and it just takes all of the joy out of it. It’s like a business (transaction).” 

Alex Steen, a Beaver Dam mom, is thinking about child care as she plans to have a second child. She recently paid Community Care Preschool & Child Care Inc., which her 2-year-old daughter attends, $200 to secure an infant spot.

“It’s kind of wild that it’s come to that: that you can place your unconceived children on a waitlist just to ensure they have care when they come about,” she said.

Unaffordable care also contributes to larger age gaps between children

“Affordable” child care is defined as costing no more than 7% of a family’s household income, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

“That’s not a realistic number to attain,” Schmeling said.

In reality, a typical Wisconsin family with an infant and a 4-year-old spends 33.6% of its income on child care, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Infants typically require more costly care.  

Brown, Outagamie, Winnebago and Fond du Lac county families are familiar with these costs. Home-based child care for one infant will cost a median-income family 10.5% to 12.2% of their income, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Center-based care costs 14.7% to 17.4% of the median household income. 

Meanwhile, a minimum wage worker in Wisconsin would spend on average 83% of their income on child care, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Tyler Sjostrom of Appleton said child care for he and his wife’s two children costs more than their mortgage, car payments, insurance and utilities combined.

“I don’t know anybody who has kids in daycare who isn’t always a little bit seething about (the cost),” Sjostrom said. “If you get a group of parents together and somebody mentions daycare, it descends into chaos really quick.” 

Costs may be high — Northeast Wisconsin families pay an average of $11,000 to $13,000 per year for in-center toddler care — but what families pay often does not cover all of a center’s operating costs, such as rent, maintenance and food, or allow it to provide its employees with a living wage and competitive benefits.

Green Bay’s Savannah Zoch and her husband feel high-quality early education and care is vital to early childhood development. Because Zoch is a community engagement specialist for Encompass, she receives a 60% employee discount on child care for her two children — a lifesaver for her family.

“Without the Encompass employee discount, I would basically be working to pay for child care,” Zoch said.

Because of the high cost of child care, many families now wait to have a second child until their first begins school, at least part time. That’s the case for Steen, who said she’ll probably wait until her daughter enrolls in 4K.

Currently, her daughter only attends child care three days a week, but if it were five days a week, the cost would make having a second child impossible, she said. 

“In our situation, we are settling for a larger age gap than we might truly want,” Steen said. 

Anna Schneider, a mom of two from Denmark and sister to Abby Funseth, wants a third child, but financial concerns are also prompting her to wait. 

“You want to be able to have kids when you want to have kids, but financially speaking, it doesn’t make any sense for us to have three kids in daycare right now because it would make more sense for one of us to stay home (and not work),” she said. 

To delay or not to delay? That is the dilemma.

Waiting to have a second or third child, however, may come with its own costs.

Gunderson pointed out that car seats expire and may need to be replaced, and other equipment, like cribs, may be deemed unusable due to recent safety upgrades.

While children are in care, parents often have to make sacrifices. Sjostrom said child care costs determine his family’s discretionary income. For other families, the tradeoffs may be more grave. Roughly one in three households in Brown, Outagamie, Winnebago and Fond du Lac counties are already below the federal poverty level or struggle to afford the basic cost of living, according to the 2020 Wisconsin ALICE Report.  

Age is also a consideration for many parents — both the age gap between their children and their own.

Desotell is in her late 20s, and her husband is in his early 30s.

“(My 13-month-old) still sometimes doesn’t sleep through the night consistently, and I don’t know if I want to do that at 35,” Desotell said. 

It’s a reality more families will have to confront, as many parents are starting families later in life. 

U.S. Census American Community Survey data shows that between 2011 and 2021, fewer people between the ages of 20 and 34 bore children, while the birth rate among ages 35 to 50 steadily increased. 

Medical professionals generally categorize giving birth at 35 or older as “advanced maternal age.” While it is increasingly common for people to have children after 35 — even a first child — the medical community recognizes there are medical risks to both the pregnant person and baby. 

That’s something that has been on Funseth’s mind recently. 

“When we think about the potential of adding another child to our family, I’m thinking about: ‘When does my oldest go into the school system so we won’t be paying for her daycare anymore?’” she said. “And … ‘When will (our child care provider) have another opening for a baby?’ That might be for a couple of years yet, and I’m almost 35; will we be able to have another?”

Beyond families: the broader impact of the child care crisis

Northeast Wisconsin’s child care crisis is taking an increasing economic toll, too. As such, employers and economic development organizations are already realizing its impact their workforce.

It’s no secret that Wisconsin’s workforce situation is less than ideal: “Help wanted” signs adorn most workplaces, and in September Forward Analytics projected the state could lose 130,000 working-age people by 2030.

The report said women drove a decline in workforce participation among all Wisconsinites ages 35 to 44 and cited family reasons, including a lack or high cost of child care, as potential contributors to the trend.

Child care challenges have a ripple effect, costing Wisconsin’s economy $1.1 billion annually, Raising Wisconsin, the advocacy arm of Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, found. The same study found 75% of business owners believe child care affects the economy, and 86% of caregivers said child care issues hurt their work time.

Christina Thor, Wisconsin director for the advocacy group 9 to 5 – National Association of Working Women, said available, affordable child care — like affordable housing and adequate health care — can either attract people to Wisconsin or hasten young peoples’ departures.

“We are estimated to lose 130,000 residents by 2030,” Thor said. “That’s young people moving from the state for different opportunities. That’s huge. And that’s scary.”

Ana Hernández Kent, a senior researcher at the Federal Reserve’s Institute for Economic Equity, said employers miss out on potential employees when they do not consider the needs of working moms. While 84% of women without children are employed, that figure falls to 74% for working mothers. 

“If you talk about women in the economy, you can’t do that without talking about child care issues. (Women and mothers) bear the brunt of taking care of the kids whether or not they work,” Kent said. “But it also has broader implications. If a mom has to take time off she didn’t want to, it impacts their (family’s) financial stability, their economic mobility.”

Because women bear a disproportionate brunt of child care responsibilities, flexible workplace policies like the ability to work from home, child care assistance and paid family leave have already become vital benefits to working parents.  

“Those kinds of things are really positive for women and mothers,” Kent said.

Northeast Wisconsin workforce would ‘boom’ if child care issues were resolved

Thor prefers to think about what Northeastern Wisconsin would look like if the region found ways to address families’ child care needs, especially the “big, big gap” in culturally-competent child care she said the region’s increasingly diverse communities need.

“We’d bloom,” Thor said. “I feel like our workforce would boom.” 

Raising Wisconsin estimates addressing child care needs would enable 250,000 people to enter the state’s workforce. 

Ann Franz, executive director of the Northeast Wisconsin Manufacturing Alliance, said manufacturers recognize the need to do something different. Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry now offers employees a $400 monthly reimbursement to help with child care costs while Schreiber Foods is testing a $5,000 annual child care stipend for workers at two of its facilities. A variety of employers secured Partner Up Grants from the state to provide child care for their employees.

“There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but there are a lot of resources that can help our companies and our region know the options,” Franz said.

Shawn Phetteplace, Midwest regional manager for Main Street Alliance, a group that empowers small businesses to create policy changes, warns that leaving the issue to businesses alone could lead to further inequity for small businesses.

“If child care becomes a benefit that an employer provides rather than a broad-based community asset, it puts small businesses at a competitive disadvantage,” Phetteplace said. “If we make public investments in health care, child care, paid leave, (small businesses) can increase pay. It creates a level playing field for them to grow.” 

Wisconsin stands to reap huge economic benefits if family-friendly incentives allowed more women and minority residents to enter the workforce, studies such as Council for a Strong America’s “Want to Strengthen Wisconsin’s Economy? Fix the Childcare Crisis” have shown. 

Just like many other issues families face, the child care crisis cannot be solved with a single program, grant, innovation, incentive or change.

But such solutions are what Sjostrom, the Appleton father of two, longs for. 

“I hope that we’re still not talking about this when my kids have kids, but I also think that if we are, (my wife and I) will understand and try to help,” Sjostrom said. “There has to be a solution where families aren’t mortgaging everything for the right to have kids and help them thrive.”

Contact Jeff Bollier at 920-431-8387 or jbollier@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JeffBollier. 

Madison Lammert covers child care and early education across Wisconsin as a Report for America corps member based at The Appleton Post-Crescent. To contact her, email mlammert@gannett.com or call 920-993-7108. Please consider supporting journalism that informs our democracy with a tax-deductible gift to Report for America.

What would help make family life better in Northeast Wisconsin? This is one of the questions the NEW News Lab hopes to answer in 2023. Write to the lab at families@wisconsinwatch.org or call 608-262-3642 and leave a message with your name, what you’re calling about and phone number.

High child care costs, low accessibility leads to smaller Wisconsin families is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

SHEBOYGAN — Key city officials say they were left in the dark at various points during and after three 2021 internal investigations into sexual harassment by the Sheboygan Police Department.

The Sheboygan Press and Wisconsin Watch first reported on the existence and results of the sexual harassment investigations, which included discipline or verbal reprimands for a dozen officers on Feb. 6. The city also settled a discrimination complaint related to sexual harassment with a female officer for $110,000.

The police oversight board, a five-citizen commission that can decide to hear and act on complaints publicly, was out of the loop, former president Robert Lettre told the news outlets. The city also discontinued an external review of the police investigations that city leaders had initially agreed upon. 

The state Department of Workforce Development (DWD) later found probable cause to believe recently fired city administrator Todd Wolf retaliated against former Human Resources Director Vicky Schneider over her concerns about how the investigations were handled. The finding advances the case to either a settlement agreement or an evidentiary hearing presided over by an administrative law judge. 

Over the past few months, city leaders have been updating policies they hope will prevent future harassment and better respond to any future complaints as the fallout from those probes continues. 

Bryan Pray, the officer who received the steepest penalty, a two-week unpaid suspension, resigned Feb. 8 — two days after the story was published and over a year after the conclusion of the internal probes. The investigations focused on misconduct including sharing semi-nude photos of co-workers without their knowledge or consent.

Addressing police culture top priority

Sheboygan’s new human resources director, Adam Westbrook, said the path forward includes improving the culture at the police department, in which “dark humor” and “inappropriate”  statements and behavior were tolerated — a situation he noted is not unique to Sheboygan.

“There was a culture at the police department that allowed for that type of behavior to happen,” Westbrook said. “There has to be a shift that says ‘This is not OK.’ ”

“The second thing is rebuilding trust, and that’s what I’m trying to do. Because I feel like employees and police officers, whether rightfully or wrongfully, feel like if they report something, nothing is going to happen… (I) have been very clear that I want to know bad things that are happening so that I can address them.”

Moving forward, any allegation of harassment, discrimination or retaliation will be investigated separately by the human resources department and the police department, Westbrook said.

On Feb. 14, a citizen complaint was filed with the police department against Chief Christopher Domagalski, Capt. Kurt Zempel, recently promoted to assistant chief, and Capt. James Veeser for their handling of the original sexual harassment investigations, citing Wisconsin Watch and the Sheboygan Press’s reporting. 

Two days later, Westbrook responded in writing that the complaint could not be investigated “based on the lack of information provided,” but the complainant could submit a new complaint to human resources with more detail or appeal to the Police and Fire Commission.

Investigation of a more recent complaint related to sexual harassment at the police department closed in February after investigators found it was not true and did not happen, Westbrook said.

City launched external review, which never finished 

One step the city did take was to hire a law firm in July 2021 to investigate the police department’s handling of the allegations after Schneider raised concerns. But the review was discontinued when a female officer filed a sex discrimination complaint with the DWD.

That was news to Mayor Ryan Sorenson, who said he did not know the attorneys’ investigation was halted.

“I was trusting our team that this was being handled correctly and obviously best practices weren’t followed, so I was very upset by that,” he said. “I guess I fully don’t understand why it (the outside review) stopped.” 

The mayor said he is not normally involved in personnel issues; after making the decision to hire outside attorneys, responsibility for the review passed to the human resources department, city administrator and city attorney’s office.

City administrator alleged to have downplayed concerns

Schneider, the former city human resources director, filed a complaint with the state Equal Rights Division in January 2022 against the city claiming discrimination. Schneider’s case, which is pending, alleged then-city administrator Wolf downplayed her concerns about the police department’s response to sexual harassment complaints.

Wolf instead “sought to discredit the female officers involved” and told Schneider not to get involved in the investigation or to inform the city council about the sexual harassment complaints, her attorney wrote in filings to the state DWD. James Macy, the attorney hired by the city to defend it against Schneider’s employment discrimination complaint, declined to comment further on the pending case but said no discrimination occurred.

Schneider took leave from November 2021 until March 2022, when the benefit ran out, resigning in early June. 

In early January, the council fired Wolf, citing no reasons, after hearing additional, unrelated concerns about his conduct. The city has declined to release its preliminary investigation report but Sorenson told the Sheboygan Press that Wolf’s actions as city administrator made the city vulnerable to lawsuits. 

The city chose to fire Wolf without cause, rather than for cause, to save money and “minimize the negative impact on both Wolf and other city employees,” according to the city council resolution.

On Feb. 6, Wolf sued 13 people, including the mayor, city council members and Sheboygan Press reporter Maya Hilty, in connection with his firing, which he contends was unjustified. 

Police and Fire Commission not involved

In 2021, Lettre, then-president of the Sheboygan Board of Police and Fire Commissioners, also raised concerns about the sexual harassment investigations.

The commission holds trial-like hearings on complaints filed against police officers, if concerns remain after those complaints are dealt with internally. Complaints can be filed with the commission by a member of the commission, the police chief or any aggrieved person.

The commission decides appropriate discipline for officers, including the chief of police, if the charges are sustained.

Lettre said a female officer contacted him in 2021 saying she had made a sexual harassment complaint that was inadequately addressed by the department. Lettre then met with the police chief, the mayor, city administrator and city attorney.

“It seemed like they were more interested in hiding the fact that there had been what was going on in the police department with sexual harassment … than really addressing the problem,” he said.

Lettre said he “never had a chance to pursue” the officer’s concerns because in the spring of 2022, he was removed from the commission.

According to Lettre, Sorenson told him in April that the police chief thought Lettre should not be reappointed at the end of his five-year term. 

“I kind of laughed at him. I said, ‘What’s the police chief got to do with you reappointing?’ ” Lettre later told a reporter, saying that “goes against” the intent of the state law establishing police and fire commissions to oversee police chiefs and departments.

Sorenson said the chief did not influence his decision but both the police and fire chiefs “gave some good perspective that kind of confirmed my decision.” Sorenson said he did not reappoint Lettre because he campaigned on making new appointments to city boards, and Lettre had already served 25 years on the commission.

While president of the commission, Lettre said he was not aware of the city’s external review of the police department’s investigation, although he “certainly” thinks the city should have informed him of that. He added that the commission knew “almost nothing” about the sexual harassment complaints at the department.

Andy Hopp, the current president, declined to discuss the department’s harassment investigations or the city’s external review, adding he cannot comment on matters discussed in closed session.

Hopp also declined to comment on whether the female officer’s allegations about supervisors and the chief of police failing to take her complaints seriously warrant further investigation.

Police misconduct remained out of public view

The police department redacted more than 70 pages of the reports obtained by the Sheboygan Press and Wisconsin Watch, along with the names of all but two of the 12 officers who were disciplined or verbally admonished.

Domagalski wrote that full disclosure would discourage officers from cooperating in future investigations and undermine the privacy of those who participated. He also wrote it would hinder the city’s ability to recruit and retain officers by causing a loss of morale and limiting their opportunities for “satisfying careers and fair treatment.” 

Chuck Adams, the city attorney, initially said the city would not release the settlement agreement with the female officer but later provided it.

Employment attorney Nola Cross, who was not involved in the investigations or complaints, said efforts by a city to hide what happens with public money is a violation of public trust.

Additionally, anyone contemplating applying to the Sheboygan Police Department should “easily” be able to know the department’s record on sexual harassment, such how many settlements there have been and how many complaints have been filed, Cross said.

“That’s one of the reasons there’s so much pervasive sexual harassment … in non-traditional female positions,” she said. “It doesn’t see the light of day. There’s no sunlight on these cases.”

This is a collaboration by the Sheboygan Press and the nonprofit Wisconsin Watch, (www.WisconsinWatch.org), which collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Top Sheboygan officials lacked key details on police department sexual harassment probes is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

A community organization is calling for the Sheboygan Police Department to act after Wisconsin Watch and the Sheboygan Press reported earlier this month on the department’s handling of three internal investigations into sexual harassment in 2021.

“As an organization focused on supporting victims and holding individuals accountable, what is published alleges that the exact opposite happened,” Safe Harbor of Sheboygan County said in a news release. Safe Harbor provides prevention, intervention, education and outreach services to end domestic abuse and sexual assault.

Meanwhile, the police department is investigating still another complaint related to sexual harassment made by an employee in the past few months. The Sheboygan Press and Wisconsin Watch do not know the identity of the target or targets of that fourth probe.

In all, 10 officers were disciplined and two others admonished as a result of the 2021 sexual harassment investigations, which focused on inappropriate behavior including viewing or sharing nude and semi-nude photos of co-workers without their knowledge or consent. 

Police Chief Christopher Domagalski said his department took the 2021 harassment complaints very seriously and held offending officers accountable.

Sheboygan’s then-human resources director, Vicky Schneider, thought the discipline “sent a message that female employees had no legitimate protection against this kind of behavior from their male co-workers,” her attorney wrote in documents from her own discrimination case that she filed with the state Department of Workforce Development before resigning.

Safe Harbor wants accountability, transparency

“The existing culture of the Sheboygan Police Department and the City of Sheboygan allowed this (sexual harassment) to happen and go as far as it did,” Safe Harbor’s news release stated. “The eyes of the Sheboygan community are on the police department and city administration in how they handle these allegations, discipline the offending employees, and support the victims, including those who have come forward and any who have remained silent.”

The organization called for a “complete review of the policies, training, reporting avenues, and support mechanisms in place for victimized employees and potential whistleblowers.”

Deanna Grundl, vice president of Safe Harbor’s board of directors, said the organization is “really just saddened and surprised” by the scandal.

“Some people may look at it as just a picture, but behind that picture is someone who had something done to them that they didn’t want done,” Grundl said. “When that happens, whether people want to be identified as victims or not, nonetheless, that person unfortunately became a victim of gender-based violence.”

Safe Harbor works closely with the department and will continue to do so. “Their officers and administration have traditionally demonstrated professionalism and compassion in working with our advocates and victims,” the news release stated.

Mayor says city will ensure ‘situations like these don’t happen again’

At a Sheboygan City Council meeting after the Wisconsin Watch and Sheboygan Press articles were published, Mayor Ryan Sorenson said the city’s “top priority moving forward is to rebuild the trust” of employees and the community.

“We have already begun the process of … ensuring our internal policies and procedures reflect the values and expectations of the community,” he said, later saying the city was already updating its code of conduct, violence in the workplace, whistleblower and other policies.

“I am committed to ensuring that leadership at every level of municipal government takes allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse of power seriously,” Sorenson said.

Sheboygan’s newly-hired human resources director is working with the police department to correct problems, the mayor added.

Accountability also “has to start with” Sheboygan’s Board of Police and Fire Commissioners, Sorenson said.

In addition to approving all officers’ hiring and promotions, the five-citizen commission hears complaints against members of the police department in a public, trial-like setting if concerns remain after those complaints are dealt with internally. 

The police chief, a member of the commission or any aggrieved person can file a complaint with the commission. After a hearing, the commission decides appropriate discipline for officers up to and including the chief of police, if warranted.

Sorenson added: “I share everyone’s frustration that this happened, but I’m not focused on retribution. I’m focusing on making sure that we can fix these mistakes so that situations like these don’t happen again.”

Reach Maya Hilty at 920-400-7485 or MHilty@sheboygan.gannett.com. Originally published by the Sheboygan Press

Sheboygan anti-abuse group calls for accountability from police department is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.