The South Dakota district has already frozen new classified hires, slashed travel and cut overall spending. But without an expected $18 million in federal Impact Aid funding, she warns, “I have no viable path forward to maintain school operations.” Unwilling to furlough or lay off essential staff — a move that would simultaneously derail educational continuity and destabilize a community where the school system is a key employer — the district is attempting to secure a loan to bridge the gap until Impact Aid arrives.

In upstate New York near the U.S. Army’s Fort Drum, Indian River Central School District Superintendent Troy Decker is dealing with similar problems. The “withholding of Impact Aid, together with military and civilian pay reductions, furloughs and outright job losses has created a noticeable anxiety in our community,” he says. All that, combined with uncertainty around state and federal education budgets, could lead to serious cuts in next year’s programs and increased class sizes.

The districts are among about 1,100 nationwide, serving 8 million students, that rely on Impact Aid to offset the lost local revenue and increased costs associated with nontaxable federal land, such as military installations; Indian Trust, Treaty, and Alaska Native lands; national parks; and other federal sites. The initial payments typically go out in October, after the start of the federal fiscal year. But the shutdown has stalled all payments and closed the office supporting these districts.

The National Association of Federally Impacted Schools (NAFIS) recently surveyed its members on the effects of the federal government shutdown, now in its fifth week. The response is clear: The situation is urgent, with districts across the country scrambling to meet payroll, maintain programs, and keep schools open.

Unlike most districts, these schools cannot rely on local property taxes for funding. For some, Impact Aid makes up more than half of the budget, covering teacher salaries, special education services, utilities and essential classroom programs.

Delays in federal payments can force these districts — many serving Native, military-connected, and rural students already facing inequities — to make difficult decisions. Across the country, districts are drawing on reserves, implementing spending and hiring freezes, and putting infrastructure projects on hold. 

A Wyoming district has eliminated tutoring services, while one in Wisconsin is considering cuts to after-school programming and an Oklahoma district warns that paraprofessionals will be the first to go if payments do not arrive soon. Lonnie Morin, district clerk at Arlee Joint School District in Montana, said her district has stopped all discretionary spending — including supplies, maintenance and repairs — and “anything else that is not absolutely necessary to run the school.”

Making matters worse, most staff members in the U.S. Department of Education’s Impact Aid Program Office have received reduction-in-force notices. These analysts manage payments and provide technical guidance. While the RIF is currently blocked by court order, if it moves forward, their absence could further delay funding once the shutdown ends.

Marking its 75^th anniversary this year, Impact Aid is the nation’s oldest K-12 federal education program and has earned strong bipartisan support. It is a cornerstone of the federal government’s responsibility to the communities where it holds land.

 As Jerrod Wheeler, Superintendent of Knob Noster Public Schools in Missouri says, “Impact Aid absolutely must be protected for the sake of our military connected students and for the sake of military readiness and retention.” Bryce Anderson, Superintendent of Page Unified School District in Arizona adds, “My strongest desire is that political division does not negatively impact communities like ours, [reliant on] the federal government’s promise to pay its fair share for untaxed treaty land.”

Every day of delay forces districts to make impossible choices: cutting programs, laying off staff and leaving children without the resources they need. The federal government must act now to reinstate Impact Aid payments and staff, honoring its promise to support the districts that serve our nation’s military, tribal, and federal lands — and the students whose futures depend on it.

The child care needs of U.S. military families are often utterly distinct from those of civilians. That has led to the creation of a child care system that is often held up as one of the nation’s exemplars — . With more funding, thoughtful systems-building and innovations to address its gaps, the military has taken major steps in recent decades to increase access to high-quality child care options. That said, the landscape of military child care is not well understood, especially by outsiders. Having a better grasp of the contours of military child care programs could help policymakers apply lessons to the broader U.S. child care system. 

The military provides a diverse range of options including on- and off-base. A 2021 report found that nearly 50,000 children were enrolled in the Department of Defense’s on-base child development centers; nearly 25,000 children were enrolled in DOD’s school-age care programs; and 2,700 children were receiving care in DOD family child care homes. The families of another roughly 26,000 children were receiving fee assistance to acquire care from community providers near their base. 

In addition, the military offers , facilities where providers care for children in a home-like setting during traditional and nontraditional hours; these centers are designed to meet the needs of workers with rotating schedules or nontraditional hours, such as nights and weekends.

Backed by around a year in public funding and receiving bipartisan support because of implications for recruitment, retention and troop performance, DOD child care options tend to be of solid quality. As the GAO chart below shows, different settings have varied quality-related requirements, but all of the on-base programs include multiple annual unannounced inspections.

While care is not free for servicemembers, it is : An active duty family making between $55,000 and $65,000 pays a standard fee of $74 a week, or slightly under $4,000 a year. By comparison, civilian child care slots frequently cost a year. 

For all its strengths, the U.S. military child care system still struggles with many of the challenges that plague its civilian counterpart — challenges undergirded by inadequate public funding such as insufficient slots and high levels of staff churn. That says something about the true price tag of a good child care system, given how much is put into military child care. With the substantial percentage of military families that opt to use off-base child care due either to a lack of on-base capacity or having special needs, the weakness and scarcity that mark the country’s civilian child care system also impacts the military. In 2024, the top enlisted officer in the Air Force that DOD needed to decide whether child care was a “requirement or a nice to have.”

All told, military child care slots can be hard to secure and do not always match family needs: As of 2023, , around 12,000 children were on waitlists for child care. That’s problematic, especially given that around one-third of military spouses who wish to work outside the home . 

Recruiting and retaining qualified staff is a constant challenge — the range from 35 to 50%, but there’s a unique twist:  Many military child care employees are the spouses of servicemembers and thus highly transient. The turnover rates are also driven by familiar factors that plague the sector broadly: low compensation, stressful work environments and limited opportunities for career progress. These challenges were exacerbated by a temporary hiring freeze put in place earlier this year by the Trump administration. 

Recently, the nonprofit military news organization War Horse the military child care system is “delicately balanced on a wobbling foundation, made shakier by the frequent moves of its primary pool of employees — military spouses. But suddenly, the was upended by staffing shortages that rippled from base to base after a DOD-wide hiring freeze announced in late February prevented centers from filling vacancies. Even though child care providers were exempted from the freeze three weeks after it was announced, the damage has persisted for months.”

Despite these obstacles, there are innovators within military child care trying to forge new paths. HomeFront Help, for example, an initiative of the nonprofit , provides free training and screenings to individuals who want to become what are known as Helpers. These Helpers then set a reasonable rate and provide one-off, part-time, and/or emergency child care for military families, who can access them through local databases. By facilitating the connections of trained and reliable Helpers to families who need them, the philanthropically funded initiative fills in gaps and needs in ways a Child Development Center cannot.

During a pilot of the program at Elgin Air Force Base in Florida, Helpers supported over 150 families with more than 550 days of care.

In a different vein, an app specifically developed for military families and their unpredictable schedules to other military families while they’re traveling or on leave. Typically, parents have to cover the cost of care even when their family is away, but this app allows them to support another military family by providing a child care slot, and in return, they receive a credit they can apply to their child’s care. As of April 2025, more than 12,000 spots had temporarily changed hands, according to Air Force officials.

The DOD is also with community providers, essentially creating off-base child care programs, as with a new facility in Norfolk, Virginia, operated by a local YMCA. This strategy allows the DOD to expand its child care capacity far faster than relying only on building and staffing additional on-base facilities.

If one squints, there are emerging principles from the military child care system of the mid-2020s that are broadly applicable: Substantial public funding that enables deep fee cuts compared to a market-based system. Supply-side expansion efforts backed by those public dollars. An emphasis on flexibility and a population’s diverse set of needs and preferences. A balance between accountability and autonomy. Engagement of both licensed professionals and community members.

The U.S. military child care system is far from perfect. Given, however, that it is one area where the country has gotten past first-order fights about whether the government should even be involved in child care, it’s worth continuing to keep a close eye on — and holding up as a continued source of hope for those who believe a better approach to American child care is possible.

In mid-March, one of the two child care centers run by the Department of Defense (DOD) at Utah’s Hill Air Force Base (Hill AFB) was forced to close due to staffing shortages. As the Salt Lake Tribune reported, base officials issued a statement , “several recent departures in conjunction with the hiring freeze have reduced the number of supervisors and trainers available.” The result is 31 families without child care. Similarly, Petersen Space Force Base in Colorado an infant classroom and ask for eight volunteer families to be shunted to an unfamiliar provider in town, lest families start “to be released” from the child care program. The reason, a base official explained in a memo cited in , was that “due to ongoing staffing challenges related to our adherence to the current administration guidance and recent impacts from the hiring freeze the [child development center] is facing a critical shortage of qualified childcare providers.” 

The hiring freeze in question is the instituted by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Feb. 28 in response to the president’s Feb. 26 related to the Department of Government Efficiency. While a on March 18 exempted child care employees from the freeze, the damage was done. 

Child care positions are hard enough to hire for resulting from America’s longstanding decision to treat child care more like an individual commodity like a gym membership than a vital part of our social and economic infrastructure. The job of shepherding young children’s development is difficult; add insecurity from the administration’s actions around the federal workforce, and it’s easy to imagine many would-be educators looking elsewhere. At any rate, filling empty roles is not like flipping a switch. As the Hill AFB spokesperson said, “The hiring, on-boarding, and training process will take time.”

The importance of child care for national security . Among other things, the presence of good, reliable child care has been linked to service members’ improved job performance and retention. Mark Esper in his 2019 confirmation hearing to be President Donald Trump’s second secretary of defense: “I understand very well the impact issues such as … child care and spousal employment have on the readiness of our service members.” Esper added that, “You cannot ask a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine to go out and deploy and be worried about what’s happening at home.” Nor is this a small cohort: the National Military Family Association 40% of service members have minor children, and 38% of those children are under age 5.

The Trump administration’s actions are all the more harmful because they are layered onto an already shaky foundation. The U.S. military child care system is regularly held up as one of the nation’s strongest models, with relatively high-quality offerings backed by over in federal dollars. Yet the system continues to be plagued by staffing difficulties and long waiting lists due to inadequate supply. As of 2023, according to the Senate Committee on Armed Services, around 12,000 children on waitlists and the military was lacking nearly 4,000 child care providers.

All of this goes to show that half-measures will not work in child care. According to the Government Accountability Office, as of January 2024, for DOD child care providers was $18.21 an hour. The ceiling for non-entry-level staff is $29.06 an hour. Yearly turnover in the Air Force and Army child care programs is around 50%. While DOD pay is modestly better than the average in civilian programs, and there are certainly unique features to the military child care equation (for instance, many military child care providers are the spouses of service members, so when the service member is transferred, they necessarily depart), this is not the picture of a healthy system. 

The last thing military families needed, then, was more precarity. Kayla Corbitt, a military child care advocate, that the Trump administration’s actions were making staffing extra difficult, saying, “Nobody really knows what direction we’re going when every day you wake up and there’s a headline about 2,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 people being laid off.” 

Because so many military members have children — to say nothing of all those working in government departments and private companies that support the defense industrial base — one cannot wield a budget chainsaw without hitting the vital connective tissue of military and military-adjacent families. For all of the posturing about supporting our brave warriors, the Trump administration must understand that weakening the nation’s child care system weakens our national defense. 

That might seem like an innocuous statement, but states are struggling to define those pathways in equally rigorous ways. Moreover, a lack of reliable data on who actually serves in the military means that it’s being left out as a successful post-high school outcome. 

Let’s start with the college track because it’s the largest and easiest to define. About two-thirds of high school graduates go into some form of postsecondary education. That number is down slightly in recent years, but states have built sophisticated data systems to track public school students from K-12 into higher education. If students go to a private school or leave the state, a nonprofit called the National Student Clearinghouse has data on 99% of postsecondary students nationwide. That data allows any state or school district in the country to find out, for a nominal fee, how many of their students enroll and persist through higher education.

In contrast, it’s harder to define a successful outcome on the career side. More than half the states are now counting whether high school students earn “industry recognized credentials.” This is admirable work, but states are struggling to balance encouraging students to follow a wide variety of pathways on one hand, while also ensuring that all of those options are equally rigorous. State lists of allowable credentials routinely run into the hundreds, and a 2020 found that the most common credential students earn was “Microsoft Office Specialist.” That report concluded, “many of the credentials earned by K-12 students carry little currency with employers, and therefore offer questionable career value to students.” 

This lack of rigor shows up in depressingly small income gains. For example, by Matt Giani at the University of Texas found that students who earned a credential had somewhat higher employment rates, but the median earnings of recent high school graduates with a credential was barely over $10,000 a year. A out of Florida found that, five years after high school graduation, those who had completed a certificate earned about $600 more than those without one. 

Contrast the situation on the career side with military service. Military service is not only a noble career, it’s also a strong pathway into the middle class. And yet, states don’t have a good way to get accurate counts of which students serve in the military. 

Upon the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, 10 states said they were planning to use military service as one of their indicators of student success. Unfortunately, without a good way to collect that data, they were forced to remove military service as a success indicator, treat it as an optional measure for some schools, or fall back on self-reported data, effectively putting the burden of proof of military service on individual schools and districts. 

To address this problem, a number of state education chiefs are working behind the scenes to ask the Department of Defense (DoD) for help in solving this data challenge. (Disclosure: I’ve been helping the states craft that request.) 

This is not just a wonky data issue, because the military stands to gain from a secure but accurate data-sharing process as well. If military service counted as a successful pathway for students, that might indirectly help the armed services meet their recruitment goals. 

To be sure, this is delicate ground. If states begin working with the DoD to solve this data challenge, there are questions about data security and concerns about not promoting the military above other potential pathways. And students need to be protected from receiving unwanted recruiting pitches. At the same time, this issue needs to be resolved in order to recognize military service as a successful outcome for students who do choose to serve. 

This isn’t the first such effort to track military service. Many states have tried to get this type of data in the past, only to be stymied by technical or bureaucratic obstacles. But there’s widespread interest in solving this problem and putting military service on par with other post-high school pathways.

While public schools have struggles, families can navigate a district with elementary, middle, and high schools. But, early child care education doesn’t have the same infrastructure. We’ve been overlooking a national program for child care that could solve this issue — the child care system for military families. This model could serve as a valuable blueprint for establishing a more comprehensive and accessible child care infrastructure for all American families.

More than of families in this country live in child care deserts, a census tract with more than three times as many children as licensed child care slots. Furthermore, roughly children will likely lose spots resulting from the end of pandemic relief federal funds for child care, which expired September 30, 2023. Without child care, children miss out on early education, and parents find it hard to work and support their families. This also affects businesses, as our current child care system isn’t strong enough to meet the needs of working families. 

Prior to the , military families struggled to access reliable child care, and child care providers lacked resources to offer high-quality consistent care. After the act passed, wages increased for early educators working in military child care programs, standards increased for child care and military families could reliably access affordable care. The resulting system was mixed delivery, meaning families could access child care in a variety of settings, including larger centers and home-based child care programs. In 2020, about , compared with 9 percent of civilian centers nationwide.

This model can serve as a blueprint for increasing accessibility to child care for more families. It begins with dedicated, sustained public investment in child care across multiple settings so children and families have access to child care that meets their needs. Tessie Ragan, a veteran and owner of Perfect Start Learning in California, participates in the military child care program because of the opportunity it affords to provide high-quality early learning opportunities to a diverse group of children & families.

Data shows that access to high-quality early childhood care has significant lifelong benefits. One showed that children from low-income backgrounds who received 24 months of early childhood education before age 5 had higher graduation rates and earned higher salaries by 26 percent compared to peers without access. 

However, the number of regulated home-based child care programs (also called family child care) has been in steep decline. From December 2019 to March 2021, family child care (FCC) programs closed in 36 states, representing a 10 percent loss in licensed FCC programs. This is on top of the more than 97,000 (25%) licensed family child care homes closed in the United States between 2005 and 2017.

According to a 2023 survey of NAFCC members, 32 percent of respondents stated their income does not allow them to cover expenses like rent, utilities, and supplies. Educators who care for children from their homes and operate as small businesses often make far below minimum wage. Family care providers must cover these expenses without federal subsidies, often forcing many of them to to cover costs and provide for their own families.

As we have learned from the military child care system, well-funded early-learning programs include dollars so that early educators like Ragan can cover the costs of competitive wages for staff, rent, insurance, materials, and professional development. 

Every parent wants what’s best for their kids and high-quality child care should be broadly available. A well-funded early care and education system enhances workforce participation, particularly . As parents have more opportunities to work and advance in their careers, their families and the overall economy benefit.

By leaning into the federal child care education model and advocating for increased funding we can build a robust child care system that supports families and empowers early care and education providers ensuring a brighter future for all our children.

, a music therapy app created by founders Brian Femminella and Travis Chen, reduces students’ stress and anxiety through audio and visual beats tailored to the needs of each user.

The goal for Femminella, 23, and Chen, 24, is to use the healing effects of sound as an approach to help students combat pandemic-induced stress so they can focus in the classroom.

“We’re not a program, we’re a tool,” Chen told ����Ӱ��. “We’re a tool that complements existing social-emotional learning curriculum and guides students along the way as they try to relax and improve their mental health.”

SoundMind launched in November 2021 and has gained over 100,000 users — in addition to reducing their stress and anxiety levels by 46%.

From districts in Los Angeles to New York City, SoundMind has partnered with schools nationwide to help teachers, counselors and administrators gauge their students’ mental health.

The science behind SoundMind centers around their music development team that utilize clinically-proven research.

“It’s rooted in thanatosonics…or the relationship between sound, violence and the human relationship,” Femminella told ����Ӱ��. “That’s something we found very useful as we developed our binaural beats.”

Femminella noted as students’ use the app, the built-in artificial intelligence creates more personalized sounds.

Through SoundMind’s online platform, educators have the opportunity to check in on their students’ anxiety and depression levels.

The platform provides real-time data for educators to better understand trends between their students’ happiness and learning capacity.

“The response we hear is that it’s transparent and gives them more insights,” Femminella said. “We’re able to help admin feel like they can actually see what’s going on in their classrooms.”  

Chen added how schools particularly enjoy the suggestions page that provides strategies for educators to remedy their students’ specific mental health needs.

“Our platform is comprehensive, immersive and interactive,” Chen said. “And we’re really proud to be in this specific time where we can help schools with their students’ mental health journey.”

To increase the app’s accessibility, Femminella and Chen partnered with to not only provide students with tablets and wireless service through the but also a SoundMind membership.

“We recognize that 55% of students are on this program so there was a very big need for us to do this,” Chen said.

For Femminella and Chen, mental health advocacy stems from their personal stories.

Femminella and Chen originally met as randomly selected roommates when they interned for the U.S. Congress.

“Over time we really bonded and started going to dinners together and had brainstorming sessions later at night,” Femminella said.

As time progressed, Femminella and Chen discovered their mutual interest in mental health advocacy — which eventually led to the creation of SoundMind in their University of Southern California dorm rooms.

Femminella noted his LGBTQ and military background plays a large role in his understanding of social-emotional wellness.

“I joined the military at a young age and had a lot of political aspirations in regards to how I saw the mental health space and how soldiers were struggling,” Femminella said. “I’ve seen folks in these environments feel small so being able to give a voice to people who feel powerless is something really impactful for me.”

Chen said his Asian American roots reinforce his desire to destigmatize conversations around mental health.

“There’s a lot of competition in the AAPI community in regards to AP scores and SAT classes to name a few,” Chen said. “I remember personally struggling with my own mental health in high school and I knew I had to do something about it.”

Chen believes the power of social media has shaped the landscape of youth mental health.

“Nowadays students are hiding behind screens,” Chen said. “So instead of disciplining and telling them what not to do, how can we meet them where they’re at?”

As SoundMind continues to grow, Femminella regards their work with SoundMind as a testament to how impactful Gen Z leaders can be.

“We hope to be the pinnacle of what it means to push hard and be furious about how youth in our country are struggling,” Femminella said.