At H.W. Longfellow School’s Community Learning Center, which is operated by the South Side nonprofit Journey House, staff are always finding new ways to immerse students in art and culture.
To help, Cherise Myers, Journey House director of community partnerships, said the nonprofit utilizes state Child Care Bridge payments to bring in instructors specializing in art, dance, digital media and more.
Now Longfellow and other Milwaukee Public Schools-based before- and after-school programs must grapple with how to continue exposing students who don’t often get exposure to art while losing thousands of dollars in stabilization payments.
“This is kind of putting the nail in the coffin,” Myers said. “Not being able to have the money to contract or work with these opportunities.”
The Child Care Bridge Payments Program was the state’s temporary solution to the federal government sunsetting Child Care Counts, a monthly federal childcare stabilization program born out of the pandemic that supported nearly 1,400 childcare providers in the city of Milwaukee.
The Wisconsin Legislature budgeted for a year of Child Care Bridge payments, which ended last month.
Journey House received over $6,300 from the state in 2026 to support the Longfellow Community Learning Center. About 90 MPS-based before- and after-school programs collectively received $1.2 million in 2025.
Activities to be cut
Milwaukee Recreation, which received Child Care Bridge funding to operate childcare as part of its programming at MPS locations, has struggled to attract and retain high-quality staff with competitive wages.
The monthly Child Care Counts and later state Child Care Bridge funding were critical in raising wages and giving employee bonuses, Community Learning Center coordinator Leighton Cooper said.
Cooper, who coordinates Community Learning Centers through Milwaukee Recreation, said the funding helped staff stay longer at their programs overall.
“It’s causing us less and less to have to go out and find and recruit more and more staff to operate our programs,” he said.
Now that Child Care Counts and Child Care Bridge payments have ended, Cooper said Milwaukee Recreation may have to cut funding for some supplies and activities, stop giving bonuses and cut staff positions beyond the required ratios from the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families.
“Our staff wages certainly can’t be changed,” Cooper said. “Staff are paid and that’s going to help us to keep staff in spaces.”
Journey House received less funding than other Community Learning Centers, and Myers said the organization already can’t always compete with wages at other schools.
Myers said the ended funding may not affect new employees who were hired in on starting pay, but veteran employees may leave if pay drops. Many already rely on other jobs to make ends meet, she said.
Still, Myers said the money helped Journey House bring in instructors from local colleges, universities and community organizations to lead activities, because those instructors aren’t always free.
Myers said Journey House programming depends on student needs, but the organization runs chess and Lego clubs, flag football, basketball and cheerleading classes, painting and metal classes and more.
500 programs across state losing funds
Across Milwaukee, about 90 MPS-based Community Learning Centers and before- and after-school camps received $1.2 million in 2025, according to Wisconsin Department of Children and Families data.
Randy Neve, lead of the Wisconsin Out of School Time Alliance, estimates more than 500 before- and after-school programs serving school-aged children statewide are losing monthly stabilization payments. Milwaukee’s MPS-based programs are among them.
Many of the providers who received state and federal stabilization payments were early-childhood centers serving infants and toddlers, NNS reported in June.
But Neve said these programs, including the ones across MPS, serve thousands of 4- to 12-year-olds. The loss of stabilization payments will affect that population of children and families.
“In the long run, the kids are the ones that lose out and are hurt,” Neve said.
Push for the state
The state budgeted for one year of Child Care Bridge payments in the biennial budget.
Legislators including State Sen. LaTonya Johnson, who represents District 6 on Milwaukee’s North Side, proposed SB 322 to support childcare providers, but the bill didn’t get a hearing, NNS reported.
Neve said the Wisconsin Out of School Time Alliance is working with other organizations to advocate for greater funding for before- and after-school programs like the one Journey House hosts at Longfellow. He and other partners are educating policymakers about what the loss of this funding will mean for providers and families.
Myers said many of the families at Longfellow are already struggling with the rising cost of living, and the loss of stabilization payments will ultimately hurt students and families.
“Things are tough, and it’s sad to say that this is just going to make things tougher,” Myers said.
Alex Klaus is the education solutions reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
