Otter Tail County in child care dessert

Oct. 08--Rural communities in Minnesota continue to struggle with child care deserts, including areas such as Pelican Rapids who held a meeting in late September to address their ongoing issues with a lack of child care.

A child care desert is defined as a zip code with at least 30 children under the age of 5 and no child care centers, or so few centers that there are more than three times as many children under age 5 as there are spaces in centers.

According to the Center for American Progress, 26 percent of people in Minnesota live in a child care desert. Otter Tail County is split into 15 census areas studied by the Center for American Progress as to whether that census area was a child care desert.

Six of the 15 areas are considered child care deserts based on the definition above, including the census area that includes Pelican Rapids. With these statistics, 23.6 percent of the population of Otter Tail County lives in a child care desert.

Capital Campaign Co-Chairs of the Battle Lake Area Child Care Center capital campaign Team Karalyn and Gary Harrington have worked to solve some of the child care desert issues in Otter Tail County through raising funds for the new Battle Lake Area Child Care Center.

"There was no child care center in the zip code area we are calling the Battle Lake area," Gary said.

While originally researching the issues in Battle Lake they found there were 201 kids, age 5 or under who were not in day care or pre-school.

"Gary and I interviewed about 25 young parents," Karalyn said. "We learned a lot about their struggles finding spots and keeping them."

Some of the stories Karalyn and Gary heard about parents in the area include a mother who lived in Battle Lake, driving her child to Fergus Falls for child care then Perham every day for work and in reverse to pick them up. Other stories included twins and siblings who had to go to different child care centers or home child-care facilities because of lack of space.

Parents can very easily be bumped from their spots if another parent ends up having priority, such as a parent already at that child-care center who find out they are having another child.

"We salute and applaud any community trying to increase their child care in their community," Gary said.

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