Building the Future of Child Care on the Iron Range
Watch the full story and video on the Range at WDIO News. Then read below to learn how this first-of-its-kind partnership is changing what’s possible for child care in northern Minnesota.
L-R: Liz Popp, VP of Administration at NorthRidge Community Credit Union; Shawntel Gruba, owner and director of Iron Range Tykes; Staci Gilpin, co-owner and co-founder of Rural Pathways
A new partnership between Iron Range Tykes and NorthRidge Community Credit Union marks a breakthrough in child care innovation.
In communities across northern Minnesota, child care shortages continue to strain working families and employers alike. Now, a first-of-its-kind partnership is offering a new way forward. Iron Range Tykes, a child care provider in Mountain Iron, has teamed up with NorthRidge Community Credit Union through the Enhanced Two-Tier Child Care Partnership Model—a new approach designed by Rural Pathways to stabilize child care for providers, families, and employers.
The model brings together employer contributions, family co-pays, and public supports to fully fund the true cost of high-quality care. It gives providers predictable revenue, helps families afford care, and ensures that employers can offer reliable child care access as part of their benefits package.
“We need a business solution, because it’s a business problem,” said Shawntel Gruba, owner and director of Iron Range Tykes. “And this helps with the workforce, by making it possible for me to invest in my staff.”
As the first employer to join, NorthRidge Community Credit Union now has guaranteed child care slots for its employees. The agreement also gives NorthRidge workers priority access to future openings and expansion slots across the network—an important benefit in a region where child care waitlists are often months long.
While for-profit employers will soon be eligible for a federal tax credit returning up to 50% of as much as $600,000 in qualified child care investments annually, NorthRidge doesn’t qualify as a nonprofit. Even so, Liz Popp, VP of Administration, said the partnership was an easy decision.
“We’d end up losing good employees because they couldn’t find a day care spot. I’m super excited for our workforce. And for our membership.”
Staci Gilpin, co-founder of Rural Pathways, helped design the model and sees this as a milestone in aligning workforce and family well-being: “This partnership shows that rural employers don’t have to wait for someone else to fix the system,” Gilpin said. “They can be part of the solution—investing in their employees, their community, and the next generation of the local workforce.”
Rural Pathways looks forward to working with communities and employers across the Iron Range to replicate and scale this model.