Raishelle Everett was thrilled when she became pregnant with her first child after undergoing IVF in 2022. The first thing she and her husband did was get on the wait list for Siemens Child Development Center (CDC), the popular and highly regarded on-site childcare center on the sprawling 53-acre Oregon campus of Siemens.
The center, which serves as on-site childcare for Siemens employees as well the local community, cares for about 70 children from infant to pre-K and was built in 1992 to serve employees of Mentor Graphics (which was acquired by Siemens in 2017). The high curriculum standards and low student-to-teacher ratio meant that even though Everett’s husband was a Siemens employee who got priority enrollment, they were still on the waitlist for nearly two years. City reports from 2020 describe a “severe shortage” of childcare spots especially for infants and toddlers in Wilsonville, Oregon where the Siemens campus sits.
Everett now has two children (a three and one year old) who attend the CDC. They love the center so much, it’s one of the main reasons her husband makes the 30 minute commute to the office. In her opinion “there is no comparable program in the state of Oregon.”
But on March 10th, she received an automated message saying that the CDC would be closing at the end of June. Everett was devastated.
A very precarious strategy
Childcare costs in the U.S. have increased by over 32% since 2019. Yet, childcare is still in short supply. This has ramifications that go beyond parents and children. For example, in a recent national poll of working parents of young children, more than 60% reported that child care struggles led them to leave work early, be late for work, or miss work. As a result of lack of affordable and reliable childcare, families lose $134 billion per year in forgone earnings and employers lose $38 billion annually due to child care challenges faced by their workforce.
The idea of private companies investing in childcare for their employees gained in popularity in the 1980s as a record number of mothers of young children were in the workforce. A 1985 New York Times article highlighted that 2,000 corporations underwrote some form of childcare assistance that year. When the CDC opened 34-years ago, it was part of a mini-boom in the 80s and 90s on-site childcare on community-like campuses that included companies like IBM and AT&T. A second wave came in the early 2000s when companies like Nike and Google also offered on-site care. Still, childcare assistance in the form of stipends or community investment has always been a rare perk, and onsite childcare even more so.
While employer-sponsored childcare may seem like a gold standard benefit, childcare policy expert Elliott Haspel points out that it can end up having negative impacts on employees and their families.
In an article he wrote for Fast Company, he points out: “Childcare that runs through the employer-employee relationship risks replicating one of the very worst features of the American healthcare system: lose your job, lose your healthcare. The equation of lose your job, lose your childcare may be even more cruel because there is a third party involved: the child. Young children thrive on reliability, and multiple caregiver changes can be disruptive for child development; a good childcare system is a stable system.”
And, he points out there’s no Cobra coverage or Affordable Care Act marketplace if you lose your childcare coverage. Haspel’s comment, written in 2023, has turned out to be prescient as today, companies are clawing back the family-friendly policies that they once used to attract talent.
Both Nike and Google have shuttered their programs in recent years. Meanwhile, Deloitte recently announced it was cutting benefits that supported families, including slashing parental leave from 16 weeks to eight. “The Great Rollback” has also seen Zoom cut parental leave from 22 to 18 weeks.
In an interview, Haspel warns that relying on businesses to provide childcare can be a “very precarious strategy.” He says, “If an employer is operating and providing childcare services, when the economy turns or something changes in the policy environment and the economy always turns, at some point, something always changes in the policy environment, eventually childcare is going to be one of the first things cut.”
Parents band together
Siemens plans to sell off most of the buildings and land in September 2027 and targeted the CDC as one of the buildings to get the axe. Parents received an automated message on March 10th informing them that the CDC would be closing at the end of June 2026.
At the meeting the next morning Everett said she sobbed along with many of the other parents. “It’s a devastating loss for our small community, but also for the bigger picture of childcare in the state of Oregon.” The time line too was particularly difficult, “It’s next to impossible to find care in the middle of the summer,” Everett explains. The teachers, too, she said, are unlikely to find new jobs in the summer. She said Siemens HR said they had explored all options and the decision to close was final.
Siemens declined to comment on the details of the closure, the meeting, or the parent’s efforts to save the childcare center. A Siemens spokesperson said in part: “Siemens is modernizing its Wilsonville campus as part of a broader effort to right-size our global footprint, so will invest in a new facility that reflects how our hybrid teams work today. This required us to make the difficult but necessary decision to close our Child Development Center.
Siemens did not respond to further questions about what this entailed.
By the next morning Everett says she had gone from “sad to mad.” She and a group of around 40 parents decided to try to save the CDC and re-open it as a non-profit childcare center, retaining all of the current families and teaching staff. Everett, who works as an accountant, created a budget. They realized they would need $1.6 million to cover all expenses, maintain the teachers salaries and benefits and only raise tuition modestly.
Over the past two months, Everett and others have reached out to the Wilsonville Mayor and other city and state government officials for help.. It’s an uphill battle as their insistence in keeping the living wages and benefits for the teachers has made integrating into other local childcare sites like the YMCA untenable. They’ve built a childcare caucus with Oregon Senator Senator Neron Misslin to help seek state grants.
Everett says she thinks the local press attention, and pressure from city and the senators convinced Siemens to approve their nonprofit to operate in the building rent free through September 2027 (saving them $400,000 a year in rent). Still, they need about a million dollars just to stay open for the next year. “I’ve always gone into this with the idea that we would probably lose,” Everett said. But after winning the battle for the building, she’s feeling more hopeful. “ I have full faith that if we could make it the first year that we would be able to fundraise, [apply for] grants, and get funding.”
A small investment in a greater good
While what the group of CDC parents are attempting to do is remarkable, it’s by no means a wide-spread solution. The real solution isn’t as labor intensive as expecting working parents to navigate the byzantine process of building their own childcare solution. Nor does it rely on a few large corporations providing flashy benefits that can come and go with trends. Haspel points to a much less flashy, but much more reliable solution: Taxes.
In 2023 Vermont passed a 0.44% payroll tax on employers to fund childcare subsidies. The bill was heavily supported by business leaders in the state who had struggled to recruit and retain employees due to lack of affordable childcare. The cost to families is heavily subsidized with those making under $56,000 paying nothing and higher earners paying roughly 10% of their income. And most importantly it’s universal to all families and not tied to a single employer. The law took effect in 2024 and has already led to over 1,200 more childcare slots across the state.
“Companies need to be using every ounce of their political muscle to advocate for public solutions,” Haspel says. In Vermont he says business leaders advocated for the legislature to pass a payroll tax because they would much prefer to pay a small amount and have childcare for their employees rather than have to navigate the complicated and expensive terrain of providing childcare themselves. This, he says, is the most viable, sustainable, and responsible way that businesses can contribute to childcare.
Iowa has another model of public-private partnership which started in 2024: The Iowa Child Care Solutions Fund (CSF), where employers receive tax credits for donating to the fund. Oregon, where Siemens is located and where semiconductor companies are booming, established a $7.5 million CHIPS Child Care Fund to expand childcare access near semiconductor sites. Business Oregon, the state’s economic development agency, has dedicated $50 million for broader childcare infrastructure.
Beyond helping to fund the broader childcare landscape, Haspel points to Corning’s approach as another model. The glass maker invests about $2.5 million a year to fund high-quality childcare centers in the town of Corning, NY which serves over 400 children including employee families and the community. Corning’s contribution is significant but if the company pulled back on the grants it wouldn’t crater them in the same way a corporation’s abrupt closure of their own childcare center would.
It’s time for businesses to stop thinking of childcare as a benefit or perk for employees and instead as their corporate responsibility to invest in the public good, Haspel says. “There’s no reason companies large and small can’t center families. If we had a full throated effort from business to get publicly funded childcare, it’s going to support their employees in the communities that they serve. We’d be a lot better off.
Support for this reporting came from the Better Life Lab at New America.