For years, Spanish-speaking child care workers in the Madison area have faced a frustrating barrier: they could work in classrooms, but couldn’t access the credit-based education they needed to advance their careers or increase their earnings. Now, Madison College has launched a fully Spanish-language track for its one-year early childhood education technical diploma — the first program of its kind in Wisconsin.
The program, which enrolled its first cohort last fall at Madison College’s South Campus, is already drawing strong interest. About 50 students are taking courses across four classes per semester, with ages ranging from the mid-20s to the 60s. The classes are offered in the evenings and can be attended virtually, accommodating students who already work in child care during the day.
Emily Pink, who coordinates the early childhood education program, said the diploma opens real doors. “It’ll make you a lead teacher in a classroom,” she said. “So you can be in any childcare classroom or preschool and be a lead teacher with the one-year technical diploma.”
The program is especially significant for Spanish-speaking providers who run regulated family child care businesses out of their homes. Under Wisconsin’s YoungStar quality rating system, providers with credit-based education qualify for higher reimbursement rates from the state for children receiving public assistance. Before the Spanish-language program existed, many providers were shut out of that opportunity.
“Before we started our Spanish program, they weren’t eligible for any kind of credit-based education because their English wasn’t good enough to take our classes in English, and so they were getting less money from the state because of YoungStar,” Pink said.
Luis Godinez, who teaches all of the Spanish-language courses, was hired last year after a lengthy search. Getting the position created and funded had been a goal for the program for years. “It took us a long time to find Luis and get it budgeted and everything,” Pink said.
The curriculum mirrors the English-language first-year track and covers child development, licensing requirements, guiding behavior, early language and literacy, and classroom health and safety — along with required trainings in areas like Sudden Infant Death Syndrome prevention and mandated reporting. Students also complete field experience in classrooms.
The demand is clear. Godinez said he has spoken with four or five Spanish-speaking child care centers in Madison alone, with more family child care providers beyond that. Spanish immersion programs are also attracting families from both English- and Spanish-speaking households.
“There are a ton of jobs in early childhood education,” Pink said. “People are constantly asking me to post jobs. There just aren’t enough people. So when we realized that these people were all being kept out of credit-based education, it was kind of our, okay, maybe we can help some of this issue.”
The long-term vision is to expand the Spanish track beyond the one-year diploma. Madison College has an articulation agreement with UW-Whitewater that allows students in the English-language program to transfer and complete a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education. Pink and Godinez are now exploring how to create a similar pathway for Spanish-language students — potentially including Spanish-language general education courses and partnerships with out-of-state institutions.
“What we’d like to do is give them options,” Pink said. She added that UW-Whitewater has shown interest in offering its bachelor’s degree in Spanish as well, though a recent change in university leadership slowed that effort.
The program also exists in a challenging political moment. Godinez said some students feel nervous about being on campus, which is why virtual attendance is always an option. But the college remains committed. “The political climate isn’t kind of dictating what the college is doing,” Pink said. “The college is kind of just saying, unless they take money from us — which it’s not affecting this thing — we’re still moving forward.”
Madison College has also hired a Spanish-speaking adviser and has Spanish-speaking staff at the South Campus front desk to support students from their first point of contact. Recruitment has relied on word of mouth, connections with Centro Hispano, appearances on La Movida radio, and outreach at education conferences.
Other technical colleges in Wisconsin are watching the program closely. “We were at a statewide meeting, and a lot of people were asking just a lot of questions about it,” Pink said.
Anyone interested in enrolling can contact Luis Godinez through Madison College’s South Campus.
