Office of Governor Tony Evers
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 15, 2026
Contact: [email protected] 
 
Gov. Evers Celebrates Opening of Madison College Early Learning Campus
 
MADISON — Gov. Tony Evers today joined local leaders and officials from Madison College at the Goodman South campus to celebrate the grand opening of the college’s brand-new Early Learning Campus (ELC), designed to provide access to affordable, high-quality child care and training for future child care and early learning professionals.

“My administration and I were proud to do our part and help support this project with over $4 million in grants, including nearly $3 million through our Workforce Innovation Grant Program,” said Gov. Evers. “We created the Workforce Innovation Grant back in 2021 with one purpose in mind: to support projects that address key regional workforce needs, and this center and its mission to support kids, student-parents and caregivers, and our early childhood education professionals, is precisely what we were looking to support with these funds.”

According to Madison College, the facility will provide licensed care for up to 100 kids, addressing a critical shortage of child care options in the city of Madison, including for Madison College students, 42 percent of whom are parents. Additionally, the new facility strengthens Madison College’s early childhood education (ECE) program by immersing students in real-world learning environments that build the skills needed for professional child care careers.

Gov. Evers and the Evers Administration have been steadfast supporters of the ELC, having secured critical funding to support its development at the Goodman South campus. In 2021, the governor awarded Madison College $2.875 million in grant funding through the successful Workforce Innovation Grant (WIG) program to support the college’s efforts to bolster child care availability in the area and training and upskilling for in-demand jobs in the ECE field. Administered by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation and Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, the governor created this program to support projects aimed at addressing long-term solutions to Wisconsin's regional workforce challenges, including child care.

The governor and his administration subsequently secured an additional more than $3 million in federal pandemic relief funds to support the Early Childhood Education and Workforce Training program, including $1.45 million in funds to support construction of the ELC facility not covered by WIG.

GOV. EVERS’ EFFORTS TO STABILIZE WISCONSIN’S CHILD CARE INDUSTRY, BOLSTER PROVIDERS, AND LOWER CHILD CARE COSTS FOR WORKING FAMILIES

Gov. Evers has made investing in the state’s child care industry to help fill available child care slots, cut child care wait lists, and lower the cost of care for working families a top priority of his administration. After months of negotiations with legislative leaders, Gov. Evers secured a more than $360 million investment in child care in the 2025-27 Biennial Budget, including delivering on the governor’s promise to secure direct payments for child care providers—a bright line the governor previously signaled would force him to veto the budget if Republicans failed to pass a budget without it.

Soon after Gov. Evers signed the 2025-27 Biennial Budget in July, the governor and his administration worked quickly to launch the Child Care Bridge Payment Program, which provides $110 million in monthly direct payments to Wisconsin child care providers through June 2026. The Child Care Bridge Payments Program is similar to the wildly successful Child Care Counts Program, which was launched by Gov. Evers and the Evers Administration in 2020 and that helped more than 5,700 child care providers keep their doors open, ensuring the employment of more than 75,000 child care professionals and allowing providers to continue care for more than 430,000 kids. The Child Care Bridge Payments Program provides the financial stability providers need to stay open, to recruit and retain qualified staff, and to continue providing high-quality care for Wisconsin’s kids. The quick work of the Evers Administration and the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families (DCF) ensured there were no gaps in direct funding for child care providers caused by the winding down of the Child Care Counts Program. In 2025, Child Care Bridge Payment ensured employment of more than 34,000 child care professionals and allowed providers to continue care for more than 177,000 kids through over $54 million in direct payments to providers.

In addition to the $110 million in direct payments to child care providers, the $360 million investment secured by Gov. Evers in the 2025-27 Biennial Budget included $65 million to fund the new “Get Kids Ready” initiative. Launched earlier this week, the “Get Kids Ready” initiative is the first-ever entirely state-funded child care program in Wisconsin state history and will support child care providers serving four-year-olds to help prepare Wisconsin’s kids for kindergarten and get an earlier jump start on learning at a critical time in development. According to DCF, through Get Kids Ready, qualified child care providers will focus on developing the academic, physical, social-emotional, and self-help skills that kids need to succeed in school. The state pays child care providers for the time kids spend in Get Kids Ready programming, making that part of the day free for families. The new, first-of-its-kind program in Wisconsin is also designed to help ensure the state’s child care industry will receive sustainable, ongoing state investments into the future.

In November, Gov. Evers and DCF also announced the launch of new online tools to help Wisconsinites interested in starting a licensed or certified child care program navigate the regulation process, cutting license processing times nearly in half and helping to bolster the child care industry by making licensure and certification more accessible and more straightforward for interested applicants.

In addition to the $110 million investment in direct payments to child care providers and $65 million to fund the “Get Kids Ready” initiative, the governor’s budget also includes:  
  • Over $123 million to increase rates under the Wisconsin Shares Child Care Subsidy Program to help lower out-of-pocket child care costs for working families across the state; 
    • Thanks to the $123 million budget investment to increase rates under the Wisconsin Shares Child Care Subsidy Program, Gov. Evers, together with DCF, announced in October that Wisconsin Shares families will see an increase in their subsidy amount. With this investment, the maximum Wisconsin Shares subsidy rate will be at or above the price of 75 percent of child care slots. The increase impacted roughly 15,000 Wisconsin Shares families, with the average savings per family being around $174 per month.
  • $2 million to Wonderschool designed to help child care providers across the state build capacity to be able to cut child care wait lists and ensure more kids and families have access to affordable child care;
    • The grant will expand access to high-quality child care in the state, including launching an online software platform that is linked to the department’s website to connect child care providers with child care workers.
  • $2 million intended to help bolster Wisconsin’s Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, which help parents find child care locally and provide training and technical assistance opportunities to child care providers; and
  • $28.5 million for a pilot program to help support expanding capacity across Wisconsin’s child care industry to ensure more families with infants and toddlers can access quality, affordable child care.
    • The proposal will increase payments to providers caring for infants and toddlers across the state through the Wisconsin Shares program.
    • Under the plan, providers would receive payments of $200 per month for every infant under 18 months and $100 per month for every toddler between 18 months and 30 months.
Gov. Evers also exercised his broad, constitutional veto authority to partially veto aspects of the budget that were outside of the bipartisan budget negotiations. More information about the bipartisan pro-kid budget signed by Gov. Evers is available here. More information on Gov. Evers’ efforts to do what’s best for kids in 2025 The Year of the Kid is available here. 
 
An online version of this release is available here.
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