Date: 01/04/00
Source: The Wisconsin State Journal
Author: Sandra Kallio

Working parents, try this one on for size: Your employer requires you to spend lunch with your child at the child's day care center.

It's not a hard and fast rule at Tri-North Builders Inc., but it's the norm. And it explains why, despite already missing half a work day to take her son Nicholas to appointments then to kindergarten, Jodi Herbig still showed up at Little Builders Day School with a McDonald's meal to share with her 14-month-old daughter, Madison.

"Oh, is that for Mommy?" Herbig asks Madison, who was offering a french fry off her high chair tray.

After lunch, Herbig went back to work. It didn't take long; she had a short trip to her desk, up the stairs and down the hall. Little Builders, you see, is an on-site day care operated by Tri-North for its employees at 717 Post Road.

The contractor is among a growing number of employers offering some form of child care assistance. In 1980, 200 employers offered assistance; by 1997, there were at least 10,000, according to the Child Care Action Campaign, a national coalition formed to promote quality, affordable child care.

Two forms of child care assistance include:

Flexible spending accounts.

These allow workers to save money by paying for care in pre-tax dollars. In Wisconsin and Minnesota, 54 percent of companies now offer these accounts, according to a 1999 national survey by Compdata of Kansas City, Kan.

Day care on-site or nearby.

Nationally, 9 percent of companies with 100 or more employees provide child care at or near work sites, according to "The 1998 Business Work-Life Study" of the Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit research and planning organization based in New York City.

Eleven states offer tax credits to businesses for construction, start-up or operating expenses for corporate child care facilities. Wisconsin is not on the list, provided by the National Child Care Information Center of Vienna, Va. The eleven states are: Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas,Maryland, Mississippi, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Rhode Island and South Carolina.

In Madison, on-site centers such as Little Builders are rare. American Family Insurance Co. built a day care center in its office park. The center is leased and operated privately by Greentree Day Care. Another Madison company venturing into the day care business is the Carlson Co., which manufactures retail store displays and cosmetics counters at 2305 Daniels St.

The company will open its WhizKids day care for children of employees and the general public Feb. 1. There will be space for 64 children. (Plenty of full-time and part-time slots remain for children from 6 weeks through kindergarten; for information, call 222- 4540.) Little Builders was opened three years ago by Tri-North, a general contractor with 45 employees in Madison, 10 in Milwaukee and about 300 working at sites around the country. Company president Tom Thayer was familiar with the day care center business because his wife Donna had owned and operated a center. She now works for Tri-North, although not in the day care. Thayer also was familiar with the concerns of working parents on his staff.

"Finding good quality day care is always a problem," he says.

And he was well aware of his own staffing problems.

"We were losing a lot to absenteeism," he says, referring to parents taking time off when their children were sick.

Thayer's partners hesitated to jump into the day care business. "They were a little apprehensive in the beginning," but, Thayer says, "They are true believers now."

They are reaping the benefits now with a "happier, healthier staff," says Thayer, who believes that his staff and their children are sick less often because Little Builders is a small center with three teachers and a maximum of 10 children at a time.

"When we set it up, it was a slight loss for the company," Thayer says, adding that Little Builders hasn't raised rates since opening. The company pays about half the weekly cost for employees, whose rates vary depending on whether they're part of the parent cooperative, which requires them to relieve teachers at lunchtime or contribute in other ways such as maintenance.

Herbig, a parent cooperative participant, pays just $100 a week for her daughter's full-time care. Full-time infant care in Madison centers is usually at least $180 a week.

But the financial benefit is not the main reason Herbig appreciates this service. "It's the peace of mind," she says. "I know they're getting excellent care here. You get on a more personal level with the teachers because you're not just in and out. You see the kids off and on during the day."

The quality of care and the flexibility to visit are even more crucial for Joe Herr, project manager for Tri-North. He has been bringing his son Logan, now 2+, to Little Builders since Logan was several weeks old. That's not unusual among working parents, but it is among parents whose child has severe physical limitations related to cerebral palsy.

"The day care does an awesome job with all the kids - especially with Logan with all his special needs," Herr says, explaining that Tri-North bumped up staffing from two teachers to three when he registered Logan. "They tube-feed him. He throws up and he's irritable. He's doing a lot better now."

Without Little Builders, Herr says his wife Stacy would have quit her job at Brunsell Lumber and stayed home full time with Logan. "Anywhere else wouldn't take care of him. It's not even a matter of economics," Herr says.

While Little Builders is unique, United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Dane County does offer training and on-site staff support and consultation to assist child care providers in including children with disabilities in their programs. For information, call Brenda Hull, director of UCP's Extended Day Care Program, 273-3318. One of the therapists who visits Logan at Little Builders is Stephanie Mikesell, a speech and language pathologist with UCP's Birth to Three Connections program.

"It's a remarkable situation in that the staff in the day care is very flexible about having therapists come in and out," Mikesell says. "And they're also very good at adapting activities and supplies and techniques to include Logan as much as possible...He's just another kid in that day care setting."

They use a special walker to help him "stand" for activities, a wheelchair lightweight enough for his buddies to push and a switch that Logan can press to trigger recordings of his dad's voice, for example, to say "Turn the page" during storytime. They also have attached a blender to another switch so Logan can turn it on when the group is making a snack or mixing paint. "He gets as much normalcy as can be expected," Herr says.

And Herr gets to be around his son when he needs a break or Logan needs dad. "I usually pop down four or five times a day."

If Logan or any other child is having a problem, Little Builders' director Kelly Patterson says, "We can instantly use our telephone and intercom and say so-and-so could use an extra hug." Parents can bring children up to their desks or into the conference room if they're fussy or need quiet time with parents.

Thayer says employees who don't have children in the day care have not complained about this benefit they don't share. In fact, Thayer says he and others benefit, too: "If you're having a bad day, and there's a stroller going by in a parade, it takes the edge off your day."

For employers considering on-site centers, Thayer stresses planning. "You want to set it up right from the beginning," he says, explaining that he and his wife knew the pitfalls, based on her previous career. The company developed a parent handbook and recruited a "great" day care staff. "That's critical," Thayer says.

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