What has me most excited is that we’re seeing bipartisan interest in this issue. Because the care economy isn’t red or blue. It impacts everyone, even those who don’t need regular care for themselves or loved ones.

While I’m noticing the bipartisan interest in childcare solutions, I’m also seeing that leaders in the bluest regions of the country seem to be taking up the mantle for childcare as a central platform issue. New York, Vermont, and New Mexico are so far leading the charge on figuring out how to bring universal childcare to full realization.

This is why I wasn’t surprised when I read about Denver mayor Mike Johnston’s recent State of the City speech in which he announced a plan to bring universal childcare to Denver, the city I call home. Our city is deeply progressive (you may already know that Denver voters recently outed a 30 year democratic congresswoman in favor of a DSA backed candidate) and our cost of living is very high. We’re the exact kind of place where an idea like this might take off.

I should disclose here that I know the mayor. Many years ago, his kids attended the Montessori school that I ran. We’ve had a variety of interactions at various events over the years. The most fun being when he accidentally crashed my wedding last year when my husband and I were eloping on the steps of Denver’s iconic City and County Building. He’s a good man with positive intentions.

HOWEVER…I remain skeptical that a city the size of Denver can pull off universal childcare. I’m going to need to see a lot of details before I’m convinced that this plan has true promise. I have a few questions for Mayor Mike…

How exactly are we paying for this?

It’s important to be clear here: I’m VERY supportive of the concept of universal childcare. I think it’s absolutely necessary that we get there, but how we get there also matters quite a bit. Because a truly universal system is going to be expensive and last time I checked, the city of Denver is broke. The city had a $200 million deficit last year.

Mayor Mike loves big ideas. He gets jazzed about his vision for a better city. His enthusiasm can sometimes leave one feeling a bit dizzy. While he loves whipping up an exciting new idea, sometimes his office is light on the details. We saw this with a housing initiative he tried to push but Denver voters declined because it felt very unclear exactly what we were funding.

This time, it’s clear what we’re funding, but it isn’t so clear how we’re funding it. I get nervous when I hear things like “pilot program.” I get even more nervous when a plan is reliant on some component of charity/grant funding. A long-lasting universal system is going to require a permanent source of funding that’s locked into the budget.

Do we have the infrastructure to back this up?

One of the big issues New Mexico is facing after the launch of their universal childcare system last fall is that there simply aren’t enough providers to care for all the children who need it. Denver has approximately 5,000 childcare slots for approximately 31,000 children under age 4. While some of these kids would stay home with their parents regardless of the childcare availability in their neighborhood, many of them are home because their parents can’t find a program that suits their family budget and has available space.

They’ve already identified the red tape that providers like me must navigate in order to get open and I appreciate that understanding of a core issue. In his speech, Mayor Mike said "This task force has three jobs. First, to cut the red tape so passionate educators can open and run a quality childcare business without drowning in paperwork. For those that work in these places, they know how real that is.”

I think this is one of the big opportunities the city has to make an impact on childcare affordability and accessibility. It needs to be cheaper and easier to get programs open in the first place. Cities have a lot of control over this process through their zoning departments. They could potentially help more programs open if the regulatory process is eased.

Who is on the task force?

Because government is, well…government, the first step in his plan is to form a task force who will do a listening tour to learn more about the issues. We need swift, bold action on this issue. A task force feels like an unnecessary step to me because we already know very clearly what the issues are: childcare is too expensive for families, there isn’t enough care in the places families need it, the quality of childcare programs is uneven, and childcare providers are not paid appropriately for the work they do.

Whatever solutions we come up with, they must address all four factors or it’s a failed plan. While I don’t love the idea of a task force because I worry that it will languish as a report that sees no action in the end, I’m hopeful that the task force can actually drive solutions forward if the right people are involved. It would be a huge mistake to fill the task force with people who work at think tanks, nonprofits, and government programs.

We need some of those people, but the bulk of the task force should be childcare providers. If you want to know what’s really broken in the system? Ask us. If you want to know what needs to change so that we can have high-quality programs with well-compensated teachers in every neighborhood we’re needed? We can tell you.

Unfortunately, we providers often find ourselves in the position of being told what’s happening instead of being empowered to influence it from the start. Mayor Mike, call me girl, you need me on your task force.

How are you doing the math to figure out program costs?

I’ve written about this before, I have a fear of math when it comes to early childhood funding initiatives. My primary fear is that the funding for this system will be calculated on flawed numbers such as current federal reimbursement rates, current average tuition rates, or current program costs. Each of these numbers is too low.

As I wrote about recently, current federal reimbursement rates are way below the cost of care. This causes teachers to be paid lower salaries. Most programs are also undercharging for tuition. Many nonprofit programs make up for this through grant writing and individual donor fundraising. Other programs make up for it by limiting pay and benefits and forgoing new materials and building upgrades.

The true cost of this universal initiative must start with what teachers should be paid, including paid time off and a full roster of benefits. In the Denver metro area, that means a bare minimum base wage of $20 or $21 per hour for a new, inexperienced assistant teacher. I would expect to see lead teachers set at $23 to $25 per hour and program directors at a salary of at least $65k per year.

A program cannot be universal or built for public good if it’s based on paying workers poverty wages. If we want truly high-quality programs, the people working in those programs need to have financial security, access to healthcare, and paid time off to live a life outside of work.

How does the city address problems with the state?

Aside from the big funding question, at the root of my suspicion at how this program will work is the fact that a lot of what drives up the cost of care is at the state level. The city of Denver cannot change childcare regulations developed by the state Department of Early Childhood.

Much of what causes our programs to be expensive is related to the massive book of regulations childcare providers in Colorado must follow. As I’ve said before, many of these rules are good and necessary, but some of them just make childcare more expensive and difficult without doing anything to improve safety for children.

Does the city plan to engage with the state to work towards a sensible approach to limited deregulation? If childcare providers are bound by the state, there’s little they can do to make care more accessible to families. Addressing zoning issues will help, but a comprehensive solution requires changing how the state runs things to align more precicely with realistic program implementation in the city is necessary to keep costs down.

I meant it when I said “call me”

I want to be clear about something: I’m not writing this to pile on Mayor Mike. I want universal childcare to happen in Denver. I want it badly enough that I’m willing to be the annoying person asking hard questions before I cheer.

Because here’s the thing about big, exciting announcements — they’re easy to make and easy to walk back once the listening tour ends and the real numbers show up. I’ve watched this cycle before. A bold vision gets applause at the podium, and then two years later it’s a line item that quietly disappeared from the budget.

So consider this essay my marker in the ground. I’ll be watching for who ends up on that task force. I’ll be watching for whether “pilot program” turns into a real funding mechanism or just turns into a nice-sounding phrase that dissolves under budget pressure. And I’ll be watching for whether anyone in that room is willing to say the number out loud — what it actually costs to pay a teacher what they’re worth, not what the state currently pretends they’re worth.

Denver has a real shot at building something other cities could learn from. But only if the plan is built on honest math, real provider voices, and a funding source that doesn’t rely on grants running out at the worst possible moment. Mayor Mike, I meant what I said earlier: call me. I’d rather help build this thing right than write another essay in two years explaining why it didn’t work.

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CCAA pulled market rate surveys and cost analyses from all 50 states and D.C. and lined them up against each other. The pattern is the same almost everywhere: subsidy rates fall below both market prices and true cost, and in a lot of states, market prices themselves fall below what it actually costs to provide care. Providers aren’t just getting shortchanged by the government, many of us are shortchanging ourselves, charging parents less than the real cost of the classroom, because we know families can’t absorb the increase. It’s a slow bleed that will eventually lead to the death of childcare programs in any area that doesn’t have a concentration of high-earning parents.

Why this isn’t news to anyone running a program

If you’ve ever built a budget for a child care center, you know exactly where the money goes. Personnel costs (teacher wages, benefits, training, payroll taxes) eat up 70 to 80 percent of total cost in a center-based program. Facility costs come in a distant second. Everything else (supplies, insurance, food, materials) is a rounding error by comparison. So when a subsidy rate or a market rate gets set too low, there’s really only one place the math can come from: the people working with the children all day.

That’s the part of this report I want every policymaker to sit with. States are, in their own cost models, already acknowledging that teachers deserve more. CCAA found that 31 of 45 states that built quality enhancements into their cost analyses included increased teacher wages. Some states benchmarked to a living wage, some to parity with K-12 teachers. I recently wrote about how important getting the math right on subsidy payments is. States know what the number should be. They’re writing it down in their own studies. They’re just not paying it.

Younger kids, higher quality, bigger gaps

The report breaks the gaps down further, and the pattern tracks with everything providers are experiencing: infant and toddler care is more expensive to deliver because ratios demand more staff per child, and the gap between subsidy and true cost tends to be widest there. Higher-quality programs that invest in credentialed teachers, smaller groups, richer curriculum cost more to run.

Unfortunately, market prices don’t reliably follow, because families simply can’t pay more even when they want the better program for their kid. Providers end up absorbing the cost of quality out of their own margins, which is totally backwards. Quality should be funded, not donated by underpaid staff and undercompensated owners.

The access problem hiding inside the funding problem

Even in the handful of states where subsidy rates meet or beat the actual cost of care, the system still isn’t working, because so few eligible families ever receive a subsidy in the first place. Only 15 percent of children eligible under federal rules actually receive one. So we have a two-part crisis: rates too low to sustain providers, and eligibility too narrow to reach families. Fixing only one half leaves the system just as broken.

Vermont is the case study worth watching. (Rebecca Gale brilliantly outlines the good work happening in Vermont in her recent report you can find HERE.) The state expanded subsidy eligibility from 350 percent to 575 percent of the federal poverty level, and in the aftermath, more centers and family child care homes opened than closed for the first time since the state started tracking that data. That’s what happens when you fund the demand side and the supply side at the same time instead of asking one to cover for the other.

What I’d tell a legislator

CCAA’s recommendations line up with what I’ve been saying to anyone who’ll listen in the Colorado legislature:

• Set subsidy rates to the true cost of care, not to whatever families can currently scrape together.

• Keep running market rate surveys alongside cost models, because you need both. One tells you what families can bear, the other tells you what it actually takes to keep the lights on and the teachers paid well with benefits.

• Invest in the workforce specifically, because the workforce is the program.

• Expand who qualifies for a subsidy, because a well-funded rate that only reaches 15 percent of eligible kids isn’t a solved problem.

None of this is complicated. It’s just expensive, and it requires the people who write budgets to stop treating child care as a line item that can absorb infinite compression. Every year we set rates below cost, we are quietly asking teachers to fund the gap with their own paychecks. That’s the actual subsidy system in this country right now — teachers subsidizing the state. It’s time to flip that back around.

As many of you know from my recent post my family is facing a prolonged immigration challenge. My husband is out of the country and unable to return, which means he can’t work as an H1-B visa holder. I’m facing some serious financial challenges in the near future. If you have $34 to spare for an annual subscription to Child Care Chronicles, I’d be so grateful for the support.

“You can’t do that. It’s a licensing violation.”

We are regularly coaching and reminding each other to follow diapering procedure, not set the cleaning spray down while wiping a table, keep the speaker with music more than three feet from the nearest crib, lock the door to the employee lounge, and not bring in woodchips from the playground to the classroom because outside the woodchips make the playground safer and we must have a lot of them but inside they are considered a choking hazard and they must not be near the children.

The regulations we must follow are intense and detailed. We are regulated by the health department, zoning, fire, and child care licensing. Sometimes, these entities have conflicting ideas about what we should do, which is super fun to navigate.

Who’s In Charge Here?

For example, one of my programs faces a very busy road. When we have a fire drill, we exit across the playground and through a gate that leads to a parking lot that sits on that road. The fire department wants it to be very easy to open that gate and get out because it’s a fire exit. They are concerned only with getting out because they’re only thinking about fire. However, child care licensing wants it to be difficult to get out of the gate because they are worried about small children running into the busy road. They have both ordered me to do different things with that gate that contradict each other.

I have yet to figure out a solution that satisfies both of them, so I cross my fingers every time we have an inspection that they don’t bring up the gate. In this case, I’m on the side of child care licensing, young children sometimes inexplicably run without thinking about the danger ahead. A small hook latch at the top of the gate that an adult has to open before they can get to the street seems reasonable to me. They are already several hundred feet from the building where the theoretical threat of fire is located. We can open the latch and get out with plenty of time.

When child care providers talk about how regulations are killing us, this is the kind of stuff we’re talking about. We spend SO MUCH of our days focused on regulatory compliance, yet we often feel like we can’t win. Satisfying the demands of everyone who regulates us sometimes feels impossible.

This is where I must offer my standard disclaimer that I am in support of a well regulated child care industry. We are caring for precious and fragile young people who depend on us to protect them. We need environments that are safe and clean and designed to support their development. The adult to child ratio must be such that every child’s needs are met in a timely manner and teachers can maintain their sanity. Providers need background checks, training, and ongoing professional development. Regulations keep children safe and programs accountable.

However, there are some regulations that truly do drive up the cost of care but don’t have any meaningful impact on program safety and the well being of children and staff. Some people talk about complete deregulation, but I think that’s nonsense. What we need is to review and edit child care regulations with surgical precision. Most of the rules are fine, but a few of them really to cause outsized expense for no discernable reason.

A Tale of Two Playgrounds

In Colorado, we have a regulation that states that there must be separate playgrounds for toddler and preschool classrooms. This makes a lot of sense for large programs with many classrooms to have divided outdoor space for different age groups to play at the same time. Playgrounds are important and the state wants to ensure that programs are not under-investing in outdoor play space.

Unfortunately, they apply this rule to programs with as few as sixteen children. If a program serves 16 children, and they have a mix of children that are over and under the age of three, that program must build two playgrounds in order to be compliant with regulations. The state has deemed it unsafe for licensed facilities to use one playground for these mixed age groups, but also says it’s perfectly safe for home child care programs to have just one play area for the same ages.

Currently, I have a program that I would like to be licensed to serve children up to age four. This program is licensed for 34 children. Of that, 10 are infants. The infants don’t really use the playground. Therefore, we have one playground for 24 kids. This works out great because each classroom has a designated outside time and the playground is just right for us…as long as I kick families out upon their child’s third birthday.

The state has arbitrarily decided that a two year old and a three year old cannot safely enjoy the same playground, even though we’ve all seen this exact scenario play out safely in playgrounds and yards across America. It is absurd to me that I can’t have one playground to serve 24 kids in two separate groups. If I want to keep children in my program beyond their third birthday, I must spend tens of thousands of dollars to build a whole extra playground. Then I must pass that cost on to the families in the form of higher tuition.

Giving smaller programs the flexibility to have one shared outdoor play space for kids of multiple ages is a simple act of deregulation that can actually have a real impact on the cost of care. I feel comfortable saying that no children will face harm because of this change. But more programs will have flexibility to manage their enrollment and keep families until they’re ready to move on to a public preschool.

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Weaponized Teacher Credentials

Another issue we face with Colorado’s regulations is related to credentialed teachers. In our state, a person who is named as the lead teacher of a classroom must have what is called a Level II Credential. This is earned through a mix of formal education and experience.

On it’s face, I’m generally supportive of this policy. I think it’s a good idea to have teachers with both education and experience leading our classrooms. The issue is the way this regulation is interpreted and enforced.

If the lead teacher needs to go to the bathroom, we must have a person with the same credential or higher available to cover them. We can’t send an assistant teacher. We can’t sent and admin assistant. If the lead teacher with the credential steps out of the room for even one minute, we are breaking the law. That means that program directors end up using half their day to cover teacher breaks instead of focusing on the onerous mountains of administrative work we have to do in order to maintain compliance with our many regulations.

Now imagine that a teacher wakes up sick. The health department regulations state that the teacher must stay home. However, if we don’t have a Level II credentialed person to put in their place right away, we are in a precarious position. We essentially have four options:

1. Pay an extra person with a Level II credential to sit around and be needed, passing the cost of an extra salary off on the parents through higher tuition.

2. Allow the assistant teacher, who knows the children and the routine, to run the room for the day with the help of someone who doesn’t have the credential. We must hope that licensing doesn’t show up, because allowing the assistant to lead the room for the day is illegal.

3. If there’s room in other classrooms, split the children up and send them to the other rooms. This puts them in a space where they don’t have their peers, routine, or primary caregivers, which is very stressful for a small child.

4. Close the classroom for the day and deny care to the families, causing them to have a last minute disruption to their work day, even though their child isn’t ill.

Most programs choose option one because they don’t want to cause the disruptions to children and families that options three and four create. Option two is completely reasonable, but not allowed by the regulations. Assistant teachers not only know the children and the routine, they are background checked, CPR and first aid certified, and have extensive training and professional development. They are perfectly capable of running a classroom for a day or two while the lead teacher is out.

I recently discussed this issue of credential enforcement driving up the cost of care on the Arvada Business Today podcast. It’s only 21 minutes, but packed with great context on child care issues. Give it a listen!

But the regulators see this as the worst option. They’ve decided that disruption to children and families is best practice in the face of a sick teacher. Every time I really contemplate this, I am shocked that the state of Colorado would rather have us close a classroom for the day and deny care to families than let the assistant teacher handle things for the day. I think that’s crazy.

When I advocate for deregulation, I’m advocating to adjust regulations like these. Ones that are well-intentioned but directly lead to higher costs for families without creating any meaningful improvement in health and safety for the children.

Deregulation Cannot Save Us

I had a whole segment of this essay ready to go that talked about the limits of deregulation as a solution for child care affordability, but then and both came out with absolute banger pieces on this exact topic last week. So, I’m instead going to share some of what they said with you.

Haspel, who publishes the excellent Substack, , published a letter to the editor in the Washington Post in response to DC Board of Education member Allister Chang’s claims that overregulation is the primary driver of child care costs. He points out that some of the states with the most intense deregulation efforts are still seeing programs shutting down at a rapid clip:

Then, on her Substack, Mead talked about the limits of deregulation as an affordability solution, especially considering how much of the expense of child care is due to zoning and building codes more than child care specific regulations:

I highly recommend reading the full pieces written by both of these folks to understand the limits of deregulation as a solution to child care affordability and accessibility. They get into some important details.

Precision Deregulation is Key

Getting rid of child care regulations, or cutting them to the bone, is not going to solve the current crisis facing this industry. However, there are certain rules that are definitely driving up the cost of care without any demonstrable benefit to children and families. These are the rules we need to focus on in the deregulation conversation.

My framework for improving the child care climate in America has four pillars: affordability, accessibility, quality, and caregiver compensation. While certain deregulation of child care specific rules can increase affordability for parents some, it can’t address the other three pillars.

A new approach to zoning that embraces an Abundance mindset will get us closer to accessibility by way of making it possible for more programs to open sooner and with less expense. Deregulation cannot improve program quality or teacher compensation. In fact, if not done carefully, it could make them worse.

Ultimately, what it takes is funding. Lots of it. Until we can get everyday taxpayers, politicians who control the purse strings, and the corporate interests who fund them to agree that child care is necessary social and economic infrastructure, child care will continue to slide into becoming a luxury service available to only the most privileged.

As many of you know from my last post, my family is facing a prolonged immigration challenge. My husband is out of the country and unable to return, which means he can’t work as an H1-B visa holder. I’m facing some serious financial challenges in the near future. If you have $34 to spare for an annual subscription to Child Care Chronicles, I’d be so grateful for the support.

Immigrants Power Child Care

Child care is an industry that is powered by highly skilled immigrant labor. It is estimated that there are approximately 2.2 million early educators working in the US. Of that, almost half a million are immigrants. They make up about 20% of the workforce.

For years, standard immigration enforcement had what were called “sensitive locations” where they would not engage in surveillance, patrolling, and arrests. These locations include places like churches, hospitals, schools, and daycare centers. On his first day in office, the president rolled back that policy.

We’ve seen some heartbreaking examples of immigration enforcement in child care programs in the past year. In November, an employee of a daycare in Chicago was arrested by ICE during morning drop off time in the lobby of the program she worked in, a surely traumatizing event for the children who witnessed it.

August 2025 in San Diego saw a rash of parents arrested and detained while dropping off their young children at local schools. The parents of a five year old were arrested immediately after dropping off their child. As they were being processed, the mother vehemently protested stating that they had nobody to pick up the child after school. At the end of his school day, this tiny child had no family left and became a ward of the state.

The result of this institutional fear the child care workforce is experiencing has been devastating. Research from New America and the Better Life Lab found that in just the period from February to July of 2025, the number of actively working immigrant early educators dropped by approximately 39,000. The total number of foreign born mothers participating in the overall workforce dropped by 77,000. People are afraid to go to work, even if they are legally allowed to do so.

Immigration enforcement is also having a chilling effect on enrollment and attendance of children in early care and education programs. recently published data showing the specific impacts on Head Start programs. There isn’t a cohesive data set for national child care enrollment, but there is comprehensive data from Head Start programs across the US, so they can serve as a good proxy.

Nearly 80% of surveyed staff reported that ICE enforcement has had a noticeable impact on student attendance: On average, surveyed programs have experienced 7% of their students disenrolling altogether, and 14% of directors said they faced delays in new student registrations, attributing both to immigration fears. Center leaders estimate an average 7% chronic absenteeism rate explicitly tied to ICE, though that number varies drastically among the surveyed districts and states, ranging from 0% at some centers up to a reported 62% in others.

In my own program in Denver, we have historically had a robust immigrant population in our family population. That has now dwindled to essentially none. These families are terrified to go to work and give their children the quality care and education they deserve.

This is Personal

As I said in the beginning of this essay, this issue is deeply personal for me. It goes beyond the missing immigrant families from my program. I am married to an immigrant. We were married just over a year ago. He came to the US legally on a student visa then did an adjustment of status to an H1-B visa when he got an engineering job after school.

He’s been a loyal participant in American life for nearly ten years. He works hard. He pays taxes. He buys (too many) cars. He has a broad community of people in the US who love him and an employer who depends on his skills and expertise. He is kind, adventurous, curious, and loyal. He is everything we want in a friend, colleague, and neighbor.

This guy right here is someone you want as your friend, colleague, and neighbor.

We’ve been building a life together. We got married after the election because we wanted to protect him. I now understand that it was naive of us to think that marriage was enough. Last week, everything changed for us.

We were preparing to file our application for an adjustment on status to a marriage based green card. Then, on Friday, USICS announced that they were reversing 70 years of precedent by requiring anyone applying for an adjustment of status to return to their home country before filing the application, even if they are married or have children who are US citizens. This was stunning news. It’s a massive and cruel policy designed to break up families and make people suffer unnecessarily.

We had a conversation to prepare ourselves for the fact that this new policy would likely cause us to be separated for a long period of time. Then, on Monday, his father died back in his home country. My husband is the eldest son and in their culture that means he has essential duties to the family with the funeral and aftermath. He booked a ticket as quickly as he good to get home to his family.

Normally, he would just come home after the visit. But currently, we face many obstacles. First, his passport expires in October. That means he can’t book an international flight until it is renewed. His home country has inefficient systems that mean the renewal process will take months.

Next, his employer is only willing to hold his job for a short amount of time. Per the rules of H1-B visas, he is not allowed to work remotely. This means he will likely lose his job, which means he will lose his visa. That means he won’t be able to come back to the US until he has a new marriage based green card. The process for green cards has been slowed down significantly by the current administration. They’ve made it much more difficult.

Our lawyer told us yesterday that he expects it will take one to three years for everything to be resolved. The grief and despair I am feeling is immense. Nearly overwhelming. I worry what will happen to the immigration system in the meantime. Will they make it impossible for my husband to come home? Will I have to move to a foreign country just so I can be with my spouse? I’m terrified right now.

So what does this have to do with child care? To me, everything. We don’t have data on how many early educators have family members who are immigrants. But I feel comfortable guessing that there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of us. We are all feeling the pain and stress of the changes in policy and enforcement, and we are carrying that with us into our work.

My new program that I have worked SO HARD to get open is finally starting on Monday morning. (Click here and here to get a full picture of what a nightmare the process has been.) I should be so excited. Normally, this would be a time of great celebration.

Instead, I am in mourning. While I will work very hard to compartmentalize my pain while greeting the new families and staff and ensuring our opening weeks are as smooth as possible, I will be carrying significant pain and worry with me the whole time.

The pain I carry is not mine alone. I know that there are early childhood professionals all over America dealing with similar struggles. We carry silent solidarity with one another, but we carry it quietly. Being vocal is dangerous. We know that one wrong public statement could take our hopes for the future of our families down in flames. We suffer quietly while providing essential care and education for young children.

The ripple effects of immigration enforcement that is violent and unnecessarily aggressive are massive. There are so many serious challenges facing the child care sector, and this one cannot be ignored. Teachers, parents, and children are all suffering without reason. When it comes to solutions, I feel too paralyzed and afraid to offer any. I just know that it shouldn’t be like this.

Want to do a small thing to help working families through the struggle? I have a scholarship fund that offers deeply discounted child care tuition to lower and middle income families. You can make a donation HERE and have a huge impact on people who need it.

Part of me is thrilled to see such broad, sweeping efforts to reform early childhood systems. After decades of witnessing failed efforts, mediocre chipping away at issues, and complete inaction in some places, it’s exciting to see people with power not just talking about ideas, but taking action. However, there’s this tiny sliver inside me that’s making me uncomfortable. Something is telling me to stay suspicious while I wait to see the long-term outcomes of these efforts.

I’ve written before about well-intentioned initiatives with unfortunate consequences that could have been predicted but were ignored, such as Colorado’s Universal Pre-K program. I still have a hard time getting early childhood advocates to acknowledge that this effort to make preschool more affordable had the adverse effect of making infant and toddler care more expensive. Nobody wants to hear that the good thing they did may have simply shifted the problem…or made it worse.

I think this is where my discomfort with new efforts to fund early childhood comes from. I’ve seen so many reforms that change nothing or initiate bloated programs with huge administrative burdens. I know that the good people working in government, nonprofits, and policy thinktanks care deeply about the complex issues related to early care and learning. Yet sometimes, their work misses the mark because they aren’t in the field operating child care programs day-to-day.

Yesterday, I had coffee with one of the folks working at a nonprofit dedicated to early childhood initiatives. She wanted to hear my ideas and perspectives on the current state of child care in Colorado and the funding initiatives we have brewing here. I love providing people like her who work on behalf of our industry, but not in our industry context from the inside.

She asked me one question that I’ve been mulling since our meeting: “What scares you the most about this initiative?” It’s such a smart question to ask. It gets to the root of why early childhood initiatives often go wrong. Providers can see the problem coming, but nobody’s asking us. Today, I’m here to tell you some of the things that scare me about new early childhood funding initiatives.

No gains in teacher wages

When there’s a ballot initiative or bill being run that’s designed to fund early childhood education, there are always some very smart people doing a lot of math behind the scenes. Their job is to figure out how much the program will cost, how many children will be served, what returns taxpayers get for their investment, etc. I worry about these people. I’m not questioning their ability to figure out complex formulas to deliver accurate numbers. What I’m concerned with is what they base those numbers on.

It’s no secret that early childhood teachers often make poverty wages. Those not in poverty are frequently struggling month-to-month. If the math people are doing calculations to figure out how much the programs will cost, I must insist that we first identify living wages for the area and build an appropriate increase into the formula.

This will, no doubt, bloat the cost of these measures and perhaps limit the number of families that can be served if the program doesn’t have full funding. Yet, it is the only ethical way to proceed. Our early childhood professionals perform essential, highly-skilled work that deserves appropriate compensation and benefits. Building a social service system on poverty wages is simply unacceptable.

I urge politicians and funders to consider how good it will feel when they can say, “we helped lift thousands of our state’s early childhood teachers out of poverty and into the middle class.” It just requires us to get the math right from the start.

Being told instead of heard

Back in 2012, there was a significant re-write of the rules regulating child care centers in Colorado. They regularly review and update the rules, but this time they were determined to make BIG changes. The people at the Office of Early Childhood (now the Department of Early Childhood) had clearly worked very hard on these updates. You could see the results of diligent attendance at conferences and workshops on program safety and quality.

The result was a set of proposed rule changes that took the regulations from a limited focus on health and safety, to requiring a compendium of “quality” components. It was a game-changer for anyone who was in the work for a while at that point. You could see the good intentions written all over it. They really tried.

It landed like a lead balloon with providers. We had a variety of concerns about how these significant changes were going to be funded and what the impact of such specific regulations would be on programs with alternative curriculums such as Montessori and Waldorf schools. They changed the qualifications for lead teachers and directors, but provided no funding to pay for these new education requirements.

The state held a “listening tour” around the state to “discuss” the new regulations with providers. I attended two of these events. It was not a listening session, it was a telling session. They came to tell us what was going to change. Nobody asked us what changes we thought might be good for programs and children. Nobody asked us about the potential unintended consequences of some of these well-intentioned rules.

The governor at the time, our current US Senator, John Hickenlooper, ran on a platform of cutting red tape and making it easier to work and do business in Colorado. This initiative ran fully contrary to his proposed agenda. Child care providers made enough noise that the rules were trimmed down and programs were slowly set up to provide (some) funding and support for programs to participate in the new quality initiatives.

Many of the proposed rules remained in place. And, I have seen a significant increase in the quality of early childhood programs in Colorado since. The initiative did work in that it improved quality, but it also drove up the cost of care because we treat child care as a market based issue and many of the costs of these quality improvements were passed on to the parents in the form of higher tuition and more fees.

New portals and paperwork

I simply CANNOT have another new portal to log in and report to or another new program handbook to memorize. Any new funding initiative must be braided into the existing framework of our early childhood systems.

Here’s an incomplete list of the various portals I must log into as a child care provider:

• Illness reporting portal

• Immunization reporting portal

• Child care licensing portal (one portal for each program)

• Professional Development Information System portal (one for each program)

• Colorado Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) attendance tracking system portal

• Colorado Universal Pre-K portal

• Payroll system portal

• Child care management system portal

• City zoning, health and permitting portal (one for each program because they’re in different cities)

• State wage withholding portal

• State paid family leave portal (FAMLI)

• School retirement plan portal

ABSOLUTELY NO MORE PORTALS!! I don’t care if there’s funding that solves every issue facing early childhood, if I have to log into one new space, follow one more handbook, report into one more system…I will lose my damn mind.

For Colorado, I propose expanding the CCAP program. We have a few different initiatives brewing in our state that all point towards increased funding for early childhood. I think we need to keep it efficient and work within the systems we’ve got.

As I’ve written about previously, our Child Care Assistance Program has been operating on a funding freeze for almost a year and a half at this point. There is a $70 million hole that needs to be backfilled. From there, we can continue to process funding through this program and just keep dropping the income requirements for families to participate until we get to a point where every child is fully funded and we don’t need an income cap anymore.

Partial solutions

Sometimes, people just aren’t ready for the big, brave solution that’s required to really make the change we need. I worry this is the case for early childhood. Our problem is vast and the funding required to fill the gap is significant. Smaller initiatives can feel more digestible. This leads to weak, partial “solutions” that ultimately don’t get us where we need to be: fully funded early care and learning, after school programs, and summer camps for every family who needs/wants it.

My lane is early care and learning. For this slice of the pie, we must keep four key metrics in mind as we evaluate the strength of the proposed solution: affordability for families, accessibility to families, quality programs, and well-compensated providers. Any funding solution that isn’t aimed at addressing all four, is a partial solution.

Here’s the danger with the partial solution, people will think they’ve accomplished something significant on the issue and move on. They don’t want someone coming back to the till for more funding for the same thing every few years. Patched together solutions cause voters to tune out.

We need bold solutions that hit on all four issues at once. That’s the way we make truly impactful change.

I’m genuinely excited by the idea of robust public funding for child care programs. It’s a win for local economies, community safety, and child development. We know that child care as a market based solution is a failure. It’s time to move on and build the system we know will serve our communities fully.

I think the momentum is there. People are starting to get it. I’m excited to be part of the movement, but my enthusiasm is tepid because a big opportunity to make necessary change is also a big opportunity to drop the ball. I hope we get it right soon. Our communities deserve it.

As you know, I’m deeply concerned about the affordability issue in child care. I talk about it all the time, like here and here. However, I also get the itch when I hear people talk solutions and they’re only talking about affordability.

There is serious risk in focusing exclusively on affordability. That’s how you end up with solutions that severely compromise quality and leave early childhood professionals making poverty wages. Any solutions we discuss must be attuned to the four components of a truly functional early childhood system.

Affordability

This is the one we all understand clearly. Providing quality child care costs a lot and we currently place that burden squarely on the shoulders of each family. There is tuition assistance available for many of the lowest income families, but those funds have been long frozen in my state and face defunding permanently from the federal government.

Very high income families, those with one or two adults bringing in six figure salaries, are able to squeak by and pay the rates, but it’s a challenge for many of them too. Middle income families face a nearly hopeless situation if they don’t have friends, family, and neighbors that can help them.

The math simply doesn’t work. It is imperative that every state implement universal early childhood funding that includes infants and toddlers. Every parent who wants or needs to work should be able to. There is so much evidence that a well-funded early childhood ecosystem can have significant returns on local economies.

We need our policy makers to do the right thing and start funding early care and learning. It helps families stabilize their finances and reinvest in local business. Tax revenue is generated. Jobs are created. Dreams are realized. It’s a policy win.

Accessibility

Affordable child care is a great start, but it’s useless if you can’t find a seat in a program. This is a headache many parents understand. It can feel nearly impossible to find a guaranteed spot at the time you need it. Many programs in my area operate with a two year wait list.

This puts parents into a serious bind. Do you give up your income and career trajectory and stay home for a few years? If there are two parents, which one gives up their career? Do you hire a nanny and pay even more than tuition at a good center costs? A thriving economy requires that people work. Most people need or want to work. Our current situation is unsustainable.

For many child care programs, just getting open is a nightmare. The tangle of zoning, permitting and licensing is exhausting to navigate. (Click here for parts one and two of my personal zoning nightmare.) Often programs take years to open due to these hurdles. This disincentivizes entrepreneurs from opening and it drives up costs for families. Streamlining these processes would go a long way towards increasing the number of programs opening.

We also need to think beyond traditional child care centers as the only solution to the child care accessibility problem. When we talk about establishing funding for early care and learning, we must consider who exactly will be getting those funds. Here are a few ideas for your consideration:

1. Direct payments for family, friend and neighbor care

2. Paid family leave for a full year

3. Tax incentives for home child care programs

4. Low interest loans and grants for building new programs

We are very short on child care spaces in the US. We know these types of investments pay off big time for communities. It’s time to get crackin’.

Quality

While parents need child care so that they can work, the purpose of child care is not to simply warehouse children. Poor quality child care programming can be dangerous, even deadly. That’s why I get so concerned when people talk about affordability as the primary goal in child care policy.

We need a robust high-quality early childhood system. The quality is essential. Every program must be safe, clean, engaging, and inclusive. We want infant rooms that help babies build language and motor skills while feeling safe and loved and having every need met responsively. We want toddler spaces that help them build mobility and social skills and help them be safely independent and supported in their learning. Every preschool room should be rich in language, science, art, music, play, and joyful interactions with teachers.

That beautiful vision I painted above is one that costs a lot to make happen. We can’t just work to bring down the cost of tuition unless we are also putting in place funding that more than replaces the tuition lost. Ensuring our child care programs are truly the best places possible for children requires investment in the teachers, facilities, and materials that ensure quality.

Well-Paid Professionals

The fact that being an early childhood professional means making poverty wages in many parts of the US is shameful. The work we do is essential. It is highly skilled and incredibly difficult. The demands on our bodies and minds are nonstop. We care for and educate our nation’s most precious people. And yet, many of us can’t afford to live a comfortable life.

Just as every child deserves a high-quality learning environment, every early childhood professional deserves a high-quality compensation and benefits package. Wages that dignify their valuable work. Health insurance that meets all of their medical needs. Retirement plans with a nice company match. Paid vacation and sick days. These standard components of a proper compensation package, are a pipe dream for many early childhood professionals.

As we reimagine our early childhood systems, we must center the well-being of the people who do the work. Without them, quality programming isn’t possible. The people who love the children, meet their needs, and keep them safe deserve to be paid for the value they contribute to our society.

Braided Solutions

When I observe the discussion about child care, I often feel that I’m observing flat solutions that don’t meet the needs of a three dimensional system. We need child care affordability, but only if it comes paired with accessibility, quality, and well-compensated professionals. We aren’t in a one fix to rule them all scenario here. We have to tackle this problem from many angles at once.

There have been enough studies and surveys and hypothetical budgets run. Now we need to step into action. Call your elected officials and tell them how much you care about early care and learning. Encourage them to run legislation that increases accessibility and affordability while preserving quality and increasing teacher wages. Tell them that you support using your tax dollars for this purpose. The need that explicit knowledge from many constituents to have the courage to take action.

I’ve been delighted to support two of my State Senators Matt Ball (D) and Scott Bright (R) as they work to pass early childhood education legislative reforms this session. I testified in committee on behalf of the bill last week and hope to continue championing it into law. It’s only the first step, though. There’s much more to be done…

We were supposed to have final inspection this week and get our occupancy permit next week. This would then open the chance for health and child care licensing to do their inspections. We felt ready. We’ve been working closely with the city for months. There have been several mid-project inspections and check ins. We’ve made changes and re-submitted drawings.

Look, ma! New floors and fresh paint!

Then, on the day of final inspection, the city planning department tells us they think we actually need a two hour fire wall and sprinklers. This is extra frustrating because we already re-built the walls once. Allow me to take you on our journey…

August 2024: I start looking for potential locations for my new program. We quickly find a nonprofit occupying a building that was previously an elementary school and they’re looking to rent out a corner of the building. It already has classrooms, bathrooms, sinks, and an outdoor play area. It’s in an area rich with young families. We go for it.

October 2024: Lease negotiations begin simultaneously with preliminary design work and code research.

May 2025: The preliminary design is finalized.

June 2025: The lease is signed and we submit our permit request to the city. Please check out part one of what I really hoped would be a one part series to see everything that went down in the months after.

October 2025: The permit is finally issued and work begins.

November 2025: The city determines that the walls are built incorrectly. We must take them down and build them again.

December 2025: Our contractor, who had been moving slowly and making mistakes, dies unexpectedly. Work stops for a month.

January 2026: A new contractor starts. He’s doing a great job managing the project and getting work going at a faster pace. He stays in close contact with the city and makes any change they request of him when they visit. Things get moving.

February 2026: We think we’re done! We’ve done everything the city asked! It looks really nice! But then a new person from the city pops up and says we are a different occupancy classification than the one we have designated in our drawings (that were approved by the city). He says we need to re-build the walls that separate us from the larger building.

We meet with him and our architect explains her interpretation of the code (that was allowed by the city). He disagrees. She references and reads aloud the specific language in the code that is informing her interpretation. It’s very sound. He still disagrees. We are asked to submit new drawings with detailed notes on the code so they can review it. This alone will take at least two weeks.

I just KNEW you were dying to see these floor plans!

I now cannot say for sure when our exact opening date is. I have spent so much time and money. I have debts I need to repay. I’ve hired people and enrolled families. There are very serious real world impacts to zoning delays. The ripples of these delays are being felt by me and this community I’m trying to support with a much needed service.

I’m not an expert in zoning, construction, or the complexities of managing a city. I can imagine that this work is immensely challenging. I can appreciate that they are trying to keep people safe and communities nice places to live. But there has to be a better way.

These types of preventable delays cost billions in lost economic revenue each year. (Check out this newly released report that quantifies the staggering cost of the child care crisis as a whole.) It’s preventing my business from providing a service and making an income. It’s preventing my employees from working. It’s preventing the parents who were counting on my services from working.

Meanwhile, the daycare up the hill keeps calling me. They want to know when I’m going to open so they can refer families to me because their waitlist is currently two years out. But somehow, one guy at the zoning office who interprets code differently from everyone else, has the power to stop us just when we’re ready to provide this badly needed community service. There HAS to be a better way.

I was telling my friends this week that I’ve become fully Abundance-pilled going through this project that seemed so straightforward to me. (Please head to your local library and pick up a copy if you haven’t read it yet.) We can have safe, beautiful, vibrant communities with reasonable zoning and permitting that is designed to keep projects moving quickly.

Zoning isn’t very sexy or fun, but it has a significant impact on how we experience our everyday lives. From what our communities look like, to how much housing, goods, and services cost. We’ve coded ourselves into a corner and it’s making life more expensive for everyone.

I’m not entirely sure what the roadmap is to fixing this. What are your ideas? Please leave them in the comments.

If you’re feeling inclined to offer a bit of support, I’d be so grateful if you grabbed an item off our school’s wish list and sent it our way. We serve a diverse group of families and provide significant scholarships for families with lower incomes. We could use your help in providing some fresh materials or setting up a proper staff lounge in our new (second) location. Thank you!

I instantly felt defensive and a little warm in the face. These accusations of fraud are wreaking havoc on the child care industry and directly affecting my business. There is a time in my life when I would have given him a haughty answer. Full of truth, but incredibly condescending. Expertly reading people for filth is a skill I have that has not served me well.

Now that I’m older, wiser, and less energized for a fight, I chose to respond with curiosity. I asked him to tell me more about what he’d heard and what he thinks. Only then did I tell him what I know: that there is little to no evidence of fraud happening on a broad scale. I shared with him the systems our state, Colorado, has in place for fraud prevention. I spoke with clarity, but also with kindness.

“That’s good to hear,” he said with genuine relief. “Daycare is really important, but I don’t want my tax dollars getting wasted paying for empty classrooms.” I told him that’s a valid concern, I don’t want that either. I want programs that are well-funded, affordable, and full of kids benefitting from the investment.

We had a meaningful conversation rooted in shared values. We didn’t identify by our political party, because that didn’t matter. Our focus was on the fact that we want the same things for our community and we shared information and ideas on how to get there.

I don’t know if radon guy was a Republican, but I suspect he leans more conservative politically than I do. I’m grateful that we were able to have a reasonable, even friendly conversation about a topic that is currently quite hot and divisive. This is how we make progress.

If you haven’t heard about the freeze on child care funding announced recently by the Trump administration, I’m not sure where you’ve been. But I assume most people reading a blog called “Child Care Chronicles” are more than aware of the situation. I won’t waste our time reviewing everything that’s happened, you can find lots of info with a quick search.

What I do know is that child care, for most people, is not a partisan issue. Most families need child care in some form because most families have parents who work. They need daycare for their young children and afterschool programs and summer camps for their older children. And they need that care to be affordable and accessible.

These funding freezes, if kept in place, will lead to a collapse of the child care industry. It’s not just that these grants fund programs that serve lower income children and if programs close, people will lose their jobs. It’s also that these grants fund the salaries of the people who work for the government in the early childhood ecosystem.

In Colorado, the federal child care grants fund the salaries of our Licensing Specialists. These are the folks who inspect child care programs to ensure they are safe and appropriate for young children. They do annual visits and they come out and investigate when a complaint is filed against a center. The other thing they do is inspect new programs to issue them a license to open.

The implementation of the threatened funding freezes means there’s nobody to ensure that our child care programs are safe for babies and toddlers. It means that many programs will shut down and new programs will not be able to open. The programs that do stay open may end up less safe and with lower quality because nobody is looking.

A collapse of the child care industry will be catastrophic for the economy. Cities and states will see significantly less tax revenue. Families will fall into chaos and strife. No community, red or blue, will remain stable and unaffected under these conditions.

So, if this is a nonpartisan issue, why is my focus on Republicans? It’s because they’re the only ones the president is going to listen to. He has made it abundantly clear that he does not care what any elected Democrat thinks. But there’s a chance he’ll listen to people from his own party.

Elected Republicans care about economic issues. They want to lead communities resplendent with thriving families. They want small businesses opening up and employing their constituents. They want tax revenue that allows for investment in critical infrastructure. We may not agree on everything, but almost every American agrees on these things.

Elected Republicans also know that an economic collapse brought on by the intentional choice to dismantle the child care industry will render them unelectable in the future. The best way to ensure a blue wave is with an economy in the red. If we want to stop this from happening, we need Republicans to step up and lead.

The people with power and influence are the ones that can be heroes and stop this poorly considered initiative in it’s tracks. If you live in an area with Republican representation, your voice is critical in this moment. We need you to reach out to them and explain why restoring funding to child care is critical. Tell them it will affect how you vote in the midterms. Ask them to contact the president and share their concerns.

I’ve reached out to my electeds in congress, but I know better than to think that the current administrations cares one iota what Michael Bennett, John Hickenlooper, and Diana DeGette think about anything. They probably agree with me on this issue, but they can’t do much. We need folks like Lauren Boebert, Gabe Evans, and Jeff Hurd making calls on behalf of Coloradoans.

Changing the tide on this issue is going to require grassroots organizing by everyday Americans who care about children, families, and the economy. Issues I think we can all get behind, no matter how red, blue or purple we identify. If you do one small thing to make America a better place for everyone today, do this: contact your US senators and representatives to tell them we need to stop the freeze then reach out to your state electeds and tell them you want to see increased funding to stabilize the child care industry.

2026 is not the year for sitting on the sidelines. It’s not the year for snide comments and belittling others. It’s the year for finding shared values rooted in community care and making those values known.

2025 was a year of significant setbacks for me as a child care business owner. But it wasn’t just me, our industry is facing a variety of challenges that continue to mount. We saw a freeze in an essential program that offered tuition assistance to low income families at the beginning of the year. Now it appears that we may be facing long-term or permanent loss of federal funding. Our state is accused of rampant fraud, yet the systems the state have in place make fraud nearly impossible.

I have an actively operating program in Denver that is located in one of the lowest income areas of the city. I set this program up knowing that we had a program, CCAP, which operated for decades with no interruption and supported families of the income level my program serves in accessing quality child care. My business model relied on this program being there.

Then, at the start of 2025, the funding was frozen. We steadily lost enrolled families as they were removed from the program for one reason or another. Normally, those families would be replaced with new families, but the funding freeze prevented new families from joining the program.

I knew I had to do something to keep enrollment up and support lower and middle income families in accessing child care, so I set up a scholarship program at my school. I started offering income qualified families discounted tuition between $500-$850 per month. A steep drop from the standard $1500-$1700 per month of my full pay rates. I also allowed a couple of families in dire situations to attend for free. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m bad a capitalism because I care too much about people.

This little guy in my program is one of our few remaining students on state subsidy. He is one of three children living with a single mom, who works very hard to provide for her kids. Here he is giving some dinosaurs a “bath” after he played with them in the sand. It’s hard to describe how many benefits a 3-year-old like this one gets from being in a program like ours. It’s only possible because of public funding.

I made some small cuts to staff hours, but we still needed most of our people and I didn’t want to cause these incredible teachers, who were loyal to our program for years, to lose their employment. I kept hoping the freeze was just temporary.

With the new, vicious and unnecessary funding freezes from the Trump administration, it appears that support for lower income families in Colorado will likely dry up completely. Our state is in a severe budget shortfall as it is, mostly due to a terrible law we have call the Taxpayers Bill of Rights that hamstrings our state government from saving money and reallocating funds as needed.

The new program I’m opening in the suburbs of Denver is located in a much higher income area. I’m charging a high tuition and not offering scholarships, because the families in that community can pay for it. It’s clear to me as a small business owner that I need to focus my resources on serving the highest income families, because it’s the only way to pay my teachers living wages, offer them good benefits, and still have enough to take home and care for myself and save for my future.

This year, one of my money saving strategies was to not pay myself. While I limped through, it’s not something I can do long-term. I have to make a living. I want to serve children and families across income levels and social strata. I want to be an asset to my community. But eventually, my mortgage, retirement, and health care needs have to matter.

2025 was an expensive year because of the loss of funding and because I’ve been spending money on a program that isn’t yet open. The idea is that this program will be profitable and I can start paying off the massive debts I’ve incurred getting it off the ground.

So, how much was the total financial loss on my child care business in 2025? $69,286 That’s a -380% difference from 2024. It’s not sustainable. Serving low income families cannot be done in our current political climate.

There’s a very good chance that my Denver program will close next year, along with many others located in lower income areas. My prediction for 2026 is that we will witness a slow collapse of the child care industry, which will lead to seriously negative consequences for the economy.

People can’t work if they don’t have care. If people can’t work, they can’t pay for housing, food and other basic necessities. If they can’t pay for those necessities, they will fall into homelessness, addiction, violence, and desperation. Our children will suffer. Our communities will suffer.

As I’m writing this post, a parent from my program is texting me asking if she can borrow $60 because she doesn’t have enough money to feed her young children before her next paycheck comes. Their father was killed unexpectedly two years ago while she was pregnant with her youngest child and she has spiraled into poverty since. This mother is doing everything she can for her children, but our systems aren’t designed to give her the support she needs.

Without boldness in our political leaders, not just in their rhetoric but in funding that backs up their words with real commitment, we are frankly…fucked.

Right now I’m in the process of trying to open my second location. After five months of fighting with the city to get a permit to do a very simple remodel on an existing school building, (you can learn more about that saga here) construction seemed to be moving along smoothly. Until the dreaded email that hit my inbox last week…

“They had a snafu with the fire wall. They built a 2.5 inch wall and it needs to be 3.5 inches thick.” The new walls we’re required to build to create a fire barrier between my program and the other businesses in the building was built wrong. They have to tear them out and build them again.

This is the kind of problem that anyone who has gone through a major construction project has dealt with, but it’s also the kind of problem that can be a death knell to an already financially precarious situation. This project is entirely funded by my good credit score and my home equity. It feels like a house of cards.

A mural in the hallway of my new child care program. Fortunately, this is not one of the walls that needs to be torn down.

“Child Care Deserts” Are a Favorite Political Talking Point

In the past few years, talk of “child care deserts” has surged in political discourse. It’s now common knowledge that many communities significantly lack the number of child care seats needed to serve the number of families who have young children and want or need to work.

A quick search for the term “child care desert” landed me quotes from dozens of elected officials from both major parties speaking about the need for expanded access to child care programs. Here is a sampling of a few:

Governor Tony Evers (D-WI) - 2023: “Fifty-four percent of Wisconsinites today live in a child care desert—where there are few to no high-quality options for child care in their neighborhood or community. And even if there is a nearby child care provider, it still might not be affordable for a working family.” First Five Years Fund

Governor Kristi Noem (R-SD) - 2023: “I know that one of the biggest challenges that families in South Dakota face today is access to childcare. Families might have to go on a wait list for months.” First Five Years Fund

State Senator Jamaal Bailey (D-NY) - 2022: “As a dad to two young girls, childcare access is deeply personal. Lack of affordable childcare is an economic justice and social justice issue that disproportionately impacts women of color and communities in child care deserts like the Bronx.” New York Governor

Del. Evan Worrell (R-WV) - 2024: “We need to help families so that they can be in the workforce. If you’re a single parent or the sole breadwinner, you can’t afford thousands of dollars in child care.” StatelineWest Virginia Watch

Congresswoman Judy Chu (D-CA) - 2024: “Over 50 percent of people in the United States live in a child care desert, and that number is even higher for Latino and low-income communities.” House

U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) - 2024: Barrasso emphasized that with the prevalence of child care deserts, parents are forced to make decisions about whether or not to participate in the workforce. First Five Years Fund

Everyone knows the lack of access to child care is a serious issue. It’s a bipartisan issue, which means there should be hope for addressing it, right? But, alas, while there is a lot of talk, there are very few real solutions being offered. Because solutions cost money and nobody seems to want to pay.

The Many Steps to Getting Open

Opening a child care program is complex. We are a heavily regulated industry and must address a number of state and local hurdles to get to ribbon cutting. Come with me on a journey to open doors!

1. Regulatory Review: Before we do anything, we must review, interpret and understand the myriad regulations we face. From square footage to plumbing to zoning, we need to know what we’re up against when it comes to finding the right location and building the right playgrounds and classrooms.

2. Location Hunt: Finding the right location can be a serious challenge, even in areas with high demand for child care. The site has to have the right zoning, space for parking and playgrounds, and enough room to build the spacious classrooms regulations require us to have.

3. Zoning Approval: Just because a site technically fits within the zoning code, doesn’t mean it’s going to be approved. Many child care programs run up against significant opposition from neighbors, which can lead to a viable project shutting down before it starts. It turns out, many people are infuriated by the thought of having to hear the sounds of children playing outside.

4. Construction: Whether it’s a new building or a remodel, construction (as you saw in the opening of this essay) comes with any number of challenges, delays, and unexpected surprises. Even when things go smoothly, it’s very expensive!

5. Business License: Yes, zoning approved you to build a child care. But does that mean that the process of getting your business licensing will be simple? Not always!

6. Insurance: Once construction is complete and your business is licensed you can begin, shopping around for insurance. Do you know much about insurance rates for child care programs? It doesn’t come cheap!

7. Furniture & Materials: In order to be approved for a child care license, programs must have all of their furniture and materials purchased, assembled, and in place. We must be fully stocked and set up before the health department or child care licensing will come do an inspection. It can date 30-90 days for the inspection to happen once the application is submitted.

8. Hiring & Training: In order to be approved for a child care license, programs must also have their employees hired and fully trained. The state will review their files as part of the licensing process.

9. Marketing & Enrollment: Getting the word out about a new business is always a challenge. There is a lot of noise to cut through. Many parents are going to be hesitant to enroll if they can’t first tour the program and meet the employees. Most programs open with very few children and lots of staff in the hopes that they can get parents in the door quickly once they are operational.

This full process takes most people one to three years to complete. For me, it will be about a year-and-a-half. That’s a lot of up front investment in time and money before any income is possible.

Who is Going to Pay for This?

Most of the time, starting a licensed child care facility takes enormous sums of debt. That debt has to be repaid monthly, even though it can take six months to a year (sometimes more) to get a program open once a location is set. The person or people opening the program have to have enough cash reserves to pay this debt back while having no income.

Now consider the people who work in the early childhood education profession. Pay varies by area, but lead teachers nationally on average make $15-$21 per hour and assistant teachers make $12-$17 per hour. Most of these folks are highly skilled and deeply knowledgeable regarding child development and health and safety regulations. They’re the exact people we want founding and leading programs.

Many of these professionals have dreams of opening their own programs. It is an industry dominated by women, many of them women of color. Founding a child care program should be a path to financial stability for these teachers and their families, but who is going to loan them hundreds of thousands of dollars when their wages are this low?

New Mexico has just launched an initiative to offer universal child care to all families in the state. This includes a fund to offer low interest loans to child care programs to start or expand. From what I’ve read, the funding allocated to that program is about $3 million. That’s enough to open 2-5 new programs (depending on program size) and serve a couple hundred children.

I appreciate the example that New Mexico is setting with this program, but I’m left with many questions. How is a fund of only $3 million supposed to have a meaningful impact on the many thousands of missing child care slots? Who is lending this money? I imagine it going to community lenders, such as CDFIs. While these programs tend to have slightly more lenient lending standards than traditional commercial banks, they still have strict underwriting standards and I’m concerned many of the ECE professionals hoping to start new programs will be excluded.

How Do We Close the Funding Gap?

I’m interested in building a robust early childhood system that creates true opportunity for early childhood teachers to become program leaders and build long-term financial stability for themselves while still keeping care affordable for families. I’m hungry for solutions that get us there.

We need public funding invested in early childhood programs. We need private employers invested in supporting child care. We need ALL HANDS ON DECK to address the many gaps that keep child care inaccessible and unaffordable.

I love the idea New Mexico has of offering low interest loans to programs so that can start or expand services. I’d also love to see straight up grants that do the same thing but don’t require any payback. We can offer tax credits to landlords who help cover the costs of construction or offer rent at below market rates to child care programs. We can offer tax credits to employers who subsidize tuition assistance for their employees.

We need creative solutions that utilize both public and private funds to level the playing field. None of us want to see a child care system dominated by private equity firms. But if we don’t make some big changes soon, they’re going to be the only ones who can afford to run these programs.

Pamela currently serves as CEO of Mile High Early Learning, a multi-site early learning program dedicated to providing child care and wraparound services to the Denver metro area’s highest need families. In this conversation we talk about the real-world impacts of subsidy freezes and potential pathways to creating more affordable, equitable, high-quality solutions.

We specifically discuss a Colorado based program called Colorado Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP). This program is designed to fund child care tuition for lower income families who are working or in school. That funding has been frozen for a year. We discuss how that has impacted both of our programs.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Would you be willing to start by just telling me a little bit about you, your professional journey and the work you’re doing today?

Let’s see. I came to Colorado 30 years ago and actually started working at the Clayton Foundation in the program that was research and demonstration project that turned into Early Head Start. And so I was with the foundation and then the Head Start program, and also Clayton had the first charter school in Denver Public Schools. And then I went to the city and ran the city’s Head Start program for five years, and then helped launch the Denver Preschool Program, and was the first Chief Operating Officer there. Then I came to Mile High Early Learning.

What is your education background and how did you end up working at Clayton and doing that research?

I went to non-traditional schools for my degrees. I didn’t do a traditional degree path. I believe in an interdisciplinary approach that’s really integrated with the practical. My doctorate educational leadership. Yeah, I think that’s the case for a lot of people in early learning.

There are many pathways. And I think the fact that we keep many pathways open is is essential. Because just a four year degree pathway is going to cut a lot of people who are really essential to this work.

Yeah, I think that’s true. And I’m not sure that the teacher preparation programs that we’ve have are, well, innovative. I think they’ve become more innovative, but we also know that when we require bachelor degrees in early childhood, that our diversity of our staff decreases significantly. So that’s something we’ve tried to do here, too, is create some pathways for our staff, first just to get into early childhood, so the Child Development Associate credential, and then we have a program that focuses on inclusive practices in classrooms, and then also worked with University of Colorado Denver for a place-based bachelor’s program.

It was an innovation program that was grant funded, no longer is, but the idea was that the curriculum would be individualized for each of the students and would be based on their education history, experience, and that they would be able to do the work at their place of work.

We had somebody on site to also work with those staff who were going through that program. And then it’s, it’s really, that’s sort of what I, my learning experiences were, that you have to be in the real world. So it’s great to have the theoretical conceptual, but let’s put it into practice and see, we know that it differs.

So how have you seen that work in comparison with the more traditional pathway to becoming a teacher? What have you noticed are the ways it’s better, the ways it’s more challenging?

Well, I don’t think we’ve found the answer to alternative pathways. I think it’s been a fight, frankly. When we were coming up with standards for the early childhood workforce, course, and had one of the plans, the one previous to this one, there was quite a push to mandate a degree. And I just that was the one thing that I was not, I was willing to fight against. Because again, I think because of the impact to our teachers, teachers of color who’ve been involved in for a long time, but also who haven’t had the same opportunities. But are still skilled, knowledgeable educators.

I’m glad that we don’t have that as a requirement. It’s something also in the universal preschool that we’ve really, I really worked to maintain is let’s, we should not mandate a four year degree. I think that if we mandate degrees, then we need to be able to change the teacher preparation curriculum. So that really is more responsive to different cultures, you know, language, and also needs to be funded. So funded, boy, is that an essential component!

Well, intentioned regulations and reforms are nice, but when they don’t come with funding, they really can create a slippery slope of other problems, which is related to the topic I initially reached out to you about discussing today, which is CCAP. So As we both know, this program has been around for a very long time and has, I think most program providers would say, has not provided the amount of funding that we would like to see so that we can maintain high quality and offer great compensation and benefits to our teachers.

This mandate that came from the Biden administration that was very well-intentioned to increase our funding and the structure of the program did not come with funding to make it possible. And the result is that we have seen counties for the past year or more freezing that funding and making it unavailable to new families to access. Mile High Early Learning tends to serve communities with higher needs. So I’d love to know a little bit more about the communities that your program serves, and then more specifically what impacts you’ve seen from this change in subsidy availability in Colorado.

I would like to first address the that it’s not just about the Biden rules that have impacted this program. There was additional funding provided, not the funding in order to implement fully. Second is that the state had been underpaying providers for infants and toddlers, the reimbursement rate It was, I think it was 25% of what it was supposed to be. And so when we created the Department of Early Childhood, one of the things we put in there is that we asked them to do a different cost model that would be based on actual cost as opposed to a market rate survey. We knew that was an issue when we were creating the new department.

The third thing is that the ARPA funding, the COVID funding, if you will, ended and some of those programs that had been funded, again, that supported, you know, early childhood programs, were not one-time programs. They were ongoing. And so when that funding ended, there wasn’t a plan for what needs to happen now. So I just wanted to include those.

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What would you, if you could go back in time, would you change anything about how that funding was used or how the Department of Early Childhood was set up?

So unfunded mandates, yes, are a challenge. And people have been advocating for serious changes to early childhood practices, funding practices, if you will, for a very long time. And so I would just say it’s been disappointing that that hasn’t been highlighted, that the reasons for the policies are actually really good. And so if we believe leave that, then let’s figure out how to fund them. I don’t think the way to fund them is by freezing enrollment, which eventually also will, you know, we won’t be able to serve young children. At some point, it will only be children who are attending school age programs. So additional, so the funds then get our focus school districts.

I just, I had hoped to see more focus on how do we not drop 10,000 children from CCAP, that it became a matter of balancing the budget instead of considering how to make this work and consider the needs of families.

So what impact you seen directly in your programs at Mile High Early Learning?

So we are the largest provider in Denver for families with CCAP. It constitutes about 15% of our overall budget. We serve counties in Denver Metro. And so from January to June, we saw $300,000 deficit in funds. We have closed two centers. So that means we are serving fewer children. We have reduced our overall slots to 38 infant toddler slots. And we know right that those are essential and that they, we can’t even meet the need that we have. But in order for us to continue serving families, we had to reduce the number of slots that we made available.

You’ve seen a lot of families utilize the CCAP program. What, what have you observed to be the results of that funding being available to families?

That family, the adult caregivers or parents can go to work, that they can, improve their family circumstances. Women can go to work and know that their children are in a place where they are also learning and growing. We’ve had parents come back and let us know what it was like to have subsidized care and then to have their children at Mile High Early Learning. It really benefitted them.

We also have additional wraparound supports, but they report to us they’re in a better place because of being able to afford quality child care. I think that’s the other piece. People talk a lot about needing child care, and what they really need is affordable, quality child care and so that’s part of our mission too right is to help people understand what that what that means and what that costs.

Yeah I think that is essential in the child care debates that it can’t just be about cost right and how do we how do we make it affordable, because just making it affordable can have a variety of other consequences.

How do we make it affordable while retaining quality, while ensuring livable wages and quality benefits for the professionals in the industry? You know, which is, that is a challenging math problem. What do you think are the solutions? What are the policy solutions? What are the social frameworks?

Well, you know, for many years, right, we’ve been talking about more public funding and people understanding child care as a public good. That, it just hasn’t worked. Even in the Biden administration, you know, there was an opportunity. We actually thought, you know, we were so close to fully funding preschool, increasing funding for childcare, and then politics, if you will, stopped that. And so I think we have to look at different funding models. I think we have to find different partners who understand that we are growing the next generation. And so we have to broaden our community and who we are asking in what it is that we’re doing.

I just think that what we’ve done for years, writing grants to federal or government sources to philanthropic sources that donors, I mean, all of that has just changed so much. I just don’t think we’re gonna be able to raise the money that we need. So we need to think about how do we do this different? And for us, it’s also holding on to our mission that we want to serve families who are farthest from opportunities. Those are our people. And so how do we engage a broader community to help us do that?

Who do you imagine being part of that community that you engage?

This is something I’ve been thinking about as this past year has unfolded, but if it feels more violent than that, just unfolding.

Yeah, it does feel more violent than that when you see the impacts of the families on the ground.

So it could be businesses or companies who are in business because of early childhood. And so are those, you know, people who create curricula, or our assessment tools, or is there something more than just a discount on purchasing? Is it you need you to invest in our business? And there’s some mutual benefits, right? It’s obviously there’s a contract for paying you for the supplies, and then we’re also promoting you. Because you are on our website or on all of our printed material.

How do we use our position, Mile High Early Learning’s position in the community as, look, we’re using this because not only are we using their curriculum, but they are investing in early childhood in these ways. And I think it’s different than corporate, you know, annual corporate giving, that’s not what I mean. I really mean there’s an integrated partnership. Perhaps it’s, you know, food companies that are not only serving early childhood, and are we sort of, could we help them broaden who they are working with? And again, do we become, I don’t really think a spokesperson, but the values align with our values.

You spoke to the violence of these policy changes. What have you seen on the ground? You talked a little bit about the impact to your program, but what about the impact to the people?

I think a lot of fear, frankly, fear from our families, from our staff. You know, “how are we gonna make this work?” The resources are fewer.

Some people staying home instead of working. People taking care of extended family members. A lot of our staff do that. We saw that during the pandemic as well, that they were the ones who were taking in relatives, friends. But this really, this sense of scarcity and not knowing where the food’s going to come from, you know, are they going to continue to have a job? And then when you’re scared, right? It’s really, that’s a challenge to figure out what to do. And also, then how do you think about a different way? How do you innovate? But I think for families, it’s, yeah, it’s hunger and fear. I think it’s being scared and trying to figure out how to make it work.

The story of poverty in America, of financial struggle in America, and it’s just compounded that, like this, this path out has now become another contributing factor too. Which I’m seeing it a lot.

I have two programs, one in Denver in the Westwood neighborhood and the other in Arvada in a very high income neighborhood. And it’s been very interesting to observe the significant differences, you know, it’s just disturbing, right?

There is this growing class divide in early care and education that is just unacceptable, morally repugnant, and I don’t know what to do about it either, which is why I’m trying to talk to people, learn as much as I can, facilitate as many conversations as I can, educate people who aren’t in this world on what’s going on, because it’s essential work that we do.

Yeah, and I’ve taught policy, early childhood policy, I mean, this honestly has been going on for more than 100 years. And the belief about where women should be, frankly, working outside the home, in the home with their children, and really the focus has been on white women, right? I even found a quote that said, well, black women are used to working outside the home, so we’re not talking about them. This was from a long time back, but still.

I mean, you can’t talk about any type of class in America without examining the racial components that are tied to it and the privilege components. I serve a lot of immigrant families and the particular challenges that an immigrant community faces that are compounded on top of all of this other stuff. We actually want immigrants to succeed in America, too.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, that was the first, the first blow, if you will.

So, final question. This substack that that I publish is read by a lot of people who care about the work we do, but are not in it. So we have policymakers, nonprofit leaders, people in state and local government roles, and journalists, a lot of folks like that. And then just everyday people who are concerned with the care economy.

So for those folks who read this publication, what is the message you want to give them or what is an action step you want to ask them to take that they could walk away from reading this and maybe do something or share something.

I think we have to look for other sources of funding for childcare than government or public funding. So I would say it would be help us identify or help us create that model. What does that business model look like?

Do you imagine potentially like a public private partnership type thing where there is still public funding is part of it, but it’s braided in with other sources as well?

Yes, I do. Yes. That’s a good way of saying it.

Is there anything else you want to say or share before we wrap up?

I just thank you for what you’re doing. I think it’s I think it’s just I think it’s critical and I think it’s our responsibility. To, again, work for those who don’t have the kind of access and privilege that I do. So that’s been my commitment, being part of my line, is to continue to focus on that, that those are the people that we want to serve and elevate.

Well, having observed your career closely, over the last, you didn’t know who I was, but I’ve known who you were for a very long time. And you have very much shown up and lived that commitment. It’s very clear.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

I want to thank Pamela Harris for her candor and graciousness. You can learn more about Mile High Early Learning and make a tax deductible donation here: https://milehighearlylearning.org/

I’ve summarized portions of those articles here and woven in information based on research from the Common Sense Institute, Executives Partnering to Invest in Children, and Colorado Children’s Campaign to further illustrate the layered economic impacts of these policies.

I’m standing in my preschool classroom at Westwood Academy in west Denver on a warm autumn morning. My brilliant preschool lead teacher is leading a group of 2.5 to 5 year olds through morning group time. They sing songs, they read a book, and they do the daily calendar, carefully counting through each day of the month that has passed so far before adding today’s date to the wall. I see how gifted this teacher is. I see how engaged and interested the young learners are.

But here’s what you can’t see in that peaceful scene: seven empty chairs. Seven slots in our sixteen-child preschool classroom that should be filled with children who are learning, playing, and preparing for kindergarten. Seven families on a waiting list who desperately need care but can’t afford it. Seven revenue streams that aren’t coming through our doors, slowly eroding the financial foundation that keeps this program running.

I have slots available. I could serve families tomorrow. If there were subsidies.

When Public Funding Disappears

Let me back up and explain how we got here. In January 2025, Denver joined counties across Colorado in freezing new CCCAP enrollments. The same well-intentioned but unfunded federal mandates that I wrote about previously—requiring higher reimbursement rates without providing the money to pay for them—have driven program costs up by over $20 million in Colorado. States were left holding the bag, and their response has been to freeze or cut services.

The impact on my program has been immediate and devastating. As families move away and slots open up, I can’t fill them. Not because demand has disappeared—I still get calls from families who need care. But without CCCAP support, they simply cannot afford our tuition. So the chairs stay empty, and every month our revenue drops a little more.

A picture of the preschool classroom at the author’s school

The Numbers Tell the Story

This isn’t just happening at my program. According to the Common Sense Institute, all ten of Colorado’s largest counties have CCCAP enrollment freezes in place. The number of children with frozen enrollments has exploded by 130% in just six months—from 4,700 in April to 11,000 by October. Denver County alone saw a 1,200% increase, from 83 frozen children to 1,072.

Let me translate what those numbers mean in real terms: That’s 11,000 children whose parents can’t access the subsidized child care they need to work. That’s 11,000 families making impossible choices between earning a paycheck and caring for their children. And that’s dozens of child care programs like mine watching their enrollment—and their ability to stay open—slowly disappear.

The economic modeling is equally grim. If even 20% of parents who rely on CCCAP have to reduce their work hours or stop working entirely, Colorado will lose 7,300 jobs by 2029. GDP will decline by $1.1 billion. Disposable personal income will drop by $670 million. These aren’t abstract statistics—they’re families losing income, businesses losing workers, and communities losing economic vitality.

This is Happening Everywhere

I wish I could tell you this was just a Colorado problem, but it’s not. I’m hearing the same stories from providers across the country.

In Arkansas, McKinley Hess runs Conway Cradle Care, serving teen mothers who need child care to stay in school. When the state put families on a waiting list for subsidies, she faced an impossible choice: kick out the eight teen moms she’d just enrolled, or provide free care for their infants so they could continue their education. She chose to provide free care, absorbing over $20,000 in losses. Then in September, Arkansas announced they were slashing reimbursement rates by 36%—from $56 a day for infants to just $36.

In Indiana, Jen Palmer at The Growing Garden Learning Center is losing $260,000 annually due to rate cuts. She’s laid off seven teachers and taken over teaching a preschool classroom herself in the mornings. “I can sustain for a year,” she told reporters. “Past that, I’m going to start dipping into my retirement savings.”

One of the families at Jen’s program had a toddler who had just spoken his first word in English—a huge breakthrough for a child with language delays that her teachers had been working on for months. Then the state changed the payment structure and the family’s tuition jumped to $167 a month. They had to pull him out. Now that little boy sits in a car seat all day while his mother delivers for Uber instead of interacting with other children, playing, and developing the language skills he needs. As Jen said, “That just set that little guy years back.”

The Vicious Cycle

Here’s the business reality that many people don’t understand about child care: when slots are empty, the whole financial model falls apart. We still have to pay rent, utilities, insurance, and staff salaries whether those seven chairs are filled or not. Our fixed costs don’t decrease just because enrollment drops. But our revenue does.

This creates a vicious cycle. Lower enrollment means less revenue. Less revenue means we might have to cut staff or reduce program quality. Reduced quality makes it harder to attract the families who can still afford to pay. And the whole thing spirals downward until programs start closing their doors.

As a business owner, I can see the writing on the wall. Child care has become a service for high-income families, not low-income families. If the government isn’t going to fund subsidies that make care accessible, then child care programs have no choice but to locate in higher-income neighborhoods where families can afford market-rate tuition.

The Growing Divide

This is creating a stark geographic divide in access to quality care. While states like Colorado, Arkansas, and Indiana are pulling back on child care investments, others are moving in the opposite direction. New Mexico just launched the nation’s first universal free child care program, funded permanently through oil and gas revenues. Vermont passed a payroll tax to expand child care funding. Connecticut established an endowment to route surplus state funds into early learning.

What does this mean? It means that a child’s access to quality care increasingly depends on which state they happen to be born in. Children in one state receive the care and early education that prepares them for kindergarten while children across state lines lose access entirely. The opportunity gap grows wider before kids even start school.

What We Need From You

I established my program in west Denver because I believed in serving the families in this community. I saw how CCAP strengthened our neighborhood by giving hardworking parents the support they needed to build careers and create better futures for their children. It was working exactly the way we want public support programs to work—as a hand up that helps families achieve financial security and break generational patterns of poverty.

Now that program has been frozen, and I’m watching the fabric of my community fray. Parents who would otherwise be working, paying rent, buying groceries, and contributing to the local economy are trapped at home because their young children can’t be left alone. Applications for TANF and subsidized housing are surging. Food bank lines are getting longer.

The solution is clear: consistent, dedicated public funding for child care. Not unfunded mandates. Not temporary pandemic relief. Real, permanent funding that recognizes child care as the public good it is.

This is where you come in. We need noisy, persistent advocacy from everyday people. Call your local and state officials and tell them you support funding for child care. If you’re in Colorado, specifically mention CCAP and demand that the enrollment freeze be lifted with adequate funding. Call your US Senators and Representatives and tell them you support reauthorization of the Child Care Development Block Grant with increased funding to cover federal mandates.

Child care isn’t just a “parent issue” or a “women’s issue.” It’s an economic issue that affects every single person in our communities. When parents can’t work because they can’t access care, businesses can’t fill positions. When child care programs close, teachers lose jobs. When young children miss out on early learning opportunities, they start kindergarten behind and that gap often follows them throughout their education.

Right now, I’m watching seven empty chairs in my preschool classroom every day, knowing there are families who need those spots but can’t access them because of frozen subsidies. I’m calculating how long I can sustain this financial reality before I have to make difficult choices about my program’s future.

The only way we move the needle is by making noise and demanding that elected officials prioritize pro-family, pro-business child care policy. Are you going to make the call?

Before we talk solutions, we need to understand the problem. And the problem isn’t greedy child care centers or lazy policymakers. The problem is that high-quality child care for infants and toddlers is inherently expensive, and there’s no getting around that without public investment.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

In 2018, median annual child care costs ranged from $5,357 to $17,171 per child, depending on location and age. In very large counties, infant care in center-based programs consumed 19.3% of median household income. For lower-income families, that percentage climbs even higher. In the metropolitan area I live in, the median child care cost is over $2,000 per month, which consumes nearly 22% of the median household income.

The core issue is simple math. States require one caregiver for every three to four infants. That’s not arbitrary – babies need constant supervision and attention. They nap four times a day, eat every two hours, and require one-on-one care for their safety and development. Those low ratios mean child care is incredibly labor-intensive.

But here’s where it gets painful: early childhood educators earn a national median wage of about $13 per hour with few benefits. They’re some of the lowest-paid workers in our economy, despite doing some of the most important work. The average child care worker earns less than what it costs to keep the lights on at most programs. In the area I live in, the median wage is closer to $19 per hour, but that translates to higher tuition rates for families.

Add to that the operational costs – rent, startup debt, utilities, insurance, food, supplies, licensing fees, background checks, and safety requirements – and you have a situation where providers can’t lower prices without going out of business, and families can’t afford to pay more without making impossible choices about their own work and financial security.

Economists call this a market failure. I call it a crisis that’s been decades in the making.

What States Are Actually Doing About It

While the federal government has debated and stalled, several states decided they couldn’t wait. They’ve implemented comprehensive strategies that address affordability, access, and quality simultaneously. And the results? They’re working.

New Mexico: Leading the Way on Universal Care

The New Mexico Model

The Strategy: In 2022, New Mexico became the first state to enshrine a constitutional right to early education for children ages 0-5. The state funds this through its Early Childhood Trust Fund, which draws from oil and gas revenues.

What They’ve Done:

• Offered free child care to families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level (about $120,000 for a family of four)

• Recently expanded to universal free child care for all income levels, starting in November 2025

• Implemented the Competitive Pay for Professionals grant, providing $3/hour wage increases for 16,000 child care staff statewide

• Set wage floors at $15/hour for entry-level workers and $20/hour for lead teachers

• Increased reimbursement rates to providers based on actual cost of care, not market surveys

• Provided free college tuition for early childhood educators

The Results: Within 18 months, 70% of 4-year-olds were enrolled in public preschool. Classrooms that were closed due to staffing shortages began reopening. Most importantly, New Mexico is building a sustainable system that supports children, families, and educators simultaneously.

Within 18 months, 70% of 4-year-olds were enrolled in public preschool. Classrooms that were closed due to staffing shortages began reopening. Most importantly, New Mexico is building a sustainable system that supports children, families, and educators simultaneously.

Vermont: Building Consensus Through Public Investment

Act 76: Vermont’s Child Care Transformation

The Strategy: Vermont passed Act 76 in 2023, committing $125 million annually to transform its child care system. The funding comes from a modest payroll contribution – 0.44% split between employers (0.33%) and employees (0.11%).

What They’ve Done:

• Expanded eligibility for child care financial assistance from 350% to 575% of the federal poverty level (up to $179,400 for a family of four)

• Increased provider reimbursement rates by 35%

• Changed reimbursement from attendance-based to enrollment-based, providing predictable revenue for providers

• Eliminated copayments for families earning up to 175% of the federal poverty level

• Invested $20 million in direct grants to help providers increase capacity, improve facilities, and expand hours

The Results: In 2024, more child care programs opened than closed for the first time since 2018. Over 1,000 new child care spaces were created. Enrollment in tuition assistance increased by 2,500 children. Families like the are saving an average of $2,000 monthly after qualifying for assistance.

Vermont’s success offers an important lesson: sustainable child care funding requires dedicated revenue sources. The modest payroll contribution means the system isn’t vulnerable to annual budget battles, and businesses understand they’re investing in their own workforce stability.

Massachusetts: Targeting Workforce Compensation

Commonwealth Cares for Children

The Strategy: Massachusetts invested $475 million in new state funding through its Commonwealth Cares for Children grants to directly offset provider operating costs and support higher educator pay.

What They’ve Done:

• Provided grants directly to child care providers to increase compensation

• Invested an additional $15 million in the Early Education and Care Staff Pilot Program, which subsidizes care for children of early educators

• Focused on recruitment and retention through competitive compensation

The Results: By addressing the workforce crisis directly, Massachusetts is tackling one of the root causes of limited child care access. When educators can afford to stay in the profession – and even afford child care for their own children – programs can maintain consistent staffing and quality.

The Economic Case: Why This Investment Pays for Itself

Here’s what skeptics miss: investing in child care isn’t spending – it’s infrastructure. Like roads, bridges, and broadband, child care is what makes economic activity possible. And the returns are substantial.

Economic Benefits of Child Care Investment

• Workforce Participation: When families have access to affordable child care, more parents – especially mothers – can work or advance their careers. Vermont businesses report that Act 76 is helping them address workforce shortages.

• Economic Multiplier: Every dollar spent on early childhood education generates $7.30 in economic returns, according to research. That’s a 13% annual return on investment.

• Reduced Poverty: Child care expenses push an estimated 134,000 families into poverty each year. New Mexico’s investments helped reduce child poverty from 27% (measuring only parental income) to below 9% when including anti-poverty programs.

• Business Retention: Reliable, affordable child care is essential for recruiting and retaining talent, especially in tight labor markets.

The financial case extends beyond workforce participation. When early childhood educators earn living wages, they spend money in their communities. When families aren’t spending 20-30% of their income on child care, they have money for housing, food, and savings. When children receive high-quality early education, they’re more likely to succeed in school and less likely to need costly interventions later.

The Community Impact: Beyond the Numbers

Statistics and economic returns matter, but they don’t capture the full story of what happens when a state gets serious about child care. In New Mexico, classrooms that sat empty due to staffing shortages are reopening. Rural communities that were child care deserts now have options. Indigenous communities are receiving investments in culturally responsive care.

In Vermont, a family saving $2,000 monthly on child care meant the difference between financial crisis and stability. That’s money that stays in Vermont’s economy. That’s a family that doesn’t have to choose between work and child care. That’s two children receiving quality early education.

For early childhood educators, the wage increases mean dignity and recognition for vital work. They provide both care and education for our youngest citizens. The work is essential and requires significant skills and education to do well.

What Works: Key Principles for Affordable, Quality Child Care

The Essential Elements

Based on what’s working in states across the country, successful child care initiatives share these characteristics:

1. Sustainable, Dedicated Funding
Whether it’s New Mexico’s trust fund or Vermont’s payroll contribution, successful programs need revenue sources that aren’t subject to annual appropriations battles. Child care infrastructure requires long-term stability.

2. Provider Rate Reform
Reimbursement rates must reflect the actual cost of providing quality care, not market prices that reflect an already-broken system. New Mexico’s cost estimation model and Vermont’s 35% rate increase both recognize this reality.

3. Workforce Investment
You cannot have quality child care without quality educators, and you cannot retain quality educators at poverty wages. Direct wage supplements, pay parity with K-12 teachers, and benefits like free college tuition all help professionalize the field.

4. Broad Eligibility
The child care crisis affects families across the income spectrum. Vermont’s expansion to 575% of FPL and New Mexico’s universal approach acknowledge that middle-class families struggle with costs too. This also builds broader political support.

5. Provider Flexibility and Support
States that succeed give providers resources to increase capacity, improve facilities, and expand hours – while respecting that different communities need different solutions. Home-based and center-based care both have crucial roles.

6. Enrollment-Based Reimbursement
Paying providers based on enrollment rather than attendance gives them predictable revenue to meet fixed costs like rent and payroll. This is how the private market works – and how the subsidy system should too.

The Path Forward

We’re at an inflection point. States have shown that comprehensive child care investment works – for families, for providers, for educators, and for the economy. The question now is whether other states and the federal government will follow their lead.

The child care crisis didn’t happen overnight, and it won’t be solved overnight. But New Mexico, Vermont, and Massachusetts prove that we don’t have to accept the status quo. We can build systems where families can afford care, providers can sustain their businesses, and educators can earn living wages. We can create infrastructure that allows parents to work, children to thrive, and communities to grow.

This isn’t about choosing between affordability, access, and quality. The states leading the way show us that we can have all three – but only if we recognize that child care is public infrastructure that requires public investment.

The market has failed. The evidence is clear. What we do next is up to us.

What You Can Do

• Contact your state legislators and governor to express support for dedicated child care funding

• Share stories from your community about child care challenges and their economic impact

• Support local advocacy organizations working on early childhood education policy

• Vote for candidates who prioritize early childhood education infrastructure

• If you’re a business owner, speak up about how child care access affects your workforce

As many of you know, I’m in the process of opening a new child care program in the suburbs of Denver. I am in the 9th circle of permitting hell and it is costing me money and causing problems for families who want to enroll their children in my program. Allow me to open the gates to the firey pits of despair from which the bureaucrats of municipal government conduct their miserable business…

I am not trying to build a new building. I am not trying to open a school in a place where there aren’t any schools. In fact, I’m trying to open my program in a building that used to be an elementary school and is across the street from a public middle school. That seems very straightforward!

The building already has classrooms, bathrooms, hallways, a fire system, HVAC, and proper exits. All I want to do is build two walls, update the outlets in one room, change two floor-to-ceiling windows into doors, and put in fresh paint, ceiling tiles, and flooring. Does this sound complicated to you? It seems pretty reasonable to me. AND YET…

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We applied for our construction permit in June of this year and here we are in October with NO PERMIT!! “How can this be,” you ask? Great question! Unfortunately, I don’t have all the answers because the updates I get are very vague. The last update the zoning department put into the online system said “due date changed due to workload and schedule.”

“What does that mean,” you ask? I HAVE NO IDEA. I guess the depths of hell are full of side quests that really have an impact on the workloads and schedules of the folks who issue construction permits for the city.

There was also quite a bit of back and forth debate about the square footage of the building. It is designed to meet the required square footage for our state’s child care licensing. We have to have between 35 sq ft and 45 sq ft per child, depending on certain requirements. The rooms have to be big.

The permitting folks were concerned that, with this square footage, we’d be packing up to 300 people into our space. This would open up a whole bunch of new requirements regarding bathrooms, egress, fire suppression, etc. However, state child care regulations prevents us from having more than 10-14 kids in one room at any time. We cannot have hundreds of people in our building, that would be a violation of child care regulations.

But the zoning folks apparently don’t know about child care regulations. Why would they need to know that?! Just because they are the ones who issue construction permits for child care programs?? NONSENSE!! We don’t need to waste the time of our government offices by expecting them to communicate with one another and have a proper, complete understanding of the regulations impacting the businesses they permit. They already have so many issues with their workloads and schedules!! Poor things.

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Meanwhile, I’ve been spending money to prepare for the opening of this program. The one that was originally going to open in October. Then was going to open in January. Now is (demons in hell willing) going to open in March. I’ve paid rent. I’ve purchased furniture that I’m paying to keep in a storage unit. I’m paying for marketing. I’ve taken out loans to cover this and I’m so far away from having any income to pay them back…which means I’m not paying myself.

I also have families who are ready to enroll. They are trying to make plans. They need to know when they can get back to work after having a baby. Their employers need to know when to count on them too. And I can’t make them any reasonable promises.

Child care is the keystone species of a local economy. If we struggle, everything else in the ecosystem struggles too. When we are strong, the rest of the economy is strong. Making it nearly impossible to get a child care program open is not a great strategy for a city trying to stabilize and grow their economy.

I’m trying to be part of the solution for this community. I don’t understand why they’re making it so difficult for me and the families I’m trying to serve. We need our city and state governments to get out of the way and make the permitting and licensing process for child care (and all small business) easier and more streamlined. It’s a win for everyone.

There is one significant difference between these programs. The one located in the low income neighborhood is struggling to keep enrollment up. The one located in the high income suburb has a waitlist and daily inquiries from new families. Both areas have an equal need for high quality child care, but only one area has families with the resources to access this care.

I am the owner of both of these programs. The growing class disparity I’m witnessing in the child care industry is alarming. It isn’t just my programs, I’m hearing about these same issues from other program leaders across our region and I’m reading about it happening across the US. Putting the expense of child care solely on individual families simply isn’t working.

A photo of the reading area in one of the author’s child care program classrooms.

Public Funding Works

I established my program in the lower income area knowing that I could rely on enrollment from families involved in a decades long program called the Colorado Childcare Assistance Program (CCAP). This program pays all or part of the tuition for child care for parents who are working full time or going to school full time, but are still unable to afford child care at market rates.

For the first two years my Denver program was open, 2/3 of our enrollment was children funded through the CCAP program. I saw how this taxpayer funded initiative strengthened our community. These parents are hard working people trying to make a better life for their family. They used this funding to make it possible to build a career and eventually move away from the need for public subsidy. It’s the kind of program that works exactly the way we want to see welfare work. People get the hand up they need so they can create financial security and a strong future for their children, breaking generational patterns of struggle.

Unfortunately, counties across Colorado froze the funding on this program in late 2024 and early 2025. Well-intentioned but unfunded mandates from the Biden administration requiring higher tuition reimbursement rates for providers drove up program costs significantly. Because these demands were not paired with funding to make compliance possible, the program was frozen. Instead of an imperfect program that needed improvements, there is no program available to families who need it now.

The results are devastating for families and the communities they live in. Parents who would otherwise be working, paying rent, buying groceries, putting gas in their cars, taking their kids to community events, and purchasing household supplies can no longer do these things. Without access to child care, they can’t work, so they can’t spend money.

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Going Where the Money Lives

Several people working in local and state government have told me that applications for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and subsidized housing have gone through the roof. Food banks are overwhelmed with lines of cars full of hungry families. These capable adults that would otherwise be actively contributing to the local economy find themselves trapped in poverty because their young children cannot be left alone.

Meanwhile, child care centers located in lower income areas are finding it increasingly difficult to stay open. Many are cutting services, closing classrooms, or shutting down completely. The loss of funding is decimating the child care infrastructure in these communities. Families are losing care, teachers are losing jobs, and employers are struggling to fill open positions. Everyone loses.

As a business owner, it’s clear to me that I have to focus on serving families with money. Higher income neighborhoods are really the only place it makes sense to establish a child care program. Households bringing in less than $100k per year can’t be counted on to pay the tuition we need in order to give decent pay and benefits to our teachers and provide high-quality care at the same time. It takes money to do those things and if the government isn’t going to fund it, child care has to become a luxury service.

Funding is the Solution

How do we fix this problem? The answer is simple: public funding. Child care is a public good. (If you don’t believe me, pick up a copy of ’s excellent new book Raising a Nation: 10 Reasons Every American Has a Stake in Child Care for All.) It doesn’t matter if you have young children, you directly benefit from a robust, affordable, accessible child care system.

We need noisy, persistent advocacy from every day people like you. A collective demand for child care for all is the way forward. EVERY family should have access to safe, quality care and education for their young children. We need you, your partner, your friends, your colleagues, and your extended family to each contact elected officials and tell them you demand solutions in the form of consistent, dedicated funding.

New Mexico has recently announce free child care for all families beginning in November 2025. The funding for this program was made permanent through the use of a land grant. I’m also excited to see that they are using the existing infrastructure of independent child care centers and home child care programs instead of trying to pivot all families into public institutions. It’s a win for families. It’s a win for employers. It’s a win for the majority women-owned small businesses that make up the child care ecosystem. I’m looking forward to watching how this program rolls out. It gives me hope that big, bold solutions are possible.

For today? Do one small thing. Call your local and state officials and tell them you support funding for child care. (Enter your address into this link for a list of contact information for every elected official who represents you.) Look to see if there are any programs in your area that you can specifically mention (such as CCAP in Colorado.) Call your Senators and Representatives in the US congress and tell them you support the reauthorization of the Child Care Development Block Grant and that you’d like to see increased funding allocated to this program to cover the expense of the federal mandates I mentioned previously.

The only way we move the needle is by making noise and encouraging those who control the purse strings to prioritize pro-family, pro-business child care policy.

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I am a survivor of gun violence. It happened when I was just shy of my 4^th birthday. I survived, but not everyone in my family did. Much of the gun violence we experience in America is domestic. It happens at home more than anywhere else. This is something we must reckon with. It’s easy to focus on the terrible tragedy of public shootings. But our power lies in focusing first on the spaces where we have the most control, our homes.

The author and her stepdad not long before his death by gun violence on May 27, 1984.

Many Americans keep guns in their homes as a means of self-defense. I understand the fear. I understand the desire to keep the people you love safe. The best way to ensure this safety is to not have any guns in your home or car. The second best way is to have those guns stored, unloaded and with ammunition separate, in a locked safe with a locked trigger. Young children cannot keep themselves safe from guns. If they encounter one, they are likely to be curious. That curiosity can have devastating outcomes.

The most likely outcome of having a gun in your home is that someone in your home will be shot by said gun. It’s much less likely that it will be used in self-defense towards an unwanted intruder. We must take responsibility to ensure our children do not become one of the terrible statistics of accidental gun death. If you have a loaded gun in your nightstand, under the seat of your car, or in any other unlocked space, I implore you to get it locked up immediately – for the love of your children.

While we have the most control over what happens in our homes, we cannot ignore the very real challenges we face when it comes to public shootings and political violence. Unfortunately, we have less control over what happens when we leave our homes. But we can control how we support and parent our children and we can control how we advocate for communities that are well-resourced and supportive.

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We can prioritize raising children who are kind, compassionate, and community oriented. We can ensure they feel surrounded by love and support in our families. We can help them learn how to engage in healthy conflict resolution. We can hold them accountable when their actions fall out of line with everything I’ve just listed.

The other thing we can do is advocate for our community. We can reach out to our elected officials and tell them we want to see funding directed towards equitable housing, healthcare, and education. We know that people often turn to violence when their other needs are not being met. We need resources not just for our lowest income neighbors, but for all incomes and backgrounds.

A few essential policy solutions you can advocate for that can help prevent violence in our communities:

• Robust, affordable mental health care and addiction treatment for all people

• Un-freeze access to the Child Care Assistance Program for Colorado families

• Free child care for all families like New Mexico just announced

• Free after school programs for K-12 kids

• Sensible gun safety legislation

There are SO many more things we can advocate for that ensure our communities are well-resourced and properly supported. The research is clear that quality early education and after school programs lead to better outcomes for kids and increased community safety. My biases surely lie with these issues.

Finally, we can make our communities and children safer by taking down the temperature a few degrees on our disagreements and debates. Getting fired up about myriad issues day after day triggers our limbic systems into perpetual fight or flight. This can lead us to making impulsive, irrational, and unsafe decisions.

We must each take responsibility for how we speak and how we treat others. We must find ways to hold each other accountable without wishing the worst upon our neighbors. We must find ways to live in a community of people who hold differing opinions.

I leave you with the thoughts I shared in a Substack note this morning:

I was the same age as Charlie Kirk’s daughter when I lost two parents to gun violence. While the circumstances were different, mine was a murder-suicide involving my biological father and my stepfather, the outcome for his daughter will likely be similar to mine: a devastating grief that cannot be fully healed.

Charlie’s daughter and I belong to the same terrible club that nobody wants to belong to. We are the children of parents who died by gun violence when we were small. We often carry our pain silently.

I am grateful that she wasn’t there when her dad was shot. I was present when gun violence tore into the flesh of my family. I will live with sounds and images haunting my mind for my whole life. I fear that she will not be spared the imagery of her father’s horrific demise, because the heartless ghouls of the internet have ensured the video will have eternal audience. There’s a good chance she’ll see it one day.

I disagreed with Charlie on just about everything. But that doesn’t matter. A man was murdered. His wife has lost her partner. His children have lost their father. That is a tragedy beyond words.

Wishing death upon each other is not how we heal. Every single gun violence death in America is an unacceptable horror. We can’t assassinate our way to a better future. Our children deserve better than this.

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As a provider of a preschool program, I was also excited to participate. But it quickly became clear to me that (1) the program wasn’t quite ready for rollout and (2) the goal of the program was to move kids from small private programs into public schools. I decided to step aside and not participate, though I’m open to doing so in the future.

While I still support the idea of UPK, it’s been interesting to witness the challenges and unintended consequences of the program up close. The launch of the program was chaotic and confusing for both parents and providers. I also had concerns about offering only 10-15 hours of care per week. Most families need closer to 40-50 hours per week. This gap in the care offered and the care needed created a host of challenges for families and programs alike.

• Would schools offer full day programming if the funding only covered about 2 hours per day?

• Will families have to pay for the remaining hours of care needed?

• If a program typically charges a monthly tuition, how do they calculate the tuition cost for families?

• Can programs stack this funding with other state funding sources such as the Child Care Assistance Program?

• Will programs have the time and staff available for the increased complex accounting and compliance tied to UPK?

• If a public school only offers 2-2.5 hours per day of preschool, where do the children go for the remainder of the day? Who will transport them?

UPK, which I really do support, was designed for public schools to implement. Other programs can participate, but it’s clear we were an afterthought in the design. While private providers have built and maintained the infrastructure of early care and learning in America for decades, we do not appear to be of primary consideration in the deign and implementation of this new program.

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When our programs started to lose our preschool age children to public schools, we had to shift our budgets. In Colorado, a preschool classroom of four-year-olds can have one adult for every twelve children. Infant and toddler programs can have no more than one adult for every five children. Many have lower ratios than that to ensure quality of care.

Most center-based child care programs designed their budgets to have their preschool rooms subsidizing their infant and toddler rooms. Once we started losing enrollment of the older children, we had to raise the cost of care for infants and toddlers to offset the difference. I’ve discussed this with many child care providers, we all had to make the same choice to increase tuition for birth to three in order to balance out the loss of the fours.

I want to note that I am not a researcher nor am I aware of any research that has made a direct link between the launch of UPK and the increased cost of care. However, the correlations in the data are strong and my lived experience paired with my conversations with other providers lead me to believe that this is very likely what happened.

According to the Common Sense Institute, child care in Colorado is now outpacing the cost of inflation by about 7% year over year. The Economic Policy Institute states that in 2025, infant care in Colorado averages at $21,850 per year. It is closer to $25,000 per year in the Denver area. Tootris states that infant care in Colorado was averaging at $15,325 per year in 2023.

These numbers are staggering and cannot be ignored.

There are a few truths we all know about child care in America:

1. The cost of care is much too high for families.

2. There is not enough high-quality care available for the families who need it.

3. Early childhood professionals are not paid nearly enough for the essential work they do.

The only way to make the math work is to significantly increase the amount of government funding directed towards early care and learning. We need policy that lowers the cost for families while raising the wages of workers. We need regulations and funding that make is feasible to launch new programs in areas of high need.

We also need these policies to honor, respect, and utilize the existing infrastructure of early care and learning programs. Shifting all the children into public schools isn’t a wise or responsible solution. I think a lot of parents might cringe at the thought of sending their six-month-old to a public school.

Those of us who are powering child care in America right now need to be included in the conversation about solutions. We are small business owners. We are mostly women. We know this industry inside and out. We know how to prepare safe, loving spaces in which very young children thrive. We want to be part of the solution and we know a lot about how to get there.

When policy makers create programs without us, the unintended consequences are significant. Let’s do better…together.

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As someone who has worked in a variety of different child care settings over the past 30 years, I have seen how regulations help keep children safe and I’ve seen how regulations cause unnecessary complications when it comes to implementing quality care.

My experience is specific to Colorado, as this is where I have always worked. Each state has different regulations, though there tend to be some commonalities. In this series, I’m specifically addressing the issues I’ve encountered with regulations in Colorado.

Our state has been very focused on increasing quality in all programs for the past fifteen years. I appreciate this because children deserve to have access to high quality early care and learning. Something our state has implemented is an Early Childhood Professional Credential. With levels one through six, early childhood professionals can increase their credential as they gain more education and experience.

Unfortunately, the implementation of the rules surrounding these credentials on the licensing side cause a variety of unnecessary complications for child care programs and drive up the cost of care for families.

Issue 1: Bathroom Breaks

In Colorado, there must always be someone in the room with a Level II credential or higher, even if the teacher is just taking a quick bathroom break. That means we need to have an extra teacher with a Level II credential just sitting around waiting to cover bathroom breaks. We can’t have a floater or a housekeeper step in for five minutes. It has to be someone who has taken college classes and has two years of full time teaching experience, just so someone can go pee.

Issue 2: Time Off

When a lead teacher is out sick or taking time off, we must have a substitute teacher who has a Level II credential or higher covering. It is incredibly difficult to find people who took college classes and have two years of full time classroom experience who are willing to be part-time, on call employees with no guaranteed hours. Subs with a Level II or higher credential are unicorns.

Teachers need to be able to take time off. Right now, the only way to fully comply with state regulations for a lot of programs, is to shut a classroom down and deny care to the families if the lead teacher is out for the day. The regulations allow us to to that, but they don’t allow us to have an assistant teacher run the room for the day with the help of a sub.

I think it makes a lot more sense to keep the classroom open and serve families while having people in the process of getting their credential working in the room for the day. They are always under the supervision of a director who can check in regularly to ensure quality and safety.

The playground at the author’s child care program

Issue 3: Outside Time

A classroom usually has an assistant teacher and a lead teacher. Often, the assistant teacher does not yet have a Level II credential, which means they are not allowed to supervise more than two children at a time on their own. This presents a variety of complications.

Imagine a classroom of eight toddlers is on the playground with two adults, one with a Level II credential and one without. One child needs a diaper change. The state ratio is one adult to every five children. That means, whoever does the diaper change needs to bring in three children with them so that the other adult is left with five children outside. But, the adult that doesn’t yet have a Level II credential isn’t allowed to bring in more that two children.

We cannot leave children in soiled diapers. We cannot leave the group out of ratio. Those are both safety issues. So the teachers are left with only one option that meets state regulations, make all of the children stop playing and come inside as a whole group so that one child can get a diaper change.

The other option is to have an extra employee who is paid to wait around for these moments. In a program like mine with only two classrooms, a whole extra full time salary just to cover the occasional diaper change or bathroom break is a cost that isn’t sustainable. If we have an extra $42,000 per year salary plus taxes and benefits, we’re going to have to raise tuition to a rate that is completely unaffordable for most families.

Flexibility is the Solution

Substitute teaching and assistant teaching are both great opportunities for someone working towards their credential to earn the experience hours they need. However, it’s nearly impossible to follow state regulations and have these folks in the program. How are we supposed to help people get the experience they need when we’re required to have people who already have that experience at all times? It doesn’t make sense.

We need to be allowed to have moments in the classroom where not everyone has to have a Level II credential or higher. We need to be allowed to have assistant teachers supervise groups of more than two children on occasion. We need to be allowed to have substitute teachers who don’t have a Level II credential.

It’s completely reasonable for the state to want lead teachers to have a professional credential. It’s also completely reasonable for that requirement to give programs flexibility so that we can manage day-to-day operations and give future lead teachers the experience they need, without raising the cost of care for families.

Today, I’m launching a series called “Child Care Money Diaries.” In this series I will give you an unvarnished look at what it costs, and how long it takes, to get a child care program open and ready to serve children.

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I started this journey one year ago. It only took me a few months to find a perfect location. It’s an old elementary school that’s owned by a nonprofit that serves children with disabilities. The building is quite large, so they decided to rent out a section to a program with an aligned mission. Child care was a perfect fit.

I’m excited about this location because there are already classrooms with bathrooms ready to go. It’s situated at the edge of a suburban neighborhood full of five bedroom family homes and across the street from a fully enrolled middle school. The landlord is a perfect fit. There’s a parking lot and a playground.

Despite all of these wonderful features, it’s still going to cost me a veritable boat load of cash to get this place open. And by “cash” I mean “debt.” This is one of those factors that I see people neglect to consider when discussing why child care is so expensive. Many programs are paying back the enormous amounts of debt they incurred just to get open. That debt comes with unfortunately high interest rates, which translates into higher tuition rates.

After months of negotiating a lease and working with an architect and contractor on a plan for remodeling the space I’ll be renting, we signed the papers and filed for the permit at the very beginning of June. Two months later, there is still no permit and construction has not started, but I’m paying rent and purchasing equipment that I’m putting into a storage unit because the show must go on.

An existing mural on the hallway wall of the author’s future child care program. Mural will be preserved in construction.

While the building already has classrooms and bathrooms, getting everything up to code and ready for child care is still going to cost a little over $200,000 (that doesn’t include furniture, materials, marketing, hiring, etc.) The deal I negotiated with the landlord is helpful. They are paying the full cost of the remodel and I am paying them back through very high rent over the next five years. I’ll be paying about $8500 per month for a 5,000 sq ft space plus 1,000 sq ft playground.

This is helpful because it’s not “official” debt on my credit report. This frees me up to take on the roughly $150,000 of other debt I will need in order to do everything else required to get the program ready to open. Because this is the only way I see it’s possible to make it happen.

My expenses in July are as follows:

• Rent Deposit: $8,500 (my rent officially starts on September 1)

• Marketing: $3,200 (a targeted postcard campaign to families in the area)

• Materials: $1,400 (back to school sales for school supply companies are now)

• Storage Unit: $85

• TOTAL: $13,185

This is my first month with expenses related to opening a new program. What do you think about that number? Is it more or less than you expected? Do you have questions about the cost? Tell me what you think in the comments!

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The property has two buildings on site and the new owner only needed one of them for her business, so she agreed to rent the other building to me. I was thrilled because this space had already been a licensed child care facility, so it looked like it was already set up to open. Upon closer inspection, I realized that it needed a lot of work to get in compliance with new regulations and to be up to the standard of quality I expected.

I put in new floors, tiny toilets and sinks, painted all the walls, and built an office/break room space. I demolished dilapidated playground structures and re-built crumbling fences. I upgraded the fire system and put in new carbon monoxide detectors. I also purchased new dishwashers, refrigerators, washer, and dryer. Finally, I outfitted the space with brand new furniture and materials. Shelves, chairs, tables, play kitchens, reading areas, nap cots, art supplies, puzzles, blocks, dress up clothes, playground toys, etc.

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I paid for permits and inspections. I obtained liability insurance, worker’s compensation insurance, and renter’s insurance. I purchased tablets and laptops. I paid for HVAC repairs and new phone and internet installation. I put in security measures to the property. Then I hired new employees and trained them.

This school has two classrooms. One toddler and one preschool. It’s a small space, but before we opened the doors and served a single family, I had spent just shy of $100,000. I hired help for some of the work, but I did a lot of it myself. And it still cost me six figures to get just two classrooms open and ready to serve 26 children.

The toddler classroom in the author’s current program.

I was fortunate enough to have that money available to spend. I made a loan to the business from my personal funds. I was a single mom and it was everything I had, but I chose to invest in a dream for myself and my community. I wanted to offer high quality early care and learning in one of the lowest income areas of my city.

It took about 10 months to get to full enrollment. We have a mix of families from various socio-economic levels. Some families pay our full tuition rate, which runs from $1300 per month to $1760 per month, depending on the child’s age and the program. Some families pay $850 per month as part of our scholarship program for families with a household income under $75,000 per year. Some families have their tuition covered by a subsidy from the state for low income working parents. That subsidy usually works out to about $1200 per month. We have beautiful diversity in our program because of this tuition structure.

My teachers are paid according to a pay scale tied to our state’s early childhood teacher credentialing system. People without a credential start at $19 per hour. People with a basic credential start at $20 per hour. Those with a higher level credential start at $22 per hour. My director qualified employee is paid a salary of $50,000 per year, which works out to a little more than $24 per hour. She is mostly a teacher but also handles day-to-day staffing (teachers get sick a lot).

All of my employees get 9 paid federal holidays, 10 paid vacation days, and 10 paid sick days per year. They also get a health care reimbursement stipend of up to $150 per month if they purchase their own insurance through the health care exchange. Finally, they get a 401k with a 4% match.

I’d like to offer higher wages and more benefits, but this is the maximum I can do right now. I’m working towards a model that creates profit sharing for employees, but I have to stabilize the business and pay off debts first.

I’m now in the process of opening a second location in a nearby suburb. We are early in the process and I’ve decided to share the true costs of startup with you as we go through the journey. Every month, I’ll share a post with what I spent that month to get our program ready to open. Subscribe here to come on the journey with us!

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