“What we want is that, if and when families need it, there’s childcare that’s available, that works for their needs, that’s affordable and high quality,” said Anne Hedgepeth, senior vice president of policy and research at Child Care Aware of America. “We’re seeing a lot of gaps in that promise right now.”

To get federal childcare funding, states have to put a minimum amount of their own money into the system as well. But of state funding for childcare and preschool in fiscal year 2026, conducted by Child Care Aware of America, found that seven states — Arkansas, Idaho, Missouri, Nevada, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wyoming — don’t spend any money above that bare minimum. And a handful of states don’t spend more of their own money on preschool than what is strictly required: Arizona, Idaho, Montana, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. Idaho and Wyoming find themselves on both lists, putting nothing extra into either system. 

The lack of additional investment has a lot of root causes, from political hesitance to the realities of state budgets, which must be balanced every year, Hedgepeth said. In part, she said, the problem stems from the end of federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, which infused billions of dollars into the system and allowed states to make but has since disappeared. Other constraints include a reduction in tax revenues and cuts to federal programs stemming from the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill package that passed last year. 

No matter its source, the lack of funding creates “a frustration for parents and families and childcare providers on the ground,” Hedgepeth said. Without more state investment, legislatures are unable to improve the system by, for example, expanding their subsidy programs to reach more families — or even to serve all eligible ones — or reimbursing providers the amount it actually costs to care for children instead of at lower rates. That has led to over a dozen states recently instituting or expanding waiting lists for childcare subsidies, leaving parents to try to pay for care out of pocket. The waitlists hurt providers, too, if they can’t enroll new families, which can lead to closures of classrooms and even entire programs. “The whole system suffers,” Hedgepeth said. 

State spending disparities have also created an uneven national system that leaves parents better or worse off depending on where they live. The study analyzed total investments for each child under age 5 for 37 states and found that spending ranged from less than $500 per child under age 5 to more than $5,000 per child. Eleven states spend between $1,500 and $9,900 per child, with Washington, D.C. spending the most. 

“We do have really different experiences state-to-state, based in part, on what states are putting into their childcare and early learning systems,” Hedgepeth said. That creates frustration for families, especially those who move between states and have to navigate such different systems. But it hurts everyone. “It also really presents a challenge when we think about having an overarching goal when it comes to child development and support of our earliest learners,” she said. Children arrive at kindergarten with a variety of readiness levels depending on what was available to their families before then, she pointed out. That necessitates instituting “a more robust floor” so that there is a baseline across the whole country.

Hedgepeth sees a silver lining: In the states that are failing to spend more of their own funding, “there is room for these states to do more and maybe even an appetite.” Some of them signaled in their recent legislative sessions that they want to invest more, she said. of governors talked about childcare and early childhood education in their state of the state addresses this year. She also noted that, since the pandemic, all states are at least fully meeting the federal match requirement for childcare funding, even if many aren’t going above and beyond. There were some years before 2020, mostly in “extraordinary circumstances,” such as a recession or budgetary challenge, when some states did not even spend that much, she said.

Even so, some states are moving in the wrong direction. Child Care Aware of America found that six states — Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Rhode Island — decreased how much of their own money they spent on childcare and preschool in fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal year 2025. West Virginia invested in childcare in fiscal year 2025 but then failed to do so in fiscal year 2026. 

According to from Child Care Aware of America, this lack of state spending has led to the first decline in the number of licensed childcare centers in several years. In the years directly after the height of the pandemic, between 2021 and 2023, childcare supply experienced “robust growth,” Hedgepeth said, after states made investments that “paid off in terms of making it possible for childcare programs to open.” But between 2024 and 2025, the number of licensed centers declined by 1%. 

Hedgepeth cautioned that the data is messy and the drop is “very, very small.” Still, she said, “It is very clear to us that we are not moving in the direction we need to be moving.” of American children already live in childcare deserts, according to a report from the Center for America Progress. In states that aren’t spending enough for providers to be able to open and operate with some semblance of financial stability, “the supply trend is going to continue in the wrong direction,” she said. 

This is especially concerning given that state budgets are about to enter a particularly rough patch. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act enacted the to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid in history, cuts that state budgets have to absorb. The possibility that states will feel forced to further pull back from childcare and early childhood education funding in order to cover for some of those reductions is “very much on the horizon,” Hedgepeth said. While some states started to worry about the problem in their most recent sessions, next year’s legislative sessions are where the cuts are likely to really hit home, she said. “We’re looking at a tough several years.” 

Congress can act by increasing funding for childcare programs, something it has with . “It’s very clear that the gap is there and it needs to be closed,” Hedgepeth said. “We have a very direct call to action here, which is, ‘Let’s make investments to make sure we grow the supply for childcare.’ ”

Tucked in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s sprawling universal childcare plan is a little-talked-about milestone: In September, the city will open what appears to be the first free daycare for municipal workers in the country. 

The center, called , is a pilot program that could prove to be a model for cities across the country that are childcare curious, but not ready to take the big universal swing. 

Housed in a renovated space on the first floor of the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building in Manhattan, home base for more than 2,000 city workers, the Little Apple will offer free care to the kids of full-time staff. All workers in the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), a city government support agency, can also take advantage of it regardless of their work location.

The center will be small — just 40 seats for children ages six weeks to 3 years old. To pay for it, the city budgeted about $1.5 million, or $35,000 per child.

“This is what Wall Street could call a good investment,” Mamdani . “We know that after housing, the cost of childcare is what is pushing working families out of this city.” 

DCAS Commissioner Yume Kitasei told The 19th said the solution came about as a retention strategy, responding to the needs workers shared. In surveys, workers enthusiastically embraced the idea. One worker described access to free childcare as “life-changing.”

That’s probably not hyperbole. Childcare affordability is a national problem that has only grown more acute. Childcare costs an average of nationwide; in New York for an infant at a center it’s closer to on average. Paying for a daycare now vies with housing costs as , so much so that some parents have had to move or . 

Cities, meanwhile, have been since the pandemic. Benefits like childcare, which some cities and private companies have dabbled with, can help address the quality-of-life issues that are pushing workers out of jobs. 

“This is a great time for us to sort of be thinking about: How can we make our jobs even more attractive to people and also retain the city workers that we have?” Kitasei said. “This is one piece of that puzzle.” 

Kitasei added that a “healthy” number of staffers applied for The Little Apple and the department expects to fill its 40 childcare seats. Anyone who doesn’t get a spot will be put on a waitlist.

There is an appetite across the country for childcare solutions that could help bring down costs for certain workers, and cities are already taking on creative fixes. 

Several already have childcare centers in municipal buildings or for city employees, including , , and , Colorado, though none of them are free like New York’s. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, the county school district and a local childcare center known nationally have partnered to provide childcare for the children of teachers inside unused classrooms in schools. Boone County, Missouri, is . 

In the private sector, and closed longstanding childcare centers they operated on their campuses in recent years, but efforts continue elsewhere. Patagonia has operated at its California headquarters since the 1980s, a move it argues has lowered turnover from employees who use the site by 25%. Overstock.com also has an at its Utah headquarters. Both are subsidized, not free.��

“As cities in every region of the country compete with the private sector and other municipalities to attract and retain workers and elected officials, ensuring access to childcare offers an opportunity for local governments to build a representative workforce and invest in the future of their communities,” said Quincy Midthun, an outreach specialist with the Mayors Innovation Project at the High Road Strategy Center, a think tank focused on solutions to social problems.

The Little Apple, and New York City broadly, reflect a when it comes to childcare. 

The announcements of universal childcare in New York City and in the last year received an enormous amount of attention across the country. Both places took an idea that for many years was floated as a pipe dream — treating childcare similarly to public education — and turned it into reality. In New York, it’s one of the few issues that Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, and Gov. Kathy Hochul, a centrist Democrat, . 

Voters are also hungry for more solutions: In poll after poll, they assert that spending money on childcare is a . 

Emmy Liss, who heads Mamdani’s childcare office, said childcare is at a “political tipping point.” 

“We’re in this moment where folks across all political, socioeconomic, demographic spectrums recognize that childcare is essential, that childcare is something families are struggling to access, and know that the market economics of childcare don’t work without public investment,” Liss said. “We see recognition of that.”

With Little Apple, New York is testing what it looks like to commit to its promises of free care for all, but doing it first for its own employees. 

“If we are asking folks to report to work in person in parts of the city where childcare is expensive, as it is all over the city, I think that we have to recognize that childcare is an important part of how we keep people in the workforce,” Liss said. 

Mamdani and Hochul have been working to make childcare universally available to children in the city through a phased rollout set to conclude in four years. For 2-year olds, the mayor announced that will be available in the fall in four largely low-income areas of the city. Another 12,000 are planned for 2027. For 3-year-olds, about 2,000 new seats will be added in the fall, as well. The city has an existing universal childcare program for 4-year-olds. 

Universal childcare as Mamdani envisions it will cover kids ages 6 weeks to 5 years with a price tag of about $6 billion annually, making it the most expensive pillar of his affordability agenda. Mamdani is expected to push to fund the program with a tax increase on the wealthy, a strategy Hochul for, though the state is . Mamdani has not yet unveiled what his universal childcare program would look like for infants and young toddlers.

How New York City’s program rolls out and its sustainability are being closely watched by proponents of universal care, who argue it’s also an anti-poverty measure.

“We know that other places are watching as we try different things out, including the work at the Little Apple,” Liss said.

In New York City, 21% of working parents experienced some kind of childcare hardship in 2024 that forced them to forgo care or use inadequate care, particularly families living in poverty, single mothers and Black parents, from Robin Hood, an anti-poverty organization, and Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy.��

An average of 3,400 2- and 3-year-olds were pushed into poverty between 2022 and 2024 specifically due to the cost of childcare, a from the same organizations found. An estimated 4,100 2- and 3-year-olds would be lifted out of poverty each year if they had access to universal 2-K and 3-K education. That would reduce poverty for this age group .��

Rebecca Bailin, the executive director of the parent organizing group New Yorkers United for Child Care, said the problem has reached such a fever pitch that thousands of parents started to organize around the issue in 2023 and helped push the agenda that was central to Mamdani’s election. 

Bailin, who has a 1-year-old, said she can now depend on a 3-K program when her child turns 3 and likely a 2-K program, as well — a savings of about $100,000. The 2-K program Mamdani is rolling out will also be full-day care rather than partial-day care that wraps up around 2 p.m. like the existing 3-K program, addressing a top ask from parents.

“People are stoked,” Bailin said. “People feel like they can stay in the city.” 

The Little Apple is a small part of the larger effort, but, “if we want to retain people, we have to do this,” Bailin said. 

“This is something we want to see scaled. If city workers can’t afford to live here, that’s a real problem,” she continued. “This is really critical and we need this for everybody.” 

was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of .

The law’s passage followed nearly two decades of groundwork and an eight-year advocacy campaign led by Let’s Grow Kids, a local organization focused on building broad public and political support for childcare reform. The mission? To achieve high-quality, affordable childcare for the whole state. 

A from New America chronicles the years of advocacy and organizing that paved the way for Vermont to pass Act 76, including the incremental legislative strategy that developed bipartisan support; efforts to build a coalition of stakeholders; and the strategic pivots and political organizing that were instrumental in passing the law. By recounting Vermont’s roadmap, the report’s author, Rebecca Gale, who has been covering childcare in the state for years, shares lessons learned to highlight what’s possible when it comes to state-led childcare reform. 

Here’s a look back at Gale’s reporting on some of the key actions and policy changes that have led to progress in Vermont.

While childcare has gained visibility in political campaigns, it’s more often a secondary issue, rather than a key priority for candidates. That may be starting to change. In April, Aly Richards, who led Let’s Grow Kids for nearly a decade, announced her bid for governor. In an interview with Gale, Richards discussed why the governor’s office might be the best next step for someone who knows how central quality childcare is for families — and states — to thrive.

Let’s Grow Kids, a nonprofit organization formed in 2015 to improve Vermont’s childcare infrastructure, sunset its operations in October 2025. According to its CEO, it was always intended to be dismantled after a decade, and the sunset strategy was critical to its success in spurring change. Here’s an inside look at how the organization’s efforts drove progress that led the state to make childcare more accessible and affordable, and why the time-sensitive nature of Let’s Grow Kids was key to its success.

Act 76, a law which passed in Vermont in 2023, has been a game changer for many of the state’s childcare providers, offering a notable financial boost. For some, it’s doubled their income. The law, which was designed to increase access to high-quality childcare for families and to support the state’s early care and education workforce, has had a number of successes in its first year of implementation. Here’s a look at how family childcare providers in the state have been impacted.

In June 2023, Vermont’s legislature overrode Republican Gov. Phil Scott’s veto to approve a number of state-wide priorities, including $125 million to shore up its childcare infrastructure. The state’s successful effort followed more than a decade of advocacy and grassroots organizing focused on strengthening its childcare system. The law, , expanded childcare subsidies to reach more families and increased wages for providers. Supporters view Vermont’s approach as a national model for expanding affordable, accessible child care and strengthening the workforce.

In June 2023, Vermont’s Republican Gov. Phil Scott vetoed a bill to strengthen the state’s childcare system, but even after the governor’s veto, the state legislature had sufficient support to consider an override. Richards, CEO of Let’s Grow Kids, said the decision to veto could be traced back to a campaign promise not to raise taxes. Without the payroll tax increase, the program could not afford to pay providers more. “The Governor agrees childcare is essential but won’t raise taxes. Those two things cannot live together. The solution is public investment. We know this is hard work. That is why we have a bipartisan movement. We are making hard choices together, but we are doing so responsibly,” Richard said.

As the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc across the globe, many states across the U.S. were navigating childcare setbacks. But in May 2021, after years of advocacy and organizing around strengthening childcare, Vermont passed , key legislation to reform childcare in the state. Despite the groundswell of political will for the program, Vermont still faces major funding hurdles. Gale offers a look into the state’s progress and challenges.

On Friday, New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed into law, which allows retirees taking care of children to access the state’s childcare assistance program.

For eligible families, the NH Child Care Scholarship Program provides funds for childcare through direct payments to daycare and out–of–school time providers for children up to 13 years old, and through 17 for a child with disabilities.

SB 608 requirement for kinship caregivers who are retired and at federal retirement age. Previously, parents and guardians were required to be working, looking for work, in a training program, or in school. Families still have to meet state income eligibility requirements, which require them to make 85% or less of the state median income to qualify.

The law also requires the state to ask the federal government if family care support services are “an allowable service” under the Acquired Brain Disorder, Choices for Independence, and Community-Based Service waiver programs.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com.

California is doing something about diaper insecurity for its residents. Gov. Gavin Newsom that the state will provide 400 free diapers to families with newborn babies, beginning with hospitals that predominantly serve low-income households, before expanding more broadly.

Diaper need is a serious challenge for many families. of U.S. households with children under age 4 in diapers report diaper insecurity, according to a nationally representative study from the nonprofit National Diaper Bank Network. An infant typically goes through diapers in a day. At , the annual diaper cost for one baby can run roughly $1,000 during the first year. These costs hit during a period when families are often due to the combination of baby-related costs and employment challenges driven in part by America’s .��

The consequences can be harmful: When parents can’t afford enough diapers, they may turn to alternatives like using plastic bags or towels to make their own diapers, or reusing wet or soiled diapers. These practices can lead to severe diaper rash and urinary tract infections. In my work, I have spoken to childcare providers who describe the phenomenon of “Monday morning rash,” when babies arrive after having diapers stretched over the weekend.

Cloth diapers present an alternative that can save parents a lot of money, but they for many families because they require up front costs, need frequent laundering — which can increase utility bills — and importantly, because many center-based childcare programs won’t allow them.  

In fact, many childcare providers require parents to provide disposable diapers, and if they’re unable to do so, they may not be allowed to drop their children off. In of Connecticut diaper bank users, more than half of parent participants who relied on childcare programs reported missing work due to a lack of diapers, with an average of four missed days per month.

While the long-term solution to diaper need likely lies in ensuring all families have access to reliable and well-paying jobs, a statewide program like California’s Golden Gate Start can provide a strong preventative intervention that can set families off on the right foot, helping them leave the hospital with one less worry while they try to figure out how to care for the beloved, squalling creature that’s coming home without an instruction manual. In practice, the 400 diapers, which come in varying sizes, should cover about a month’s supply.

California is not the first state to try to tackle diaper insecurity. Illinois has, since 2023, been utilizing Diaper Dollars, a statewide initiative that sends out a monthly $40 e-card to eligible families that can be used to purchase diapers at various stores, and the idea has since spread to Ohio. In 2024, Tennessee to families enrolled in the state’s Medicaid system, although the program is being as the state legislature tries to shore up healthcare budget holes. 

California’s model, though, may have the most straightforward delivery system. Diaper Dollars has faced challenges because the stipends can only be used at participating stores and some major retailers don’t currently accept that form of payment, while Tennessee struggled with coverage because it delivered the benefit via pharmacies, and left many families lacking options. California’s use of hospitals is innovative, though it does mean only a one-time infusion of diapers versus an ongoing supply.

Despite the fact that California’s program seems like a clear win, it has . While plausibly driven by animus toward Newsom, a , commentators have focused on the fact that a nonprofit with connections to Newsom’s wife, Baby2Baby, is involved in the administration of the free diapers. Some see Newsom’s free diaper program as politically flashy but economically tokenistic, that giving new parents 400 diapers does little to solve the real reason California feels unaffordable — especially the state’s severe housing shortage and high cost of living. Others suggest routing diapers through a nonprofit and hospitals may cost taxpayers more than simply handing families cash directly.

This argument almost entirely misses the point. While it’s always worth watching the implementation of a benefit to make sure the government is working efficiently, the question on the table is whether there is a public interest in helping all parents and babies get off to a strong and healthy start. As conservative analyst Patrick T. Brown in his Family Matters Substack, “even if the program design could theoretically stand to be improved, it hardly deserves the scorn being directed at it. … Sometimes a program can be good without being perfect; and sometimes we should do a better job resisting the temptation to hold our political opponents’ ideas to a higher standard than our own side’s.”

Indeed, American families would surely welcome a race among states to figure out how to most effectively support them in securing an adequate diaper supply. Babies need diapers, but especially as the cost of living continues to rise, not every American family is in a position to provide them. California is taking action: That in itself is worthy of praise — and one way or another, there will be important lessons to learn.

The way she recalls it, nearly everyone in the group whose child had a summer or even late spring birthday was thinking about holding them back from kindergarten an extra year. Bollman’s son had an August birthday, making him the youngest among the bunch. 

The conversation stuck with Bollman, she said, and soon, she found herself asking any teacher she encountered during the next year for their opinion. 

“Not one teacher told me to send him early,” Bollman recalled. “They all said it was a good idea to hold him back — ‘especially with a little boy,’ they’d say.”

The idea of delaying a child’s entry into kindergarten — a practice often referred to as redshirting — has gone mainstream in recent years, so much so that a parent of a child nearing school age might get the impression that just about everybody is doing it. 

But that’s far from the case. 

A recent from NWEA, a research and assessment company, finds that rates of kindergarten redshirting in recent years have held remarkably steady with trends from the and , averaging about 5% each year and peaking in fall 2021 at 6.4%. 

The practice gained attention in 2022 when social scientist Richard Reeves, in his book “,” proposed redshirting all boys to account for their slower pace of development, relative to girls. Reeves’ proposal followed writings from author Malcolm Gladwell, who in his 2008 book “” that birthdays, relative to cutoff dates, contribute to a person’s long-term academic and athletic performance. 

Still, recent attention to redshirting seems to have amounted to minimal, if any, increase in the uptake of it, said Megan Kuhfeld, director of growth modeling and data analytics at NWEA. 

“A lot of families probably consider it and then opt out of doing it,” Kuhfeld explained, adding that, after reflection, many probably realize, “‘You know what, I don’t want to pay for an extra year [of preschool].’ We’re capturing those that went through with redshirting.” 

NWEA evaluated data from more than three million kindergarteners between fall 2017 and 2025 (and controlled for the 1-2% of kindergarten students who repeat the grade each year). The findings show that redshirting remains uncommon, and that among families who delayed kindergarten, the students tend to be white, male and enrolled in more affluent schools. 

The analysis also found that the academic advantages experienced by redshirted students, who are starting kindergarten as among the oldest in their class, tend to fade quickly. By third grade, most redshirters score on par with their peers who started kindergarten on time. 

But one of the limitations of this study, Kuhfeld acknowledged, is that it doesn’t capture students’ social, emotional and behavioral advantages, which are often the driving force behind a family’s decision to hold a child back a year. 

“It’s very possible there is a long-lasting behavioral component,” she said. “We aren’t able to see that. That’s an important caveat.”

It was social-emotional development that ultimately drove Bollman and her husband to make the decision to redshirt their son. 

Bollman wasn’t concerned that her son couldn’t handle kindergarten academically. Rather, she noticed that, at 4 years old, he struggled to cope when he lost a game or didn’t succeed at something on the first try. 

“I worried if he went into an environment where he was having a hard time keeping up with his peers, that he would kind of get discouraged and it would lay not-the-best groundwork for his academic life,” Bollman said. “A year later, he was more emotionally mature where he could handle those setbacks.”

Now that her son has finished up his kindergarten year, Bollman feels sure it was the right decision. It wasn’t without downsides, though. She estimates that her family spent $8,000 for him to attend preschool three days a week during the year that he could’ve been enrolled in kindergarten. 

Diane Schanzenbach, an economist at Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy who studies education issues, noted that there are financial costs on both ends of the redshirting decision. On the front end is the additional cost of a year of preschool, which about $11,500 in the U.S. On the back end, it’s a year of lost earnings, if that child eventually enters the labor force a year late but retires around the same age as everyone else. 

Schanzenbach, who has about redshirting in the past, sympathizes with parents who are on the fence about kindergarten, recognizing that they often have to decide many months before their child would actually start school. 

“Parenting is really hard,” she said. “The kid you’ve got today is not the kid you’ve got in a week, in a month, in a year. You’re trying to make the best possible decisions under a ton of uncertainty… but there’s a lot of reasons to stick with the normal path.”

It’s clear that the vast majority of families come to a similar conclusion, since redshirting rates have not meaningfully increased over the decades. In fact, in 2025, in states with a Sept. 1 kindergarten cutoff, more than two-thirds of the 4.4% of students who were redshirted were born in June, July or August, NWEA shared. Those summer kids are more likely to be true edge cases, where families feel the child, at 4 years old or newly 5, is just not ready for the expectations put on children in kindergarten.  

Children who are redshirted are more likely to be from families with higher socioeconomic status, the report found. It’s all part of the “arms race” in education, particularly among wealthier communities, to try to give their child an advantage academically and athletically, Kuhfeld said. (The term “redshirting” is actually borrowed from college athletics and refers to a student-athlete delaying competition until sophomore year to allow for more development. When they compete the following year, they’re known as a “redshirt freshman.”)

“‘We want to give them an extra year so they can be really ready to go,’” Kuhfeld said, describing the mindset of parents who redshirt their kindergarteners. “It’s both, ‘Do you have the means?’ and ‘Are you in a community where this is more normalized?’”

Elia Garrison, a parent in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, opted to redshirt two of her six children — both boys with summer birthdays. But she wasn’t trying to join an education arms race. She was trying instead, she said, to protect her children from the intense academic pressure and competition that begins the moment they start school. 

“Once the rat race starts in kindergarten,” Garrison said, “it doesn’t stop.”

Garrison has noticed the way that kindergarten has become much more rigorous and structured than it was when she was growing up in the 1980s. When one of her kid’s kindergarten teachers told her that “,” it resonated with Garrison. 

“I wanted my son to have that one more year of play-based fun” in preschool, she said, referring to her fifth child, who has a June birthday. 

The COVID-19 pandemic also featured prominently in her decision to redshirt him. She had gone to the local school district’s meeting for incoming kindergarteners in spring 2020; she had been planning to enroll him for the fall. A few weeks later, the pandemic hit. 

Garrison imagined her young-for-his-grade son experiencing kindergarten over Zoom, and she changed her mind. They’d try again the following year. 

“Developmentally, it was a great decision with him,” she said of her son, who will be in third grade this fall. “I don’t know if it’s because we redshirted him, but I feel like he was able to grasp concepts better than had he been rushed into first grade and second grade.”

If he’d been born in April or May, she said, she wouldn’t have held him back. That was where she drew the line. She ultimately decided to redshirt her sixth — and last — child as well. His birthday is the day before the Sept. 1 cutoff.

“I’m OK with holding them back a little bit, within reason,” Garrison said. “I’m OK with that because we’re in such a hurry … to make our kids grow up … that pushing them creates problems later on — unnecessary goals and unnecessary stresses.”

She emphasized that, above all, it’s a personal decision that each family has to make for themselves. 

“I can’t reiterate it enough: One size doesn’t fit all,” Garrison said. “As a parent, you know your child best. Just because everybody is doing it doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Some kids will be bored and will want the challenge of kindergarten, even if they are younger. You don’t want to hold them back. You want them to have the challenges. It all depends on the parent and the kids.”

Others made a similar point. Kuhfeld clarified that neither she nor NWEA are coming out against kindergarten redshirting. “We’re not endorsing that no one redshirts,” she said. “For some kids it does help, but for a lot it doesn’t — and there are these long-term downsides you should think about.”

Schanzenbach, who believes that redshirting is “generally not worth it,” noted that, if she had been in Garrison’s case with a child who would’ve been starting kindergarten virtually, “I for sure would have redshirted my kid.”

At the end of the day, Schanzenbach said, whatever a parent decides, they can’t ever know what would’ve happened if they’d chosen the alternative. Maybe a young kindergartener would’ve had a nurturing teacher who helped him with his social-emotional development and gave him time and space to thrive. “It’s literally impossible to know,” she said.

Bollman, in Arizona, has another son — a toddler — who will be enrolling in kindergarten before she knows it. But his birthday is in January, and he’ll be starting kindergarten “on time.”

“It’s kind of a relief,” she said, “that it’s not a decision I have to make.”

But when TV writer Ernie Bustamante read Manzano’s 2015 memoir, Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx, his mind went to an entirely different neighborhood: He thought her life story would make a great sitcom. 

He envisioned a coming-of-age series, with Manzano as “the ultimate protagonist” who pushes through all of her struggles. “She conquers. She overcomes.”

Manzano liked the idea, and the pair got to know one another as they worked to sell it to studios. But after years of trying with little success, they pivoted to a new enterprise.

The result is , a new feature-length documentary that explores Manzano’s life and career as the first Latina to appear regularly in an American TV series. The film is making the rounds at this spring as Bustamante searches for a distribution deal. In the meantime, he’s seeking out schools and universities to arrange “impact screenings” for aspiring filmmakers, actors, educators and anyone wanting to know more about the iconic actor — and the groundbreaking series that both offered her a platform and revolutionized children’s television.

“All young people want to change the world to some degree,” Manzano said in an interview. “I was lucky enough to fall into a group that wanted to do the same thing.”

In the film, she likens the show’s key creators — puppeteer Jim Henson, producer and composer , among others — to another seminal ‘60s group: “The Beatles are great — separately they’re all good. But together they made some magic.”

‘I had to be myself on purpose’

Manzano grew up in the South Bronx in the 1950s, before the notorious city planner Robert Moses “destroyed” it, in her words, with a tangle of expressways cutting through mostly Black and Latino neighborhoods. Her parents were both Puerto Rican — her father was a roofer, her mother a seamstress, and the everyday talk in the neighborhood revolved around la lucha, the struggle to survive.

Raised in a home where her father drank and her parents often fought, Manzano quips in the film, “Mostly they struggled with each other.”

She found solace in TV, movie musicals in particular, and imagined herself in starring roles. When a teacher took her to see the movie West Side Story, she was “absolutely overwhelmed” by the spectacle and awed by how it transformed the gritty streets of New York into art. At the end of the film, she burst into tears.

“I think it touched me so much because it was the first time I saw things in my neighborhood exalted and made beautiful,” she says in the film.

Manzano’s first big break came when a teacher encouraged her to apply to New York’s High School for the Performing Arts. She’d eventually make her way to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, studying with, among others, the renowned mime , who introduced her to the physical comedy of Charlie Chaplin — she’d later bring her own to Sesame Street. 

By 1971, Manzano had fallen in with a group of Carnegie Mellon drama students helping classmate John-Michael Tebelak produce his senior thesis, an improvisational drama based on the Gospel of Saint Matthew. It was a hit at school and the group took it to on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where, with the help of composer Stephen Schwartz — only two years older than Manzano and the rest of the cast — it morphed into the surprise hit musical .

Sesame Street, another surprise hit, had debuted on TV in 1969, and by 1971, Mexican American activists on the West Coast were demanding more Latino representation on the show. Manzano got a call for an audition and impressed producer Stone, who offered her a part.

Manzano had actually glimpsed the show at Carnegie Mellon, wandering into the student union one day as a very young James Earl Jones slowly and deliberately onscreen. The scene cut to , married characters who also happened to be Black. “I really flipped because in those days you never saw people of color on television — and if you did, it wasn’t these charming couples.”

Coming on the heels of the Civil Rights movement, the show’s representations made sense. None of it happened in a vacuum, she said. “America was ripe for it.”

Manzano’s first moment of reckoning as a Latina on the show happened before she even appeared on camera: A makeup artist was at work heavily tinting her face when Stone walked in and insisted that she appear onscreen as natural-looking as possible. The makeup — at least most of it — had to go.

“It made me understand that these people at Sesame Street, they really meant what they said — they really were interested in having a real Puerto Rican on television that was not slick or glib. They wanted real humans.”

Recalling the moment more than 50 years later, she said, “It freed me, because I realized I didn’t have to play any part. I could just be myself.” Whenever she tells the story, she likes to cite her favorite line from : “I had to be myself on purpose.”

With her improv and musical theater background, Manzano soon became a reliable player who could do nearly anything.

Puppeteer , who performed on the show for 26 years, said her abilities shone through despite the show’s demands: In early seasons, cast and crew were expected to shoot as many as 130 episodes.

“Everybody is great, but when you had a scene with Maria, it was just guaranteed to be awesome, because she was such comedy gold,” he said in an interview. 

All the same, Mazzarino said, Manzano and her co-stars felt like real people. By the late 1980s, Maria would fall in love with and marry Luis, played by , another longtime player. Her scenes with Delgado rang true, he said, bringing a truly loving couple to the screen.

“Even though Sonia can do great comedy, she always felt grounded,” Mazzarino said. 

Manzano herself has a fondness for the show’s loose, improvisational feel, especially in the early days: It was, she recalled, a party-like atmosphere in which everyone was trying to crack up everyone else. That allowed her to both try out her comedy chops and search for a way to let the Muppets’ madcap humor shine. 

“They were completely zany,” she recalled. “They ate tables. You could throw them against the wall and nothing would happen to them.”

She recalled an early episode in which a scene began taping before puppeteer , who played The Count, could make it to the set. As his colleagues proceeded with the scene, Nelson swept in. “And there was no interruption,” Manzano recalled. “It’s a remarkable moment.”

Over time, she became renowned for the knowing gaze she’d offer to the camera, breaking through the fourth wall in exasperation each time a Muppet co-star — most notably Oscar the Grouch — did or said something ridiculous. 

“That was a real breakthrough — no pun intended — when I understood what my job was,” she said, “that I could have this relationship with the camera separate from my conversation with the puppet right next to me. I could look at the camera and say, ‘Do you get this? I mean, do you see what’s going on?’”

Over the years, Sesame Street scripts became more research-based and deliberate, and life on the set tightened up. Manzano left the show in 2015 and gets nostalgic about the “looser kind of environment” it had at the beginning. “As they became more tame, they kind of lost a little bit of that craziness.”

‘She never talked down to children’

Michael Davis met Manzano in 2005, when TV Guide sent him to write a piece marking the show’s 35th anniversary. By then, Manzano was also a writer for the show — she’d eventually earn 15 Emmy awards for her writing. She was the first cast member he met.

“I remember coming home to my wife and saying, ‘You know, I met the actress who plays Maria on Sesame Street today,’” Davis said in an interview. “‘I had a long conversation with her, and she’s the realest deal I think I’ve ever encountered. She is exactly as her character and her TV persona projects — open, funny, candid, intelligent, capable of making great sense about preschool children and their needs.’”

He filled a notebook with her thoughts that day.

Davis, who would go on to write the 2008 book , said that for all of her comedic instincts, Manzano understood her job as a trusted adult in kids’ lives. “She never talked down to children,” he said. “And I think this is true of the Muppet performers and other cast members: They never talked the cutesy voice or talked baby talk, even to 2-year-olds. They addressed children with great respect and interest and really listened to what they had to say. And yeah, it was just a beautiful thing to watch.”

It’s difficult to imagine another actor whose entire adult life has been captured by the camera, he said. Manzano grew up on the show, first appearing at age 21. She fell in love and , had a baby and changed careers several times, at one point working construction. In one renowned episode, she led the cast as they took viewers through the grieving process when old . 

In the documentary, Manzano quips, “We were the first reality show — without the whining.”

Davis, whose second book on the show, , is due out this fall, said Manzano herself underwent a remarkable transformation from her Godspell days. “She started out as an ingénue — basically a character who was in her teens, just this perky Latina who is new to the street.” She grew, he said, “into one of the most influential characters in the history of Sesame Street and a trailblazer in many, many ways.”

Manzano stuck around the show until age 65 before stepping aside to make way for a new generation of actors — and to write books and produce . At 75, she shows few signs of slowing down, working more recently with another Sonia from the South Bronx, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, to help found the .

Through it all, Davis said, “she has the most level head, and she is almost painfully normal, and I love her for that.”

He added, “She knows who she is — she absolutely knows who she is, and why she’s here.”

The preschooler’s prolonged absence was related by Decca Calloway, the executive director of early learning at Puget Sound Educational Service District in Renton, Washington. And this young learner was not the only one to feel the effects of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, said Calloway, whose district serves nearly 1,000 Head Start and roughly 360 Early Head Start children across two large counties.��

“Many children stop coming to school,” she told ����Ӱ��. “It happens to one family, but most of our families — especially our immigrant community families — are really tight knit (and) they take each other’s children to school. So when you have one child or one family afraid, you essentially have many families and many children afraid.”

Calloway is one of nearly 300 Head Start directors, parents and teachers across seven states who participated in an April which found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions are causing significant fear, stress and disruption for preschool-aged children and their families. 

In total, just over half of surveyed Head Start leaders reported at least one instance of ICE activity near their facility within the past 12 months, and 6% noted that activity was during particularly vulnerable school pickup and drop-off times. 

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.

When Calloway analyzed her district’s attendance data, she found that up to 20% more young children were chronically absent this February as compared to 2023, much of which she attributes to increased panic around immigration enforcement. Even before ICE and border patrol officers made their presence known in the state, concerns around impending action had a chilling effect, she said, leading to significant dips in enrollment.

Just under half of all survey respondents said they had observed negative behavior changes in children in response to the crackdown, consistent with clinical symptoms of anxiety, stress and trauma. This has appeared in a variety of ways, including kids having more frequent tantrums and expressing concern around going outside to play. Others have told teachers they’re afraid to leave their homes, “thinking that they won’t see their parents again.”

Children at some centers also appear to be mirroring language they hear on the news or from adults around them. For example, one staff member wrote, “I have had 4 instances (between HS children) where 4 individual, separate white children have told Latino children in their classroom that either the police were coming to shoot them or telling them that they were going to report them and have them sent away.”

The survey was conducted by the Washington, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin Head Start associations throughout April. The groups surveyed 277 respondents in their own three states and across four others: California, Florida, Virginia and West Virginia. Those queried encompassed 90 program leaders, 165 staff members and 22 parents or caregivers. 

Sandy Diaz, an advocacy and family engagement specialist at the Washington State Association of Head Start who led the survey, noted that even children who are not from immigrant families are being impacted by ICE enforcement actions.

“It’s everybody in these Head Start communities who is witnessing and hearing about ICE activity (that) is being affected,” she said. “And that ultimately affects the quality of learning that children are receiving.”

‘It wiped out our parent programs’

For nearly three decades, immigration enforcement was largely prohibited in and around schools, hospitals, places of worship and other so-called sensitive locations. But President Donald Trump as one of his first acts in office in January 2025. 

Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security faced a , the longest in history, amid heated debates around immigration. A bill to fund ICE and border patrol in the Senate ahead of the Memorial Day recess, meaning it won’t pass before the June 1 deadline set by Trump.

Democrats have that protections for sensitive locations be reinstated as yet as it stands, the stalled legislation does not appear to include this provision.

A separate bill, , was introduced in the House in February 2025 and would prohibit immigration enforcement actions within 1,000 feet of places such as Head Start centers and hospitals, except in certain extreme circumstances. Since early January of this year, the bill has gained 33 co-sponsors in the House and four in the Senate, meaning over two-thirds of the Democratic caucus is officially in support. No Republicans have signed on, leaving it in limbo.

Without such protections, providers fear continued harmful effects for their staff and families. Of the nearly 50% of Head Start leaders who reported ICE activity around their program, 3% said it had occurred directly at their site and nearly 10% said it had occurred at a family’s house. 

One-third of parents said they were more anxious or cautious about being involved in program activities and felt worried about traveling to their Head Start centers or being in public spaces. Over a quarter said they have changed the way they routinely do pickup or drop-off at their programs.��

“Staff have been heartbroken that families ask them if they will be the emergency contact for the child if the parent is picked up,” wrote one provider.

“We have seen a decrease in playgroups/socialization,” wrote another. “Families are not as willing to hang out during drop-off/pickup to speak with teaching teams. More families are requesting transportation for their child, limiting their exposure at the center.”

The recent survey also found that local ICE activity has impacted staff and center operations: Three-quarters of leadership members received requests from employees for guidance on how to handle immigration officer encounters and 71% of programs have actively altered their systems or security operations, such as installing doorbell cameras.

Calloway, the Washington director, has seen this play out with parents and staff firsthand. 

“At some locations, it wiped out our parent programs, because we have a high population of children who speak a language other than English in their household, and those parents were the most afraid …  Parents didn’t come anymore,” she said. 

This mismatch between families’ current realities and ideal scenarios begins early — as soon as their children are born, when the parental leave they are able to take is often less time than they want. 

It may not be altogether surprising that parents in the United States are not satisfied with their leave, care and work options. After all, it is one of the only developed nations that a national paid-leave program for new parents, and in this country is unaffordable and inaccessible to many families. 

Still, these findings add an important dimension to the conversation about raising children in America: The survey is nationally representative and the largest-of-its-kind, reaching about 5,500 parents and primary caregivers with children from birth to age 5, including nearly 3,000 parents with household income below 200% of the federal poverty level or about $66,000 or less for a family of four. 

But it’s more than that, said Alyson Silkowski, senior policy adviser at the New Practice Lab, a team focused on improving economic outcomes for American families with young children, and one of the authors of the report. 

“There’s a lot we know about what’s not working,” Silkowski said of earlier data and surveys on families. “We were keen to add to this conversation about parenthood in America — what it is parents actually want as they think about these early years.”

The simplest answer to what parents want, they found, is more time and more money. 

Nearly three in four parents said they want more quality time with their children, such as playing, being outside and traveling. Instead, they feel much of their “free” time is spent doing housework such as cooking and cleaning. These findings hold across income levels, geography, race and ethnicity.

More than half of parents — 55% — said they wanted more time off with their child after they were born, and that’s true for both moms and dads. 

“Neither are getting what they want,” Silkowski noted. 

Priscilla Welsh, a mom of two living in a suburb of Denver, lost her job while pregnant with her first child a few years ago after the company that employed her went out of business. When their son was born, Welsh was not working, and her husband, who is self-employed, “took a pause” from work to be at home with his family, she shared. 

“It was a rougher period of very tight finances with our firstborn,” she said. “You want to snuggle your newborn and feel relaxed, but it was top of mind for me — how little money we had.”

When Welsh had their second child, in 2025, her husband was able to take advantage of Colorado’s state paid parental leave program, which was approved by voters in 2020 and became available to families in early 2024. He was able to take 12 weeks of paid leave to be at home with his wife, toddler and newborn son, which Welsh described as “amazing.” 

As for money, the New Practice Lab found that financial concerns seem to be leading families to choose work and childcare arrangements that do not reflect their preferences. 

Nearly nine in 10 parents said they want to work some amount, including 91% of dads and 85% of moms, but 75% said their current work arrangement is not one they want. 

Welsh has not returned to the workforce since she lost her job during her first pregnancy, but she would like to if she can find the right position, she said. Ideally, she’d work one day a week in an event-planning role. She loves the challenge-and-reward cycle of paid work, and she also thinks it would be good for her as a parent. 

“I want to miss them,” she said of her sons, who are 2.5 years and 10 months old. “[Working] would help me miss them and be a better mom when I’m around them.”

She added: ““Being a mom is just one challenge after another after another. But there’s no big reward. It’s like, ‘Potty training is over!’ But no, potty training is never over.” 

In her paid jobs of the past, Welsh would work really hard to complete a task or a project, then get appreciation and acknowledgement for it, she said — “rather than being a parent, where you’re never finished.” She thinks that returning to the labor force would “stretch” her in a good way.

The main reason she isn’t working now is because she isn’t looking — because she doesn’t think that what she is seeking is even out there. 

“Part of me just doesn’t believe it exists, or that I’d be paid high enough that it would be worth my time,” she said. 

Many moms — and some dads — with young children seem to share Welsh’s desire for more flexible, part-time work. 

Of the parents who said they prefer to work, 30% of moms and 64% of dads said they want to work full-time, compared to 28% of moms and 15% of dads who want flexible work and 25% of moms and 12% of dads who want part-time work.��

About a third of respondents said they preferred to care for their children themselves in their ideal scenario, while 19% wanted a combination of care, 18% wanted another parent to do the caregiving, 15% wanted formal settings, 11% wanted a relative or friend, and 5% wanted a nanny or sitter.��

“There wasn’t a single solution that crossed the 50% threshold,” noted Amira Choueiki Boland, chief of staff at the New Practice Lab and an author of the report.

Boland also acknowledged that many families seem to have modest expectations for what can change about their circumstances — whether it’s more parental leave or more satisfying work and childcare arrangements. 

“We’re conditioned to what we think is possible,” Boland said, recalling how “astounded” she was to observe the system of support in place for colleagues who took parental leave when she worked in Canada. “[We should be] opening up our aperture to what other societies have figured out to make this work better.”

Mary Moody bought Silver Bluff Kids Early Learning Center in 2023, one of in western North Carolina at the time. The owners cited insufficient childcare subsidy funding.

Today, the Canton center, where around 75% of children rely on child care subsidy funding, is facing the same challenge, Moody said.

“The price of groceries, the price of supplies and materials, our insurance costs, like everything has increased … except our subsidy reimbursement rates,” she said.

Childcare programs need more subsidy funding, advocates say, to make ends meet and serve low-income working and student parents. Advocates are asking for $101 million this short legislative session to increase the rates facilities receive through , which helps afford care.

“It’s about stabilizing the childcare sector right now, because before we can even think about expanding childcare programs, we have to sustain what we have,” said Leanna Martin, director of early childhood policy and research at nonprofit .

Since the state legislature passed a full budget in 2023, the state has experienced a net loss of 262 licensed programs, according to from the Gov. Josh Stein’s office.

In March, Stein’s “critical needs budget” for the rest of the fiscal year.

Legislators went home last fiscal year without passing a full budget. Both the and proposals included around $80 million per year in subsidy funding to update rates.

Without increased subsidy funding, childcare will continue to become less accessible and more expensive, said Dan Rockaway, president of the and CEO of Sounds and Colors, which has four childcare centers in Wake and Orange counties.

“It’s what keeps parents in the workforce and classrooms open,” Rockaway said. “But to truly work, subsidy rates also need to be better aligned with the actual cost of providing high-quality care, otherwise the gap continues to grow and access remains out of reach for too many families.”

‘In free fall’

Many childcare programs have had to make up for the loss of pandemic relief funding, which ran out in March 2025. The state encouraged programs to use that funding to increase teachers’ wages. When the money ran out, providers have had to find other ways to fill the gap and retain staff.

In Moody’s case, she has chosen not to hire an extra “floater” in order to maintain her staff’s wages. Instead, her and her assistant director fill in to maintain required child-to-staff ratios when a teacher is out.

“That makes things really challenging now, really tight, and it has been since March of last year,” she said.

Moody said she could raise tuition rates, but she knows parents cannot afford to pay more. Since her program is operating a waitlist, she has considered opening another center in the area to meet the demand.

“But again, that’s the problem, is the funding,” she said. “I mean, the funding just isn’t there.”

, which Stein established last year, has been studying funding and policy solutions to high costs and low access.

The group in January 2026, including creating a statewide subsidy floor, providing childcare for childcare employees, and offering childcare to public sector workers. The group has also discussed creating an endowment that multiple entities may contribute to.

Incremental changes will not be enough to recruit and retain teachers, said Henrietta Zalkind, director of the Down East Partnership for Children, a local Smart Start partnership serving young children and families in Nash and Edgecombe counties.

“The system is in free fall,” said Zalkind, a long-time early childhood advocate. “And we need to acknowledge where we are.”

She said direct funding to increase teachers’ wages would make the largest difference in the short-term, pointing to of education-based wage supplements from the from nonprofit Early Years. Child care teachers in North Carolina made an average of $14.20 an hour in 2024, .

What difference would higher subsidy rates make?

Right now, the rates programs receive cover less than half of the actual cost of care, according to from Candace Witherspoon, director of (DCDEE).

Higher subsidy rates would help child care programs relying heavily on the program keep their lights on, Martin said.

“It brings consistency into the system … and reduces that market volatility to ensure providers receive a reliable baseline that more closely reflects the cost of care,” she said.

The $101 million ask would establish a floor rate for infants and toddlers based on a and increase rates for 3- to 12-year-olds based on . The floor rate would mean all facilities serving infants, 1-year-olds, and 2-year-olds would receive, at minimum, the average statewide rate based on age and quality level.

The based on location, quality rating, and age. Martin pointed to Randolph County, which receives $867 per infant in a five-star setting. In neighboring Davidson, programs receive $1,236 for serving the same age child at the same quality level. A floor rate would increase rates in Randolph County by $600 per child per month, Martin said.

Advocates in called for a floor for all ages. This session’s ask prioritizes care for infants and toddlers because it is the most expensive and hardest to access across the state. Establishing a floor would nearly double the amount many rural providers receive to care for the youngest children, Martin said, and send about $27 million to programs in rural communities.

“(The request) is a practical, feasible approach that’s going to have the greatest impact on our childcare providers,” she said. “The increased reimbursement will allow them to reinvest into their staff, into their operations.”

Increasing rates will also make it more likely that programs will participate in the program, which is voluntary, said Rockaway, president of the NC Licensed Child Care Association and CEO of Sounds and Colors.

“If subsidy doesn’t go up, then childcare centers are either forced to close if they’re heavily subsidized … or child care centers that are on a mix of subsidy and private parents can increase their rates, but then will take fewer subsidy children,” he said.

What about waitlists?

Meanwhile, thousands of families are waiting for subsidies to afford care. , 55,166 children were receiving subsidies and 8,319 children were on waitlists.

Enrollment is slightly up and waitlists are slightly down , when 54,676 children were served and 10,892 children were on waitlists.

Local agencies administering subsidy funds had to start waitlisting families in fall 2024 when federal pandemic relief funding ran out, according to DCDEE in an emailed statement to EdNC:

During the pandemic, states received American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding. This extra funding helped North Carolina pay for childcare subsidies and keep waitlists lower. This federal funding ended in September 2024. In order to comply with federal requirements, which do not allow the removal of vouchers from children already participating in subsidized programs, North Carolina instead had to slow enrollment into the programs which led to an increase in the waitlists for potentially eligible children.

Overall, the total available funding decreased significantly from June 2024 to September 2024—from $617,789,488 to $557,023,832. This decrease in funding has reduced the number of children served through the subsidized child care program.

In order to tackle those waitlists, it has to make financial sense for facilities to participate in the program, Martin said. NC Child has done research on steps the state could take to eventually reimburse providers at the actual cost of care. This year’s ask is the first of four steps, eventually totaling $380 million per year.

“Investing in the subsidy not only sustains the programs now, but it’s really sustaining our future, and it’s an economic imperative and an economic investment,” Martin said.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has no regrets about universal childcare.

As she approaches the end of her second term in New Mexico’s top office, she acknowledges there are some things she would have done differently. In a recent interview, she called 20/20 hindsight a “very powerful tool” that not enough politicians put to good use.

Moving the state toward a free childcare system — open to all New Mexico families regardless of income — isn’t on that list, however. The issue has turned into one of the defining public policy issues of Lujan Grisham’s tenure — which will come to an end later this year. The state’s heavily Democratic Legislature, initially wary of the program, has since voiced support and created a funding stream to continue the initiative for the next five years.

Still, the future of New Mexico’s free, universal childcare system is uncertain: Democratic candidates seeking the governor’s office have promised to double down on the initiative, while the Republicans question its fairness and financial feasibility — with one going so far as to file a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the rules underpinning the expansion.

Lujan Grisham defended her focus on childcare, asserting the state’s free, universal system will be a “game changer” for healthy child development and economic growth.

“In childcare, I really think we have done it as right as you can,” she said.

‘You have to start there’

Less than 20 years ago, most New Mexico lawmakers would have dismissed the idea of a universal childcare system in the state as more punchline than policy, said House Speaker Javier Martínez.

“People would have laughed at us if we talked about universal childcare back then,” the Albuquerque Democrat said.

In 2011, Martínez was fresh out of law school, working as a community organizer for immigrants rights. He and his colleagues started to notice a pattern: Many of the immigrant families they worked with attended organizing meetings with their young children in tow.

“We started thinking: What is the future of our organizing? And we landed on early childhood,” he said.

Organizers and policymakers started to converge around a plan to secure voter approval of a constitutional amendment to draw on the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund — then about $11 billion and now nearly $39 billion, according to an April report — to pay for a rapid expansion of early childhood programs. The proposal divided Democrats at the time. Martínez said his frustration over the Legislature failing to send the issue to voters led him to run for office in 2014.

It took years, but that plan worked. In 2019, Lujan Grisham — then newly sworn in as governor — signed into law a bill to create the Early Childhood Education and Care Department, based on a plan proposed by Sen. Michael Padilla, an Albuquerque Democrat and longtime advocate for early childhood education.

The next year, the governor signed the Early Childhood Education and Care Fund into law with an initial investment of $320 million. That trust fund has grown to more than $11 billion, State Investment Council documents show.

The Legislature in 2021 approved a resolution to allow voters to determine whether to pull 1.25% more each year out of the Land Grant Permanent Fund, which long has benefited public schools, to boost both K-12 education and early childhood programs. Voters in 2022 overwhelmingly approved the constitutional amendment, which now sends more than $250 million a year from the growing investment fund to early childhood initiatives.

Eligibility for state childcare assistance with no copays also has expanded — growing to include families living at or below 400% of the federal poverty level by 2022. That eligibility limit for subsidized care — $132,000 for a family of four in 2026 — covered the large majority of families in the state.

“There are very few states anywhere that really even thought about a way to create … a revenue stream so that you can start to make this affordable for parents — because you have to start there,” Lujan Grisham said.

Women leading both of New Mexico’s legislative and executive branches also “contributes mightily” to the state’s policy focus on childcare, she added.

Overwhelmingly, the work of childcare falls on women. Women make up about 95% of the early childhood workforce, with Black and Hispanic women working in childcare at a higher rate than the workforce at large, according to U.S. Department of Labor data from 2024. Research from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, found 14% of New Mexico childcare workers are immigrants.

Meanwhile, women 55% of the seats in the Legislature, outpacing the national average by more than 20 percentage points, according to data from the Center for American Women and Politics. Women hold 57% of New Mexico’s statewide elected executive positions.

There’s a connection between the women working in New Mexico’s early childhood education system and the women who work for them in state government, Lujan Grisham said.

“Mostly women in childcare, mostly women in pre-K, women majority in the Legislature, women majority in statewide offices — I think there’s a lot of synergy there in the state about putting families first,” she said.

Childcare costs, benefits

As any parent will tell you, childcare doesn’t come cheap.

That’s true even when the state of New Mexico is paying the bill.

This year’s House Bill 2 — the state budget bill for fiscal year 2027 — sets aside more than $1.2 billion for the Early Childhood Education and Care Department. That sum, a little over 10% of the state budget, includes $215 million for childcare assistance.

Lawmakers made sure during this year’s legislative session the free, universal childcare system will be financially stable for the next five years. Senate Bill 241, signed into law in March, will allow the state to draw up to $700 million from the early childhood trust fund over five years, in addition to setting up guardrails to ensure lower-income families are “first in line” for assistance if the state’s economy takes a turn for the worse, Martínez said.

Lujan Grisham acknowledged free, universal childcare is an expensive proposition — “public education is expensive, if it’s universal,” she said — but she sees it as a boost for New Mexico’s economy and a balm to the state’s child welfare challenges.

The governor can recount the objections some New Mexicans have to free childcare: “If people can afford to pay, they should. It should not be universal. … It doesn’t make sense to me. It feels like a giveaway.”

But she argues an adequately resourced, universal system will inspire workers and companies to move to New Mexico, while allowing more parents to join the workforce.

That’s particularly true for essential workers like police officers and nurses, who often paid top-dollar prices for overnight or weekend childcare, Lujan Grisham added.

Meanwhile, quality childcare contributes to reduced family stress, calmer households, and long-term cognitive and academic benefits for kids.

While no-cost childcare for all families represents a major cost to the state, Martínez said the policy will stick around — largely as a result of lawmakers being “really judicious” in planning and setting up the program’s funding mechanisms.

“As long as I’m speaker, this is not one of those programs that are willy-nilly going to get axed by the whims of the political winds,” he said. “It took 16 years to get us here, and we will ensure that we deliver on that promise in perpetuity.”

‘We have to get it right’

New Mexico will elect a new governor in November — and the next person to inhabit the state’s top office might not choose to prioritize early childhood education in the same way Lujan Grisham has.

Both Democrats in the governor’s race — former Congresswoman and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman — in recent interviews voiced their strong support for the state’s free, universal childcare initiative. They have promised, if elected, to keep it going, in addition to bolstering the state’s early childhood workforce through increased pay and expanded training programs.

When her child was young, Haaland said, childcare felt cost-prohibitive; she remembered hiring a babysitter just one time in her entire “life as a single mom.” She said she mopped floors and cleaned bathrooms at an Albuquerque preschool cooperative to get a discount on her child’s tuition.

“Universal childcare would have changed my life,” she said.

She described the state’s push toward a free, universal childcare system as a “worthy investment” that would create economic and educational opportunities for adults while improving academic outcomes for kids. Her affordability policy proposes cutting the red tape involved in revitalizing a disused storefront or building — including by turning it into a childcare center.

“It’s better for our economy. It’s better for our workforce. It’s better for our kids,” Haaland said. “I just think it would be a valuable asset for our state.”

Haaland voiced her support for ensuring childcare workers have avenues for career advancement and better pay.

“They deserve to make a sustainable living. … You can’t raise a child on minimum wage in New Mexico, so we absolutely need to do more to make sure that people can make sustainable wages,” she said.

A father of three grown children, Bregman said his family pieced together childcare by counting on family members — particularly his wife — to watch the kids. With the introduction of the free, universal system, he said, “times have changed.”

He argued quality early childhood education has the potential to yield long-term benefits for New Mexico children, who have long suffered from higher-than-average rates of poverty and lower-than-average academic performance.

If elected governor, Bregman promised to build on the promise of free childcare. He said he’d want to conduct a kind of census of the childcare industry to better understand workforce recruitment and retention strategies, quality improvement initiatives, and whether the state’s existing supply of childcare slots meets demand — including in rural and tribal communities.

“We have to get it right,” Bregman said. “We’re obviously spending a lot of money on it, but more importantly, we’re talking about the most important asset we have — our children.”

GOP might ‘peel back’ scope

Republicans running for governor, however, aren’t sold on the program.

Former Rio Rancho Mayor Gregg Hull and Albuquerque businessman Doug Turner voiced similar concerns about free childcare for all. Both said they support childcare assistance for needy families, but they expressed concerns about the financial sustainability and fairness of a program in which families that can afford to pay for childcare don’t have to.

“I think the state has a role to play in helping people who need help — and I think it needs to be done in an intelligent way [to] make sure that the programs aren’t abused,” Turner said.

He also noted the current workforce can’t meet the childcare demand. “We have a gap that we can’t really close very quickly,” he said.

If elected, Hull said, “My first step as governor is going to be to immediately evaluate the viability and the long-term sustainability of the program. … If we need to peel back the scope of it in the short term until we figure it out, then we need to peel that back.”

He said he plans to work with staff of the Legislative Finance Committee on an “in-depth dive” into the childcare supply and demand — and how the state plans to make up the difference between the two.

“This is going down a rabbit hole that can get out of control and be far more expensive than I think anybody ever thought it could be,” Hull said.

Duke Rodriguez, another Republican seeking the seat, took his objections a step further: He filed a against Lujan Grisham, with an eye toward invalidating the rules of her universal childcare expansion.

Rodriguez, joined by state Sen. Steve Lanier, R-Aztec, and Sandoval County father Zachary Anaya in filing the lawsuit, argues Lujan Grisham’s executive branch essentially went about the universal childcare expansion in the wrong way by creating the regulations in November, several months before the Legislature voted to approve funding for the program.

Rodriguez also has raised concerns the true costs could come in far higher than the state’s projections — potentially billions of dollars — and New Mexico can’t rely on federal funding.

“It will be 100% borne by tax revenues and appropriated by the Legislature,” he said.

“Whatever program we ultimately adopt … has to be built to last, not built to simply sound good,” Rodriguez said. “It would be terrible to make promises of access when the capacity is missing.”

A state judge in the 2nd Judicial District Court ruled late last month in Rodriguez’s complaint that Lujan Grisham’s administration must pause the program or present an argument for why the initiative should not be permanently halted. A hearing on the matter is scheduled June 11.

Rodriguez called the ruling a victory.

Lujan Grisham, however, slammed Rodriguez in a statement on Facebook, calling him a “third-tier Republican candidate for governor” and describing his complaint as “frivolous” and a “despicable attempt to mislead New Mexico families and generate headlines for a campaign that is going nowhere.”

She wrote, “Universal child care is in effect and it is NOT being shut down, despite what this desperate candidate claims.”

While Rodriguez expressed his support for assisting needy families, he said in an interview Lujan Grisham’s free, universal system “sounds charming, but [is] probably unlawful.”

“I think providing this kind of support for our New Mexico families is a truly valid aspirational goal,” he said, “but an aspirational goal should not be confused with unenforceable rules and regulations that would put providers at risk, that will put families at risk, and, most importantly, will put children at risk.”

This first appeared on .

New research published in JAMA Pediatrics, a section of the Journal of the American Medical Association, found a statistically significant decrease in the number of Child Protective Services investigations in Flint after the implementation of Rx Kids.

The prenatal and infant direct cash support program and has since expanded throughout the state.

The study, done by researchers from the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Michigan State University, showed a 7-percentage-point decrease in the investigated allegation rate among infants born in Flint, which corresponds to a 32% decrease compared to the period prior to Rx Kids interventions.

“In the 3 years prior to the implementation of Rx Kids, the proportion of infants with an investigated allegation within the first 6 months of life was 21.7% (646 of 2971 infants) in Flint and 19.5% (3921 of 20124 infants) among control cities,” according to the . “After implementation of Rx Kids in 2024, the investigated allegation rate decreased to 15.5% (165 of 1065 infants) in Flint, falling below the investigated allegation rate of 20.6% (1303 of 6317 infants) among the control cities.”

Researchers estimate that the program prevented approximately 57 infants from experiencing a child welfare investigation in its first year alone, with a press release from the Rx Kids team celebrating the study as demonstrating the benefits provided by economic support during pregnancy and early infancy.

“These findings, now published in JAMA Pediatrics, underscore the powerful role that economic stability plays in protecting children,” said Dr. Mona Hanna, Rx Kids director and associate dean of public health at Michigan State University. “By trusting families and investing in them during the earliest, most vulnerable period of life, we are not only improving health outcomes; we are preventing trauma before it starts. This is what community-driven public health looks like.”

The study acknowledges a number of limitations with the study, including the fact that only one post-intervention year — 2024 — was included. Additionally, the research included all infants born in Flint in 2024 after Rx Kids implementation rather than actual enrollment in the program, but noted that the high uptake rates of the program should mean that the estimates are very close to reality.

“Our research compared what happened in Flint before and after Rx Kids launched to what we saw in a control group and the results are clear,” said lead author Dr. Sumit Agarwal, a physician and health economist at the University of Michigan, in the press release. “During the first year of Rx Kids, infants in Flint experienced fewer investigations for maltreatment. These results show that providing early economic support to families can make a real difference and should challenge us to rethink how we can proactively support families.”

Another study author, Will Schnieder, associate professor of social work and faculty director of the Children and Family Research Center at the University of Illinois, added that while it is well-documented that poverty is one of the strongest drivers of child maltreatment risk, research into Rx Kids shows the opposite of that, which is that a financial buffer around the birth of a child can lead to fewer children being harmed.

Since launching in Flint in 2024, Rx Kids has expanded to 42 communities, and to an additional 20 communities across Michigan in summer 2026 — the program’s largest expansion yet.

That expansion is coming as the program is under heavy fire from top Republicans in the state Legislature, notably both House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) and House Appropriations Chair Ann Bollin (R-Brighton). Both have advocated to cut out all state funding for the program — $20 million — in addition to the significant cuts made to the program’s state funding in a unilateral decision from House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee at the end of 2025.

and have each launched a number of allegations, without evidence, against the program in recent months over what the money provided to families is used for, though a by Rx Kids in March shows virtually no spending on luxury or discretionary items.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jon King for questions: info@michiganadvance.com.

In 2025, one-third of states had a waitlist or a freeze on applications for childcare assistance for most families, through the Child Care and Development Block Grant, according to new data published in a from the National Women’s Law Center.��

The number of states with a waitlist or freeze had increased from the prior year — from 13 in 2024 to 17 in 2025. But perhaps more concerning, said Karen Schulman, the center’s senior director of state childcare policy, is the total number of children on those waitlists. 

Between February 2024 and February 2025, the number of children on state childcare waitlists nearly doubled, to 225,000, according to the NWLC, which collected data from state childcare administrators across the 50 states and Washington, D.C. 

Those waitlists only grew as the months wore on. By the second half of 2025, more than 400,000 children were on waitlists in those states, marking a 78% increase from February. In the months since the data was collected, at least five more states, plus Washington, D.C., have implemented waitlists, and two more began freezing intake, according to NWLC. 

“A range of factors are pulling at states,” Schulman said, “so you have more families needing help but a strain on resources that provide that help.” 

Some states are struggling to adjust to the end of pandemic-era funding, the last of which in September 2024, and many states are trying to balance tight budgets while also planning ahead for federal funding cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, she explained. Meanwhile, rising costs have changed many families’ financial circumstances, and more may be seeking out assistance. 

Plus, Schulman said, some states have increased the reimbursement rates paid to providers in an attempt to get more of them to participate in the subsidy program; that has redirected some of the dedicated funds for the program.  

It’s not a surprise that the CCDBG program, which is the main source of federal support for families struggling to afford childcare, is failing to reach everyone who qualifies for it. As of this year, it is to be serving only about one in six of all eligible children, due to inadequate funding. 

While the 400,000 children on waitlists make up a small slice of the total population of eligible children, that number is significant because it represents the families who have expressed a need for the benefit and are being denied it or told it will be delayed, Schulman explained. She also noted that the number of families seeking help is very likely underestimated because of complexities with data tracking. California maintains waitlists at the local level, rather than at the state level; Colorado has waitlists in some counties and frozen intake in others; and Georgia, although it doesn’t use the term “frozen intake,” effectively has a freeze in place since it only serves families meeting priority criteria. 

Whether it’s a waitlist or a freeze, “There are tremendous impacts for a family who is waiting for assistance,” Schulman said. 

While families are waiting for a childcare subsidy, they may have to stretch their budgets to pay for care out of pocket. That could mean putting off other bills, such as rent and utilities, or struggling to afford food. 

“They’re just meeting their basic needs if they have to pay for childcare themselves,” Schulman said. “They might have to patch together unstable arrangements that could fall apart at the last minute and put their job in jeopardy. They may not be able to go to work at all, which could put them in even greater financial straits.”

All of these outcomes, she said, could have impacts on the family’s future financial, emotional and physical health. 

Meanwhile, early care and education programs in low-income areas, where many families rely on subsidies to afford childcare, may face another set of repercussions. They could end up cutting already-low staff wages, Schulman said, or go out of business, putting their enrolled families in a bind. 

“There’s just a ripple effect throughout the whole community, affecting the economy of the community, the workforce of the community, whole neighborhoods,” Schulman said. 

Kim Kofron, executive director of early childhood education at Children at Risk, a Texas-based statewide advocacy organization, said that one of the challenges is that families who join a waitlist may incorrectly believe that they’ll soon circulate off it. 

Anecdotally, Kofron said, she hears that waitlists in Texas are about two years long. (The state had more than 110,000 children on its waitlist as of February 2025, according to the NWLC.)

“Do they patch together some type of childcare with neighbors and friends? Do they go to a subpar childcare program because that’s what they can afford? Or do they turn down the job because … it’s cheaper to not work and not pay for childcare?” Kofron said, outlining the options for waitlisted families. 

She added: “There’s a lot of questions right now from providers of, ‘Is it worth it? Is it worth taking subsidies when I can’t get more kids off the waitlist?’”

These outcomes are not theoretical for RB Fast, founder of Westwood Academy, an early care and education program in Denver. 

She remembers receiving an email in fall 2024 notifying her that one of the counties she serves was . (In Colorado, waiting lists and freezes are decided at the county level.)

“I really thought it would be a couple of months,” she said. “I was not ready for it to be semi-permanent and extended the way it has been.”

Soon, she learned that two more counties would also be implementing a freeze. 

Back then, Fast’s program, which is licensed for 30 slots, was fully enrolled. She estimates that about two-thirds of those families paid with subsidies. Today, her program is underenrolled, with 22 children, and only three of those families pay with subsidies — two got in before the freeze began and the third is a child living with a foster family who was granted a temporary subsidy. 

For the remaining families, some manage OK, but others scramble each month, sending panicked emails asking if they can pay late or use a friend’s credit card for this month’s tuition. “You can tell they’re juggling to try to get tuition paid,” Fast said.

She has also seen firsthand the way some families pull together substandard childcare arrangements in the absence of public assistance. Fast knows of a family that had to start leaving their toddler with the great-grandmother while the parents go to work. 

“I’m sure she loves that child very much … but at 80, are you in place to give an optimal environment to a 2-year-old?” said Fast, noting the level of attention and activity a toddler requires. “It’s not about an inconvenience for one family or a handful of families,” she said of the waitlists. “It affects employers, extended families [and] children.”

Fast is in the process of opening her second location, in a nearby suburb of Denver. That program will not be accepting childcare subsidies, she said. Nor will any future program she opens. 

“It doesn’t feel worth it to me,” she said. 

The word “discipline” barely appears in the books, which invite adults to learn more about what drives a child’s behavior and to gain a deeper understanding of how the nervous system works. Campbell’s approach suggests that traditional consequences and rewards used by many parents and educators often address behavior at a surface-level, but lasting change comes from strengthening adult-child connections, fostering emotional security and providing consistent supportive experiences that drive growth. 

Along with one of her co-authors, Lauren Stauble, a colleague she met earlier in her career, Campbell developed a framework called Collaborative Emotion Processing, which helps adults and children navigate emotions together. She described it as “a way to teach and learn how to feel stuff with other people that builds long-term skills for emotional intelligence.” It was designed to help children and their caregivers learn from each other and grow together, she said.

The popularity of her books and the CEP method has led Campbell to develop a number of other resources for caregivers and educators, including an for families and educators, a (which elaborates on the themes in the books) and a professional development for early educators.

In the conversation below, Campbell shares the origin story behind the CEP method and why parents and caregivers need to understand how the nervous system works in order to foster healthy development.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Collaborative Emotion Processing is rooted in understanding what behavior is and what it isn’t. Can you describe the approach?

When we created the CEP method, we designed it to help us understand behavior as communication, really from the nervous system and not reflective of a kid’s character or a choice that they’re making in the moment. Folks often see behavior as a choice — that a child is choosing to be defiant or they’re choosing to throw something across the room or yell something in the moment. And we aim — with the CEP method — to focus on supporting kids through co-regulation, connection and skill building instead of trying to control or correct their behavior in isolation, with timeouts or things like that. And really shifting from “How do we stop the behavior?” to “What is this behavior telling us about what this kid needs right now?”

How did your experience as a teacher give rise to CEP, and is there research to support the approach?

Lauren Stauble and I were both early childhood educators at Lemberg Children’s Center, outside of Boston. She came to me at one point and she was like, “I feel like we’re doing something different in our classrooms than is happening in the rest of our school.” We started taking videos of one another teaching and interacting with students to see what we were really doing. We didn’t set out to create the CEP method and then research it. We kind of created a loose framework around what we felt like we were doing, and then set out to find that framework out in the wild. And we found bits and pieces of it in different spaces. Attachment research really informs that relationship space of helping kids feel safe and seen and supported, [and research] in relationship and interpersonal neurobiology helps us understand the brain and the nervous system. But we couldn’t find anything … that really encompassed everything we were doing. 

We reached out to Brandeis University — which our child care program was attached to — and connected with the psych department there and got to dive in and do the Institutional Review Board process of applying for research and navigating it, which is a beast in and of itself, as it should be. We weren’t trying to actually dive into research at first. We were just hoping to find a framework that encompassed what we felt like we were doing. In absence of a complete framework, we created the CEP method.

Why do you think the method resonated? What need is it filling for parents and educators?

I think it finally explains what they’ve been experiencing. So many adults are told to manage behavior and just stay consistent and use consequences. And that doesn’t work for kids who often need the most support. And then we get the frustration, the burnout, the sense of like, “What am I missing? What am I not doing?” I feel like CEP gives them a lens that makes behavior make sense and helps them understand a kid’s unique nervous system, which helps them see what’s driving this behavior. And it allows you then to shift your response out of that compliance state into a collaborative state. Recently, I was presenting to a group of parents and educators in Middlebury, Vermont, and afterward, a mom came up to me and she was like, “I’ve read so many parenting books.” And this is the first one I read where I was like, “Oh, actually now my kid makes sense to me.”

What’s one thing that can help a parent use the CEP method with their child?

Focus on you. Start with you. Everyone [asks], “What do I do with my kid?” And it’s why “Tiny Humans” is laid out the way it is, where you’ve got to go through part one of the you stuff and the neuroscience and the why behind it before you get to part two about how to respond to your kid.

What does it look like when kids pick up on behavior modeled by adults? 

I had this little girl when I was teaching pre-K, one of my first years of teaching. She was 3, and this tiny little peanut. And her dad was dropping her off one day and he said, “Hey, last night she said the F-word to her brother. Do you know where she may have heard that?” And I was like, “That’s not a word we use at school, but did you ask her?” And he was like, “No.” 

I called her over and I was like, “Hey, I heard last night you said the F-word to your brother when you were feeling mad. Where did you hear the F-word?” And she was like, “When daddy drives.” And he was like, “Yep, and goodbye.” What we model is so crucial. It’s why the CEP method has five components, and four of them are about the adult. When we are modeling this work, when we are showing up with our own self-awareness and self-regulation and empathy and social skills and intrinsic motivation, kids learn from it.

Brené Brown comes up a little bit in your book. She has done such a great service by helping the word “vulnerability” enter the culture. Has her work shaped yours?

I agree. She is my queen. I’ve had the privilege of diving into so much of her work, and I think she has shifted so much for us, with the understanding of vulnerability. The ability to see it as a strength and not a weakness is so crucial for emotional development.

What gives you hope? What are you hearing that should make people feel optimistic?

I am so stoked that we live in a time period when we’re even talking about emotional intelligence … It is so cool that we are talking about how nervous systems work. … The fact that this is part of the zeitgeist gives me so much hope. 

We just got some data back looking at our work in elementary schools, and we’re seeing a 60% reduction in behavior support calls in the first quarter. … It gives me hope that when we talk to kids about how their brains and bodies work, they’re so open, and they’re so curious, and they’re so receptive, and they want this. They’re hungry for it. And now we have the tools, the knowledge, the ability to talk to them. We know how to do that. And I feel really hopeful about that.

Despite having room to serve more children, Middletown day care owner Peggy Fuentes often has to turn away families in desperate need of care. Each of her toddler classrooms has 10 students — the state caps class sizes for that age group at 12 — but to fill the remaining seats, she’d have to hire another employee. That’s because a decades-old state regulation says day care classrooms have to have one adult for every five children between 18 and 36 months old.

With operating costs climbing across the board, , Fuentes said it simply isn’t feasible to pay another salary to accommodate just two more children.

“I have an inventory of childcare spots that I’m reluctant to use because it is cost prohibitive,” said Fuentes, owner of On My Way Early Learning and Childcare Center, which serves around 240 children under 13.

New York state has some of the strictest staffing requirements in the country — stricter, in fact, than New York City’s. As state leaders allocate billions of dollars to address the childcare shortage in this year’s budget, a new state law could ease those requirements and unlock new day care seats at no additional cost to providers — but only if the state agency that oversees childcare decides to act on it.  

In December, Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation eliminating a provision that has prohibited the state Office of Children and Family Services from relaxing childcare staffing ratios. The new law leaves it to the agency to actually change the ratios; if it did so, the same number of workers could care for more children.  

State Senator James Skoufis, who introduced the bill in 2024, told New York Focus that adjusting the ratios is “more critical than ever” amid the state’s ongoing efforts to scale up its childcare sector and provide more affordable care to working parents.

Childcare advocates who oppose the change are concerned having the same number of staff supervising more children would increase the risk of accidents and injuries and fail to address a root cause of the state’s childcare crisis: low wages for workers.

Supporters counter that looser ratios are consistent with set by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a professional membership organization that promotes high-quality early childhood education, and that alignment with the group’s guidance would offer flexibility to providers who already operate with razor-thin profit margins.

So far, OCFS has not indicated whether it plans to update the regulations. In a statement provided to New York Focus, OCFS spokesperson Daniel Marans said the agency is “currently assessing the viability of the requested ratio change, with the goal of supporting childcare providers without compromising our commitment to child safety.” The law does not impose a deadline for OCFS to make the switch.

More than 60 percent of New York’s census tracts are classified as a “childcare desert,” meaning that there are three or more children under 5 waiting for every available slot, according to the . Meanwhile, more than 16,000 children are specifically as a result of staffing shortages that have led programs to operate under capacity. While that’s not necessarily related to staffing ratios, some think easing them could help address the shortage.

“We can provide more resources to counties and to providers all we want, but if we don’t provide the very common sense flexibility that these providers require in order to effectuate creating more seats, then the money is only going to go so far,” said Skoufis.

Skoufis introduced the bill after providers, including Fuentes, expressed their frustrations to lawmakers over being held to tougher ratios than their counterparts in New York City, where staffing requirements are set by the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Day care providers in the five boroughs must have one staff member for every five children between 12 and 18 months and one for every six children who are 2 years old. In the rest of the state, it’s 1–4 and 1–5, respectively. The discrepancies are even wider for older children.

Assemblymember Andrew Hevesi, who sponsored the bill, believes aligning ratios with New York City could help thousands of those families access a seat without burdening providers or taxpayers with additional costs.

“Childcare providers are operating on such slim margins that they frequently worry about going out of business,” Hevesi said. “We were looking for a way to give them some breathing room in an incredibly difficult climate without costing anybody any money.”

Dede Hill, vice president of policy at the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy, a social policy and advocacy organization, has a different perspective. “One thing that makes childcare in New York state so high quality is because we have low ratios — and that’s certainly not something we want to step away from,” she said. Hill is a member of the Empire State Campaign for Child Care, which advocates for universal childcare.

“I don’t think staffing ratios are the solution to the tremendous issues we have related to supply,” said Hill. The key is more investment in the workforce, including higher pay for childcare workers, she said.

One reason providers are facing significant financial strain is that the state’s reimbursement level for its , which covers nearly all of the cost of childcare for low- and middle-income families, isn’t enough to provide high quality care, Hill said. With providers forced to absorb the shortfall, many are unable to offer adequate wages: In 2025, the annual average salary for childcare workers in New York , lower than 96 percent of other jobs.

Fuentes, who has owned her day care center in Orange County for 17 years, said she currently has to choose between raising tuition for all children in order to pay another employee and waitlisting families even though there is ample space to serve them. If OCFS chose to align statewide staffing ratios with New York City, she said, she could enroll around 15 more children without hiring additional staff.

“There’s a childcare crisis in New York,” she said. “If we can’t use our full supply of seats, then that crisis is just going to continue.”

For Heidi-Jo Brandt, president of a union representing more than 8,800 providers outside New York City, the flexibility doesn’t seem worth it. Some revisions to standards may be appropriate, such as the current 1–2 ratio for children under 2 in home-based care, she said, but a broader relaxing of staffing ratios could put children at risk. Research shows inadequate supervision is the main cause of injuries in childcare settings, including , , and from bottle warmers.

“While it could have a tremendous impact statewide, our concern is always for the safety of children,” said Brandt.

Some research indicates that high staff-to-child ratios and smaller group sizes are critical for children’s health, safety, and development, but data on the safety outcome of ratios like New York City’s is limited.

In recent years, as the childcare industry has reeled from a pandemic-driven dip in enrollment and rise in operating costs, have proposed loosening their childcare staffing ratios, increasing maximum group sizes, and relaxing other regulations to meet demand. Many states set ratios based on guidance from the National Association for the Education of Young Children; New York City’s ratios are roughly in line with the group’s recommendations.

Meanwhile, New York state has some of the most stringent ratios nationwide. It is that uses the restrictive ratios recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Public Health Association for 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds. Even New York City’s staffing ratios remain stricter than those in many other states.

Skoufis first introduced the bill after then-OCFS Commissioner Suzanne Miles-Gustave informed him that aligning statewide ratios with New York City would require legislation. At the time, he said, OCFS officials “made it crystal clear” they wanted to pursue the changes, though he’s less clear on their position today.

In a January letter to current OCFS Commissioner DaMia Harris-Madden, Skoufis argued that it is “financially unreasonable” to require a 1–5 staff-to-child ratio for 18- to 36-month-olds with a maximum group size of 12.

Hevesi said that he believes the agency should “act sooner rather than later” given the potential benefits.

“My instinct is that there’s going to be support to look at this and see what’s appropriate — but my role was just to take the handcuffs off and now they are free to do whatever they feel is appropriate,” he said.

Buffalo day care owner Emily Thrasher pointed out that New York City and state regulations differ on other aspects of childcare: The city also has more lenient classroom space requirements than the rest of the state, as well as different age group definitions that determine other regulations. For example, New York City defines a toddler as a child between 12 and 24 months old, while New York state’s definition is 18 to 36 months.

Thrasher said full alignment with New York City’s standards would allow her small business to generate hundreds of thousands of additional dollars annually. That, in turn, would enable her to serve more families.

“I can’t even imagine how much that would compound for larger day care centers,” she said. “We could help more families, open more slots, pay our staff more. … The changes seem small, but it would make the biggest difference.”

This story originally appeared in , a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. .

Effective July 13, the Administration for Children and Families will several Biden-era that sought to create more predictable, reliable payments to childcare providers. These include paying providers based on a child’s enrollment, rather than their attendance, which protects them against financial losses from unplanned events such as illness and family travel, as well as making subsidy payments in advance, rather than reimbursing providers the following month.

Both practices help to stabilize the industry by giving programs consistent revenue that allow them to plan and budget month over month, providers and experts said. 

Although the requirements will be rescinded, states will still have the option to pay based on enrollment and in advance of services — just as families who pay privately for child care have long done. There is nothing in the new rules to prevent states from continuing or starting those payment practices, noted Helene Stebbins, executive director of the Alliance for Early Success, a nonprofit that supports early childhood advocates across the 50 states. 

“It doesn’t require it, but it doesn’t prevent it from happening,” she said. “You can 100% still do it.”

But without the requirement, it’s likely that some states will reverse course. Already, three states — , Ohio and — have paused efforts to implement or extend enrollment-based pay, noted Daniel Hains, chief policy and professional advancement officer at the National Association for the Education of Young Children. 

“It’s one of those things that, absent that requirement, and given the fiscal situation states are in, states are not going to prioritize these changes if they’re not required to,” said Hains, “and that’s going to have a negative impact on providers and, ultimately, families.”

Currently, about now pay providers based on enrollment, according to an analysis from the First Five Years Fund that was published in March, while the other half still pay based on attendance. At least 10 states are paying providers up front for childcare subsidies, rather than in arrears, according to policy tracking from NAEYC. 

The particulars of how and when a provider gets paid can seem like a technicality, but to an early care and education program operator, that may be the difference between financial solvency and ruin. 

The administration first announced these proposed rule changes in early January, before opening up the issue to public comments. NAEYC included more than a dozen provider voices in its to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees ACF.

A program director in Louisiana explained why the Biden-era policies help to keep her in business.

“During cold and flu season, if childcare providers were only paid based on attendance rather than enrollment, many of us simply would not survive the winter,” the director wrote. “Most of our families have multiple children, and when one child gets sick, it often spreads through the entire household. Enrollment-based pay is the only model that reflects the real cost of maintaining stable staffing, ratios, and operations.”

A program director in Kansas wrote, “Childcare is a tough job. Providers don’t need any additional obstacles. … Having to wait for reimbursement for a month or more can have a significant impact on a provider’s financial well-being in their program.”

And a director in Maine pointed out that a child whose spot is funded by subsidies should not be treated any differently than one from a family who is paying private tuition. “We cannot predict attendance,” she wrote. 

The Maine director’s point is one that motivated the Biden administration’s 2024 rules, Hains said. The in 1990 establishing the Child Care and Development Block Grant, which authorizes the CCDF, sought to have states’ subsidy payment practices “reflect generally accepted payment practices of childcare providers” who receive payments privately from families, to maximize choices among low-income families seeking care, Hains explained. The Biden rules to get states back in compliance with that original intent. 

Stebbins, of the Alliance for Early Success, said she couldn’t think of a single other industry that operates in the way that early care and education does. 

“It’s Business 101,” she said. “I paid for two kids in childcare. I always paid in advance. I paid if they were sick or we went on vacation. Why is this such a big leap?”

Now that this issue is being returned to the states, she said, it’s on policy advocates and the early childhood community to help make the case to state leaders why enrollment-based pay and prospective pay are so essential. 

“It’s good for the field … because it creates a stable, predictable source of income, and it is aligned with how private pay works in the industry,” Stebbins explained, laying out the argument. “It treats kids who are on subsidy — low-income children — just like everybody else.” 

Those outcomes, she added, have ripple effects across communities and entire states. 

“A stable industry is good for the kids and the programs. There’s less turnover and uncertainty about income,” she said. “It’s good for the state economy because it allows parents to work.”

On the other hand, attendance-based payments may disincentivize programs from accepting families who pay with subsidies altogether, said Casey Peeks, senior director for early childhood policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. 

The enrollment-based pay and prospective pay are only two of the “four critical levers to improving the sector” that the Trump administration is rolling back, Peeks said. The third is the use of grants and contracts to provide direct childcare services, which allow states to enter into agreements with providers to reserve slots for certain populations of children. The reversal of that practice may mean that some families, particularly those with infants and children with disabilities, could have more trouble finding slots for their child. And the final lever is capping the maximum amount a family can pay out-of-pocket for childcare, which the Biden-era rule set to 7% of household income, based on federal affordability standards. 

The co-pay limit isn’t perfect, Peeks acknowledged, but “it gives this peace of mind to know how much you’re going to pay,” she said. 

In Ohio, one of the that has not yet capped co-pays at 7%, the limit is 27% of income, which can be crushing for some families. 

“I think knowing how much of a burden this [childcare] expense is — it rivals mortgage payments and rent payments — to take away a lever that exists for affordability and offer no alternatives puts families who are already struggling in a really difficult spot,” Peeks said.

Much of the conversation about how much and what type of screen time is appropriate for young kids is focused on the use of digital technology at home, under the purview of a child’s parents and primary caregivers. But the reality is that a of children age 5 and under spend at least part of their week in an early care and education setting, where screen time may be less visible, but is often present in some form. And when communication between parents and early educators falls short, young children may end up spending more time with screens than experts recommend — and their parents intend. 

In early learning environments, screen use varies widely, said Rebecca Parlakian, senior director of programs at Zero to Three, a nonprofit focused on early childhood development. Some settings are screen-free, while others set parameters like time limits or restricting screens for educational use only, and others allow children to watch movies or short videos for entertainment. 

“Depending on who cares for your child and what the practices are, it could go the whole range,” Parlakian said.

Although expert guidance around screen time has begun to move away from offering clear duration-based limits, there is still a large body of research informing best practices around children and digital media — and that research emphasizes the importance of in-person, hands-on and relational interactions for young children. But often, program staff and parents are not communicating with one another about how much or what kind of screen time a child is getting in each environment, said Kate Blocker, director of research and programs at Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development. 

“We have to acknowledge that has to apply across the contexts they’re in and is not repeated,” Blocker said. “The communication gaps are really real, I think.”

Although some states are beginning to whether and how screens can be used in early care and education settings, a program’s approach to screen time is more often driven by the philosophy and preferences of its owner or director. In the absence of clear, cohesive guidelines for the field, that can be a daunting task, said LaTonya Richardson, owner and director of The Academy of Learning and Early Care, a licensed, nationally accredited family child care program in Jacksonville, Florida. 

“Technology in early childhood is not a black-and-white thing,” Richardson said. “We need clearer guidance, and we need realistic goals.”

Many of the best-known early childhood advocacy and membership organizations do offer some recommendations for programs around screen use. The National Association for Family Child Care, for example, includes guidelines for “television and computers” in its , including limits of 30 minutes of screen time per day for children over age 2 and none for those who are under 2. But the field lacks a set of go-to guidelines that all program leaders and staff can reference, much the way that many families view the from the American Academy of Pediatrics. 

Instead, Richardson said, her approach has evolved over the years as she’s learned in real-time what works well for children and what doesn’t. 

Today, she and the other two teachers in her program use some technology with the 12 children they serve — who range in age from 7 months old to 5 years old — but they keep it brief and reserve it for times when a screen can add something to the learning experience. 

“Technology is used as a tool, not as a replacement for teaching,” she said. “We believe children learn best through play, conversations and movement.”

When screens come out, Richardson said, they are used with intention. 

Earlier that week, one of the program’s teachers used a tablet during circle time to play short videos of a few nursery rhymes the group had recently read together. It was intended to recap the lesson and deepen the children’s understanding of the stories, Richardson said. 

One video was of Humpty Dumpty. In it, the kids could see Humpty Dumpty falling, in motion. They could watch as he cracked into several pieces. Another video was of Jack and Jill. The children were able to see Jack and Jill tumbling down the hill. 

“It’s to give them something else than we’re already doing so they can see and feel and interact in different ways when we’re using the tablet,” Richardson explained. 

The older kids can also access a tablet to practice concepts like counting or the alphabet. Her staff limits this activity to five minutes at a time. 

“If a child wants to see the tablet, they know now, when they see the hourglass, ‘My time is up.’ There’s no getting upset. They put it down and move on to the next thing,” she said. “It’s all about guidance, support and making sure everyone’s clear on what the role is when it comes to using those devices.”

It helps when those messages are communicated consistently across both home and school settings, Richardson added. 

At one point, she held a workshop for families to help them understand what healthy technology use looks like for young children, and to understand the trade-offs of granting their kids screen time at home. Some parents expressed that their children were getting into the car after pickup demanding a tablet, and they didn’t know how to set boundaries. 

“It’s not to shame any parents,” Richardson said of the workshops and resources her program provides to families. “It’s to work with them so they can work with us.”

At the Primrose School of Evergreen, a private early learning program located in the heart of Silicon Valley, parents overwhelmingly view technology as a positive, said owner Bejal Patel. 

The preschool is part of Primrose Schools, a national chain of more than 500 early care and education centers. Patel’s center is piloting a new learning app from Primrose Schools called Balanced Learning that will be made available to all programs this fall. The app was designed for children ages 3, 4 and 5 and is intended to complement the hands-on activities and lessons that children are working on in the classroom. 

“There’s so much external content that might be fun and flashy … but we’re trying to get kids to think critically, solve a real-world problem,” said April Poindexter, head of curriculum and innovation at Primrose Schools, about the new learning app. “So it requires active engagement.”

One experience children may have on the app, she said, would reinforce a learning unit on gardening and pollinators. In the classroom, children may learn about gardening and taking care of the earth. Outside, they may plant seeds and tend to the school’s real garden. In the app, they can read further about pollinators or design their own pollinator garden based on information found in the app. 

Another app experience, Poindexter said, offers children an opportunity to view short videos about age-appropriate social challenges, such as starting a new school, and then use a handheld mirror to observe their own facial expressions. 

“It’s all designed to be short, sweet, brief and very purposeful to what they’re learning,” Poindexter said. 

Primrose centers, she added, do not use any digital media for entertainment and do not introduce any children under age 3 to screens. 

Patel, the owner of the Primrose location in Silicon Valley, said that aligns with her school’s approach. 

“Screens don’t enter classrooms until preschool,” she said. “Infants and toddlers — that’s non-negotiable. At this age, we know there’s no app that can replicate what a caring adult and a sensory bin can do for a 2-year-old’s development. When children reach preschool age, that’s where technology enters, but very carefully.”

Children may use the Balanced Learning app up to twice a week, for no more than 15 minutes, Poindexter noted. 

Patel acknowledged that the transition away from the app can be a challenge for children and staff, but noted that, “we’re fighting neurochemistry, not kids.” 

Children get a two-minute wrap-up cue on the app. Patel’s staff also offer verbal reminders and try to empower the children by letting them turn the tablet off and put it away themselves. Sometimes the kids try to bargain for more, Patel said. They’ll say, “I just want to finish this,” Patel said. 

“We’ve given our teachers certain things to say, like, ‘I know it’s hard to stop,’” she said. “We always try to positively redirect a child into doing something else.”

Sometimes there is a disconnect between that approach and what happens at home. Some parents, Patel said, may give their child an hour or two to watch whatever they want. 

“We do sometimes get worried that we have to start all over again [when] Monday hits,” Patel said. 

Still, despite these challenges, Patel feels strongly that children in the program benefit from having some exposure to technology, rather than none at all. 

“The best thing is to not pretend that this thing doesn’t exist,” she said. 

She offered an analogy. If a child is not allowed to have any cake on his birthday for the first 10 years of his life, and then is given a cake on his 10th birthday, he might be inclined to eat the whole thing. Whereas if he’d had one slice of cake each year on his birthday, he may have learned how to consume the sugar in moderation.

“You’re teaching the kid to learn things in small quantities,” she said. “Using the iPad or screen time for smaller chunks is better than not having limits.”

Blocker, of Children and Screens, offered a counterpoint. 

“I think it’s important to acknowledge there’s no evidence that a lack of technology is bad,” she said. “There’s no research to indicate that not having it in there is a problem.”

Blocker and other child development experts pointed out that screens are not the primary risk here. It’s actually what screens are replacing — hands-on learning, real-world experiences, free play and close caregiver interactions — that is the bigger concern. 

“Every minute a child is spending on a device isn’t spent on serve-and-return or physical development,” Blocker said. “Research is pretty clear young kids don’t learn as well from screens. What is the screen taking away? That’s one primary challenge: making sure it’s not displacing vital developmental inputs.”

Parlakian, at Zero to Three, would not necessarily suggest that technology should be absent from early care and education programs altogether, but noted that when it is present, it must be used thoughtfully and intentionally. That kind of approach, though, places the burden on already-overextended program leaders and teachers. 

There may be value in children seeing a concept they’re learning about come to life in a video. Children may understand the book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” better if they get to pair it with a video of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, she said. But there is no place, Parlakian feels, for screen use that is strictly for entertainment in early care and education programs. 

“Life is entertainment for young children,” she said. “There should be plenty to explore, experiment and solve in their setting.”

Nancy Burnside has devoted three decades to caring for children. At age 46, she jokes that she tried to leave the industry several times to pursue careers in retail and event planning, but she always came back to early childhood education.��

In 2015, Burnside returned to her home state from Georgia and reopened her parents’ Kosciusko childcare center, now called 3 Steps Daycare. She knew running the family business would be more of a passion than a lucrative job, but she never imagined things would be so hard. 

“My mom worked 16-hour days,” Burnside said. “I grew up in this industry … But this is the worst I’ve seen it.”

Over the last year, 75 of the 200 children attending her daycare dropped out. Those kids were all on the state’s voucher program, which helps low-income families access childcare that makes working possible. Burnside is losing $28,000 a month, hasn’t taken a salary in two years and is providing free care for five children whose families cannot pay, as well as discounted care for an additional seven children. 

Burnside’s center is suffering like 89% of centers recently from the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative. One year after the state ran out of pandemic-era funds that propped up a fragile system, hundreds of childcare providers across Mississippi struggle to stay open while thousands of parents remain on a waiting list for vouchers. Last year saw the greatest number of closures in nearly a decade, as .  

Out of 229 centers surveyed in the report, more than half reported having to terminate staff as a result of the pause, and nearly half reported caring for children whose parents weren’t paying. 

“When you walk through, everybody says, ‘Your building is full.’ I know it’s full – that’s because I’m not charging,” Burnside said. 

Despite and advocates, the Mississippi Legislature failed to allocate any money toward the state’s childcare voucher program. 

If the state doesn’t put up money for the program, centers will continue to close.

Burnside can’t fathom why Mississippi doesn’t prioritize early childhood education, especially in a crisis of this magnitude. She said there is a misconception that her work is babysitting. She said she has only ever thought of her center as a learning institution. It’s where children master life skills as simple as tying their shoes and as fundamental as making their first friends. 

“This is where they start,” Burnside said. “I don’t know anything else more important.”

Darren Brewer, a single father born and raised in Kosciusko, knows firsthand the importance of quality childcare. Brewer pays out of pocket for the care his 2-year-old daughter receives at Burnside’s center, but he believes he may qualify for vouchers now that his family is down to one income. He hopes to apply once the waiting list is resolved. Brewer applauds the center’s staff for recognizing early symptoms of ADHD and autism in his son, now 5, and for referring him to further testing. 

“It helped us with the doctors to know what to do and all that,” Brewer said. 

Brewer recognizes the importance of that early intervention, along with the countless birthday parties, graduations and everyday acts of love that have taken place at the center. 

“Ms. Nancy helps more people out than anybody in this town,” Brewer said. 

A potential solution that could be ‘huge’

Mississippi’s parents and childcare providers have one last hope for restoring money to the voucher program – a funding model that advocates proposed last year. That model would put unused money from the federal program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families toward the childcare voucher program. 

The Mississippi Department of Human Services is the agency overseeing the voucher program. For months, officials there said it was not possible to use more TANF money than the state already devoted to childcare. Currently, Mississippi transfers the maximum 30% of TANF funds to the state-run voucher program. 

However, advocates have pointed to other states that have legitimately and successfully transferred additional money by creating a revenue stream that utilizes TANF funds separate from the 30% limit. 

In January, department officials and said they were “exploring” the funding model. 

Now, Mark Jones, chief communications officer at MDHS, says the agency is finalizing a plan to use advocates’ model. The department has not made an official announcement. Jones would not say how much money his department would allocate or how many families the additional money would serve. 

Jones estimates that $60 million is needed to resolve the waiting list. Before the Legislature decided against it, lawmakers to the voucher program. Advocates say that while any amount will help, families and educators will continue to suffer if the state doesn’t put up the full amount. 

“As long as we have that waiting list, we know that children, working parents and providers are going to continue to struggle,” said Matt Williams, director of research at the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative. 

Still, Williams believes any allocation of money through this new TANF model would help establish the framework for the state to access more funds for the voucher program in the future. He said the implementation of this funding model would be a “huge, positive development.”

At the height of the crisis, the department reported a waiting list of 20,000 families. On April 22, Jones amended that number, saying it included duplicates and that there are currently 9,400 families waiting for vouchers. 

Even when the system is not in crisis, it is a far cry from reaching all the people for whom it was designed. Many families don’t know they qualify, or they may fall off the program due to red tape. 

Experts in Mississippi do not have solid estimates about how many eligible families go without care. But across the country, the voucher program eligible families, leaving far more without needed help in covering childcare costs. 

Meanwhile, Burnside doesn’t think she can make it past January if the families she works with don’t regain lost vouchers. She knows that closing would be an enormous loss for her community, where her center has been a lifeline for generations.  

Today, she serves many of the children of Kosciusko natives who attended the center when her parents owned it. She’s watched parents dropping off their kids become grandparents dropping off their grandkids. 

“I’m like, ‘I bet you didn’t think you would never come back on this road,’” Burnside laughed. “But they do.”

If her business is forced to shut down, she does not know where those caregivers will go to continue working and supporting their families.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Affordable preschool options are few and far between for Hannah Miller, a Waikōloa mom of a 2- and 4-year-old. 

For more than three years, Miller has relied on a free early learning program run out of a church in Waimea. 

The program has taught her two children new skills, like counting to 10 in Hawaiian and socializing with other kids, Miller said, while also introducing her to a community of other parents. But the program is set to close in the fall as federal funding runs dry for up to 17 early learning sites across the state.

“We feel like we have nothing for him, so he’s just going to be home with us,” Miller said about her son, who still has another year before he’s eligible for kindergarten. “We’re heartbroken.” 

Across the state, early learning programs are struggling to stay afloat amid potential federal funding cuts and reluctance from state lawmakers to fund preschool and child care initiatives this year. While the state faces an ambitious goal to provide preschool to all 3- and 4-year-olds by 2032, the future of the initiative remains unclear as one of its champions, Lt Gov. Sylvia Luke, takes a  amid a state investigation.   

Most early learning bills this year requested state funding to build the teacher workforce or keep child care and preschool programs afloat. But nearly all the proposals died as lawmakers faced significant budget constraints from federal funding cuts and Kona low storm damages amounting to $1 billion mid-way through the session. 

“They’re supposed to vote their priorities, and it was just not a priority this year,” said Malia Tsuchiya, early childhood policy and advocacy coordinator at Hawaiʻi Children’s Action Network. 

But failing to invest in early learning programs could have significant consequences for working families and the state’s economy as a whole, Tsuchiya said. High-quality preschool and child care not only prepare kids for school, she said, but they also allow parents to reenter the workforce and maintain stable employment. 

While Hawaiʻi runs some of the highest quality public preschools in the nation, it ranks among the worst states for 4-year-old children’s access to these programs, according to a  from the National Institute for Early Education Research. 

Coming off a challenging legislative session, advocates worry that momentum around universal preschool could further stall as Luke steps away from office. Luke led lawmakers in appropriating hundreds of millions of dollars for  in 2022, but investments may slow unless lawmakers continue to make early learning access a top priority, Tsuchiya said. 

“We’re going to need our lawmakers to support that investment,” Tsuchiya said. “Our priorities shouldn’t come and go because one person goes.” 

Funding Shortfalls 

Oʻahu parent Danielle Alefosio faced multiple roadblocks when she tried to enroll her 4-year-old daughter in preschool last summer. Some programs had waitlists, she said, while others required $200 to $300 deposits that her family couldn’t afford. 

But Alefosio found another option: Parkway Village Preschool in Kapolei, which opened as the state’s  last year. Since starting school, Alefosio said, she’s seen her daughter progress from speaking in gibberish to talking in full sentences and develop a love for learning. 

“They’re top tier,” she said. 

Parkway Village is one of two preschool-only charter schools in the state, which serve a total of roughly 180 students and are tuition-free. The two schools receive $171,000 per classroom in state funds, but advocates say it’s not enough to run high-quality programs and entice others to join the charter school model. 

Providers need roughly $275,000 to $285,000 to run a charter preschool classroom, said Caroline Hayashi, president of the Waikīkī Community Center. The center works as a nonprofit partner with , which serves nearly 100 students. 

Charter schools can work with their nonprofit partners to raise money to cover funding gaps, Hayashi said. But it’s not possible for nonprofits to cover such significant shortfalls, she said, and insufficient funding from the state could discourage other people from starting their own charter preschools. 

“There’s more sites where this could really work,” Hayashi said. “But in order to make that a reality, the key is making it more financially sustainable.” 

Parkway Village Preschool faces a budget shortfall of roughly $100,000 per classroom — or $400,000 for the entire year, said Trisha Kajimura, vice president at Parents and Children Together, which serves as the preschool’s nonprofit partner.  would have helped to close the gap by raising state funding to $250,000 per classroom, which is closer to the true costs of operating charter preschools, Kajimura said. 

The bill passed through the House but died when it failed to receive a hearing in the Senate Education Committee, chaired by Sen. Donna Kim. The bill did not have an appropriation amount, although the Hawaiʻi State Public Charter School Commission estimated the proposal would cost $790,000 in addition to the existing funds charter preschools receive. 

Funding shortfalls are also affecting early learning programs targeting low-income, rural communities.

A handful of nonprofits across the state run a network of family and child interaction learning centers, which provide free educational programs to infants and toddlers and their caregivers. The programs have historically relied on roughly $20 million from the federal Native Hawaiian Education program. 

But one of the primary nonprofits, Partners in Development Foundation, is in the last few months of its three-year grant, and there have been no opportunities to reapply for federal funding, said president and chief executive officer Shawn Kanaiaupuni.

Nonprofit leaders like Kanaiaupuni asked state lawmakers to fill the funding gap earlier this year, warning that  could close if the federal government stopped awarding grants through the Native Hawaiian Education program.  would have set aside an unspecified amount of state funding to support the programs, but the bill died when it failed to receive a hearing in the Senate Education Committee. 

Partners in Development was able to find other sources of funding to keep 19 of its locations open, but it plans on closing 17 family learning sites in the fall, including all four of its Kauaʻi programs. The closures will affect more than 1,000 children and 1,000 caregivers, Kanaiaupuni said, although she’s hopeful some county funding will come through to save four sites on Maui. 

“How much can our families sustain?” Kanaiaupuni said. “The impact is really devastating.” 

Other nonprofits operating similar family learning programs are able to keep their sites open for now, but the future of federal funding remains uncertain. The proposed version of the 2027 federal budget eliminates funding for the Native Hawaiian Education program entirely, and there’s no guarantee that the federal education department will award grants in a timely manner even if Congress appropriates the money, U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda said. 

“It’s a huge impact on our communities,” Tokuda said. “We need to continue to make sure that this funding is available and that it’s awarded and it gets to where it needs to go.” 

Pre-K Needs A Champion

Despite a tumultuous session for early learning programs, Tsuchiya said she’s still optimistic the state can reach its goal of providing preschool to all 3- and 4-year-olds by 2032. The state has renovated and constructed 81 preschool classrooms in the past three years and plans on opening another 26 this summer, according to the School Facilities Authority, the agency tasked with building new preschools.  

As of October, the state projected it needed to build  to provide universal access to preschool by 2032. 

But the state needs continued investments in preschool expansion to maintain its progress and hit its 2032 goal, Tsuchiya said. While the School Facilities Authority requested $31 million for preschool construction, lawmakers set aside $20 million in the most recent version of the budget. 

Early learning providers have also raised concerns that the teacher workforce can’t keep up with the state’s demand for new classrooms.  aimed to address the problem by setting aside state funds for an apprenticeship program, which would allow prospective teachers to work in early learning classrooms and get paid while earning their early educator credentials. 

“My desire here is to focus more on the workforce pipeline to make sure we have these early childhood education workers ready to fill these buildings as they get built out,” said Rep. Andrew Garrett, who introduced the bill. He estimates the program would cost roughly $8 million. 

The bill failed to pass out of conference committee.

Moving forward, it’s critical for preschool access to remain a top priority for state officials, said Kerrie Urosevich, executive director of Early Childhood Action Strategy. While Luke has pushed for the aggressive expansion of preschool access in recent years, Urosevich said, she’s worried progress could stall unless the governor or next lieutenant governor continues to champion the issue. 

“I don’t think it has enough momentum on its own,” Urosevich said. “I think it’s going to require a champion.”

This was originally published on .

But now, in the wake of a new focus among Ohio lawmakers on supposed fraud in the state’s childcare system, they are on the verge of ditching the idea altogether. A under consideration would require providers to be paid based on attendance rather than enrollment as they are by parents who pay out of pocket.

In December, conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley posted a video claiming to uncover widespread fraud in Minnesota’s childcare program, particularly among daycare centers run by Somali American residents. The video went viral and reached federal officials, and the Trump administration cited it as motivation to pursue an and various efforts to restrict federal childcare funding. Despite the video offering no verified evidence of fraud — and the fact that the state was several cases of fraud in its childcare system — some states have responded by intensifying their focus on supposed fraud. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott agencies to launch investigations into childcare fraud, while Idaho’s Department of Health and Welfare heightened reviews of funding. (The reviews found of providers guilty of any wrongdoing.)

Shirley’s video sparked an immediate reaction in Ohio, according to Tamara Lunan, a childcare organizer with the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. The state has the Somali American population, just behind Minnesota. in Columbus, Ohio claimed centers were receiving public funding for nonexistent children even though evidence at least two of those claims. According to the at The Ohio State University, just 0.43% of all the providers who accept vouchers through the state’s publicly funded childcare program were found to be misusing funds in 2025. In a of 124 complaints sent to the state’s Department of Children and Youth last year, the agency found no evidence of fraud in 100 of them.

In January, Ohio lawmakers two proposals — House Bills 647 and 649 — they said were aimed at combatting fraud in the state’s publicly funded childcare system.  

Marquita McClendon, who has operated a childcare program in Cincinnati since 2023, acknowledged that fraud exists. “But I feel like the systems that we already have in place already do the job necessary,” she said. “We’re changing laws over an unsubstantiated claim. It’s just beyond me.”

The state made some changes ahead of implementing the new enrollment-based payment system that have led to sacrifices for providers. It a requirement for counties to use presumptive eligibility, which allows families to receive childcare vouchers if they already qualify for another program like food stamps, and allows parents to enroll immediately once they get a new job, rather than waiting weeks for their paperwork to be approved. Some providers accept children into their programs during that interim period anyway, Lunan said, but often aren’t paid for all of that time. The state also reimbursement rates for some types of in-home providers and increased the threshold for children to qualify as full time, which allows providers to be reimbursed at a higher rate. 

“There were things taken away from us,” McClendon pointed out. With those reductions, she’s making $10,000 less each month, she said. “We’re in the red.” The loss of revenue has meant she can’t buy new equipment for the children in her care or do field trips this summer as she normally would. “I can’t run an effective program,” she said.

If providers were paid based on enrollment, it would help them weather children’s absences for illness or snowstorms, “things that providers can’t possibly be able to plan for when they’re making their budgets,” Lunan said. It “would help to stabilize the programs.” Instead, “Providers are hemorrhaging income based on these changes,” she said. “It’s killing their bottom line.”

Reversing the decision to pay based on enrollment is just one of the changes included in the legislative proposals Ohio lawmakers have put forward in the name of fighting fraud this year. Some others have since been toned down or removed. initially that would have given the state’s Department of Children and Youth the power to cut off funding or suspend a license for any provider merely suspected of fraud, waste or misuse of dollars without a hearing. That language has since from the bill; now those actions can be taken if “evidence demonstrates” that a provider knowingly engaged in fraud or misuse of funds. But providers remain concerned about lawmakers giving the attorney general more power to prosecute perceived fraud, which in the bill. 

“We don’t want to see childcare providers get penalized because the state made an overpayment to them,” Lunan said. Both overpayments and underpayments are included when states calculate their payment error rates, and those can be due to the state government’s error, not providers acting with ill intent. Her organization is pushing for the state to create a committee made up of childcare providers that could distinguish between clerical errors and actual, intentional fraud. 

The original proposal for , introduced by Republican lawmaker Josh Williams, would have mandated the installation of cameras in all childcare programs that receive government funding to “allow visual inspections in real time,” . It would have given the Department of Children and Youth the ability to view the footage at any time. McClendon pointed out that she has diaper changing stations in her classrooms. “There’s no way to protect my children’s privacy,” she said, calling the idea “a bit extreme.”

While that idea has since been abandoned, lawmakers have adjusted the bill to facial recognition for children who attend programs that receive public funding. Such technology won’t work on young children, particularly infants, given how rapidly their faces are developing and changing, McClendon and Lunan pointed out. McClendon also noted the challenge of keeping kids still long enough to take a photograph. Lunan pointed out that there is already an existing mandate for programs to have an attendance system in place that takes pictures of parents when they sign children in.

An made to that bill the storing of photos of the children. But many parents are still opposed, Lunan said: a against mandating facial recognition has been signed by nearly 900 people. 

Lawmakers are also reducing the time given for allowing a child to be checked in retroactively, if their attendance was originally missed, from 30 days to seven. “That would be a tremendous hardship,” Lunan said, on both providers and the parents who are the ones who have to go into the system and fix the problem.  

The legislation calls for spending up to over two years on data analytics to detect patterns of fraud or abuse. The facial recognition proposal alone would be “expensive for the state and providers, diverting scarce public dollars and provider time away from care itself and toward unnecessary surveillance infrastructure,” said Ali Smith, senior project coordinator at Policy Matters Ohio, . Lunan agreed. “We don’t need funds to come out of childcare,” she said. What Ohio childcare providers need instead, she said, is more funding, not less. “Providers are not defrauding the system. They are barely breaking even — most providers are in the red,” she said. “The conversation really needs to shift from fraud to funding.”

The anti-fraud bills “would just destabilize childcare, or destabilize it further, because it’s already unstable,” Lunan said. 

New Mexico has recently launched the United States’ first model, followed by Vermont and that are working to build capacity to support similar systems.

A national spotlight has also been cast on New York City’s efforts after promises on the campaign trail from Mayor Zohran Mamdani to expand free care for children as by the end of his term in late 2029.

The conversation is growing at several different levels, with some states focusing on pre-K access and others looking into providing care even earlier. But, most are grappling with major roadblocks in scaling larger – and universal – initiatives, including questions on funding models and accountability.

Shael Polakow-Suransky, a former chief academic officer at the New York City Department of Education, and the current president of Bank Street College of Education, spoke with ����Ӱ�� about childcare trends and what it’ll look like to create higher quality programs as states look to expand access.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

To kick off our conversation with the idea that there is a lot of movement around early childcare right now and accessibility to it, what are we seeing across the country and what are states investing in or considering legislation around?

We’re not getting any help right now from the federal government. During the Biden administration, it was the opposite. There were federal funds flowing to states specifically to do this work, and that’s part of how you got some really interesting, innovative stuff happening in states not that long ago.

Vermont is one of, I think, only two states now that have a really strong program to for early educators. Kentucky guaranteed for childcare workers that their own children or deeply subsidized care. 

New Mexico is one of the most interesting examples right now because in November 2025, they launched universal childcare. 

One of the things that is striking about their strategy is that they created a dedicated permanent revenue stream for it, … so it’s not conditioned on the federal government being able to support it, or an annual tax appropriation. That makes it stable in a way that’s unusual. They have also specifically said that competitive educator compensation is a goal which is really different.

D.C. is the other place that has done something similar to this. In 2018, they created a that had an explicit call around pay parity [for early care workers], and it gave people initial one time payments [up to $14,000]. Then, they created a salary scale based on educational attainment. They were also trying to push people to get the training that they needed to deliver at a high quality, and during the phase of that project, the employment in the sector grew by 7% and retention rose to over two thirds.

In most places, including New York City, early childhood folks’ turnover is five times the rate of what you see in K-12 settings. That turnover is a function of the low wages and and sometimes the lack of training as well, because if you’re not doing well in your job, you don’t want to stay in it.

In New York, a lot of our workforce is actually in poverty. More than half of New York’s early educators are relying on public assistance. We have more than 16,000 children statewide who can’t be served because of vacant positions and this is where we actually have state funding for childcare seats, but we don’t have people to fill those positions. So I think those models of D.C. and New Mexico are really worth looking at other states.

What about missed opportunities that aren’t being considered when lawmakers are drafting legislation or proposing new funding?

When you think about elected officials and who they’re accountable to, the most clear promise you can make is X number of seats for X communities. 

We’re going to have for 2-year-olds in New York City, … that is the thing that will stick in the minds of the public. That other layer, on quality, is harder to boil down into a sound bite.

When you create access, you could create a system that actually does damage if you don’t have quality. Quality is defined by what are the adults able to do with children once they have this time with them? We want it to be something that has real educational impacts, … and taking advantage of this incredible moment of brain development where 90% of your brain architecture is built by the time you turn 5.

What does high quality care look like? What are signs for parents to look for?

A quality learning environment for early childcare allows kids to move around freely and explore and interact with each other and with adults and the materials that are in the space, whether it’s blocks, or art supplies, or a dress up area, or a water or sand table.

In low-quality settings, a lot of times what’s happening is kids are in some way, physically restrained from moving, and this is done in the name of safety. In that low-quality setting, you don’t have enough adults, the physical layout of the space isn’t totally safe for a toddler to be wandering around and the kinds of things that are going to be interesting for that toddler to pick up and stick in their mouth are not available.

In a low-quality environment, that child is maybe sitting in a high chair or in a playpen, and there’s an iPad going that they’re looking at which is not able to interact with them and is not supporting that development. You may be keeping the child physically safe, but if they aren’t able to interact and move, their brain development is not going to progress the way it needs to.

You want to set up the physical space, and you want to have the staffing to support that flexible movement and exploration, because that is how our brains develop – through those types of interactions with people and with materials. If the person is so stressed, either because their own life is so stressful because they’re not able to make ends meet and or their work environment is so stressful because they’re understaffed and working really long hours, that connection is lost.

When we talk about opening seats across the country, what are the odds that these seats are going to be low quality care programs?

There’s been research done over the years that has looked at the quality of early childhood settings and in general, that number of really good settings are like 20 to 30% of what we have. That doesn’t mean that the other 70% are low quality – it’s a spectrum. My guess is probably only 10%, maybe 15%, fall into that low quality bucket, but there’s a lot in between that high quality and low quality that needs work.

How can states and lawmakers take more accountability when they are considering opening more spots up to ensure that it is leaning toward the highest level of care for the youngest kids, especially developmentally?

Building a living wage is the most important thing because that brings people into the workforce. It encourages people to stay in the workforce. And as people stay, they develop experience and relationships with children. You can’t do that without training. So that’s the other big piece of this, what are we doing to train people well?

From birth to 3, there’s not a requirement anywhere in the country that you have to have a teaching license to teach at that level and there can’t be that requirement given the current compensation structure. So then, what is the requirement? If you’re not going to ask people to have a bachelor’s degree or master’s degree, … how do you provide them with training and support that will enable them to accelerate learning and development for children?

The goal is that you build in the resources for professional development for the existing folks who are already in the field, and then resources for people to get trained as they enter the workforce as well. 

I’ll give you one example. Bank Street has partnered with New York City during the pre-K initiative because the state actually does require a master’s degree for pre-K teachers here and that’s a relatively new requirement, so there are a lot of teachers who were working before that requirement went into place, and are now out of compliance with that law.

The city asked us at Bank Street to design something specifically for that group that would be attuned to the fact that they already have lots of knowledge and skills and they don’t need to start from the beginning. 

We created something called the Advanced Standing Program, which is a mastery based program for teachers who are already pretty experienced, and so they can do it much more quickly than a normal master’s degree. They get credit for their experience, so the cost is lower, and it’s historically been paid for partially by the city or by nonprofits where the folks are working. 

So, creating those kinds of programs that are really responsive to the real needs of folks in this workforce, as opposed to a compliance requirement that pushes a lot of people away.

There’s some examples now of universal childcare, but in most states, it is pretty limited to low-income families or at a pre-K level. So, when we’re talking about this quality issue, I want to get into equity also. Childcare programs may be getting some of the highest needs students. How does the issue of quality play a role in development and readiness by the time these students enter the K-12 system? 

The achievement gap that we see in K-12 schools between wealthy and low-income students – which is usually like a 20 or 30 point spread in achievement when you look at third grade or eighth grade test scores or high school graduation rates – is visible beginning at 18 months.

If you study toddlers, the same exact graph shows up between upper-income and low-income children. So why is that? 

We know that’s exactly that moment where language development is happening in the brain, and so if a child is sitting in front of a TV all day by themselves, or iPad or and no one’s talking to them, no one’s interacting with them, then they’re going to be really low scoring around that language development.

There’s not much that’s different between upper income and lower income children except for the fact that upper income families have much more access to quality care. If we can provide that quality care across the income spectrum, there’s a shot at closing those achievement gaps later on.

We’ve talked about New York City a little bit, and I know through several decades, there’s been a push and pull around expanding this early childhood care access under each mayor. Can you talk a little bit about the history of what New York City has tried, what’s new now under Mamdani’s proposal and whether that will be effective or not?

One of my big regrets, I was senior deputy chancellor under Mayor [Mike] Bloomberg for his third term in office, and it was around that time that we started to expand pre-K, but it was a very modest expansion. As someone who came up as an educator in middle schools and high schools, I didn’t really know what I know now about the power of early childhood. I don’t think any of us at the DOE in those days, other than folks working in the early childhood division who weren’t at the decision making table, understood how powerful the impact on educational equity is if you invest in early childhood. 

It took Mayor [Bill] de Blasio making the pre-K commitment as part of his first mayoral campaign to make that the focus for the Department of Education and for the city as a whole. They added 60,000 new seats in pre-K, then expanded pre-K as well in the second term. 

Mayor [Eric] Adams made lots of promises about working on this but really didn’t move the ball. 

What Mayor [Mamdani] campaigned on is that there’ll be free childcare for kids from birth to 5. It’s beginning with expanding the number of seats for 3-year-olds and expanding 2-year-olds. It’s a fairly modest expansion in this first year, and I think the question that will face the mayor over the rest of this term is how do you get to that larger goal where everyone has access and and how do you do it in a way that pairs access with quality? 

I think they’re off to a good start.

I want to pose the question you said Mamdani’s team will have to answer. How do states lead large scale expansion and ensure quality as they try to expand to everyone?

One of the lessons that we learned from the pre-K expansion is that you need to pay attention to the existing ecosystem and not lose capacity as you build capacity. 

One of the downsides of the pre-K expansion during de Blasio’s term was that they put a lot of the seats into public elementary schools, and the teachers became part of the UFT. They got regular salary the same way any K-12 teacher, which is great, but then the nonprofits that were running childcare programs as part of the initiative didn’t have the funding to match those salaries, and so a lot of people left the nonprofit daycare centers … and even worse, family childcare, which are small businesses run out of people’s homes that usually serve children birth to 5, were not initially included in the strategy.

We actually saw a loss of childcare seats in the birth to 3 space when some of those folks went out of business. 

I think part of the solution this time around, particularly because we’re working with younger children, is how do you support family childcare as part of this? How do you help improve the quality and the economic viability of that? 

Last question just to wrap us up. What you had talked about during your time at the NYC Department of Education with not paying attention to childcare, I think is something that was universal for lawmakers early on too. This conversation has really picked up in the last five years or so. How likely is it to continue seeing such acceleration in this movement?

I think one of the interesting things about childcare is it’s a bipartisan issue in most places in the country. 

The governor of Ohio, a Republican governor, has done massive investments in early childhood. Nebraska, Louisiana, lots of red states have really prioritized this, and the reason why is that more than three quarters of families have both parents in the workforce, so people need childcare. They need a place for their children to be. They need to be able to afford it, and they want it to be safe, and they want their children to be learning.��

From an educational equity standpoint, we need that quality in order to sort of solve our broader problems in terms of achievement gaps in our school system. 

We haven’t seen as much investment in the second Trump administration, but the first Trump administration actually saw the biggest increase in early childhood funding since the Clinton administration. Biden went even further. Those were both a Republican president and a Democratic president actively investing in this. We have Republican governors and Democratic governors actively investing in this.

This is something that really speaks to people, and so I think for that reason, we are going to continue to see new public funding flow to this. It may not come as fast as I would hope, but we’re on the trajectory in the right direction.

That began to change in 2022, when Kentucky became the first state in the country to roll out an initiative making most early childhood educators automatically eligible for childcare subsidies. 

Novel at the time, this program — which, in effect, provides free childcare to early childhood educators in licensed programs through an expansion of the state’s Child Care Assistance Program — caught the attention of leaders in dozens of other states and has been replicated widely in the years since. 

“It’s not just happening in one type of state,” said Diane Girouard, state policy director at the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a nonprofit that advocates for high-quality early learning experiences. “It’s happening in [states] big and small; blue, red and purple; rural and non-rural. States are just seeing that it’s working. It’s unique. It’s a really good workplace benefit.”

The idea to make early educators automatically eligible for childcare assistance was conceived as a strategy to help recruit and retain early childhood educators in the wake of the pandemic. By 2022, many families needed childcare to return to a normal work schedule but often couldn’t find spots for their children because early care and education programs were so severely understaffed, leaving slots unfilled and entire classrooms vacant. 

The model was so successful in Kentucky that other states took notice and began to fund their own versions of an effort to provide childcare assistance to early childhood educators, primarily through pilot programs. More recently, some states have even moved to make the program permanent. 

Last month, both and enacted laws making most early childhood educators automatically eligible for childcare assistance. Iowa’s governor signed a bill on April 9, while Kentucky’s program was made permanent a few days later, on April 14. 

“We’re psyched,” said Sarah Vanover, director of policy and advocacy at Kentucky Youth Advocates and one of the champions of this program in the Bluegrass State. 

“We’re known for being frugal and conservative with money,” Vanover said of Kentucky’s legislature, which is overwhelmingly Republican. “And yet this is something we’re investing in. When you have that dialogue with [program] directors, they’ll tell you they have been able to open classrooms and keep staff.”

The reason states have continued to invest in this type of program, Vanover and other state leaders shared in interviews, is because it works. By delivering free or discounted childcare to early educators — many of whom have jobs with low wages and few, if any, benefits — several states have seen workers who are more willing to stay in their jobs. And some educators who had left the workforce to stay home with their young children are finding it’s just enough of an edge to lure them back into their teaching positions, surveys and program directors have shared.

Since 2022, leaders from 38 other states have reached out to Vanover about the model, she said. Many of those leaders have gone on to pursue some form of the program. At least a dozen states, including , , , and , currently have at least a pilot program in place providing childcare assistance to early childhood educators. Two others, New Jersey and West Virginia, have introduced related bills. is the only state known to have initially offered and then ended this type of program, and in that case, it was the result of a severe budget deficit, Girouard said. 

While the model has spread, no two initiatives are exactly alike, Girouard added.  

Kentucky and Iowa, for example, make this benefit available to early childhood educators regardless of income, while most other states only have enough funding to increase the income threshold above what is available to all families in their states. In Rhode Island, for instance, the state’s childcare subsidy program is available to all families with an income less than 261% of the federal poverty level. For , that income cap increases slightly, to 300%. 

And Kentucky’s program includes any staff member working in a center-based early care and education program — from teachers to administrators, cooks to early intervention specialists. 

“You can’t run a childcare program without the assistant teachers, without the nutrition staff, without the administrators,” Vanover said. “If you’re looking at doing this without the other staff, you’re going to have teachers get shuffled around. It’s essential for the whole program to take advantage of it — every employee.”

Meanwhile, a in Maine — called the “childcare employment award” — has emerged as unique in a couple of ways. 

Maine’s program provides at least a 50% discount on childcare for early childhood educators, according to Heather Marden, co-executive director of the Maine Association for the Education of Young Children, a state affiliate of NAEYC. For staff who were already eligible for childcare subsidies before the pilot, the state also covers the cost of their co-pays, which can run anywhere from $3,000 to $8,000 a year, Marden said.

Importantly, Maine’s program is distinct in that it allows home-based childcare providers — a group often left out of this benefit — to participate. (The legislation that made Kentucky’s program permanent also allows home-based providers to use the benefit for the first time.)

A recent of Maine’s pilot program found that it has had a positive impact on workforce retention, noting that nearly every participant was considering leaving the field before receiving the award.

Moreover, the report found, many of those participants were weighing whether to leave the workforce altogether to stay home with their children, rather than looking for jobs in other fields. The discounted childcare has put enough money back into their pockets that they have been able to stay.

Marden noted that while that’s good for each individual teacher, it’s also good for entire communities. 

“The impact of retaining one educator is pretty incredible,” she said, explaining that a single educator gained or retained opens up licensed classroom slots for four to 12 children. 

Maine’s childcare employment award program was serving 511 children from 313 families as of September 2025, with nearly as many children and educators on the waitlist. The state has funded the pilot at $2.5 million a year for the past two years, and it just hasn’t been enough to reach everyone, Marden explained.

While many early childhood leaders in Maine want to see the pilot program funded at a higher amount, the reality is that it will likely soon cease to exist altogether. During the recent legislative session, which ended in mid-April, policymakers did not fund the pilot for another year. As of now, the program is slated to end after June 30.

In Iowa, uptake has been strong. As of September 2025, more than 3,600 children from 2,153 families had taken advantage of the benefit, according to data from the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services. And a survey conducted by the state agency, the results of which were shared in January 2025, found that 87% of participants remain in their roles, and 12% began working in childcare as a result of the pilot. 

Hollie Allen, co-owner of Vine Street Child Care, a large center-based program in West Des Moines, Iowa, said that at least 13 of her teachers — out of about 60 people on staff — are enrolled in the program. They still owe co-pays between $35 and $100 per week, depending on factors like household income and number of children, she said, but that’s a big improvement over the full cost of a spot in her program.

“I don’t understand why they’re calling it free childcare. It’s not,” Allen said, but added that, compared to the $360 per week she charges for an infant slot, “paying $67 is awesome.”

The program has been a “double boon” for Allen, she said, because she was previously giving staff who weren’t eligible for other financial support a 50% discount on childcare at Vine Street — and losing money on those slots in the process. Now, with the state’s childcare assistance program covering the cost of early childhood educators’ childcare, Allen has been able to give every person on payroll a $2 per hour wage increase. 

“It was a big cashflow injection for our program,” Allen said. “Those across-the-board wage increases were critical.”

In other states, such as Rhode Island, where the pilot program has been extended through 2028, the impact on turnover in the field has been real but modest, said Lisa Hildebrand, executive director of the Rhode Island AEYC. 

“It’s still helpful,” she said. “The intent is there. It’s still retaining some educators. But it could be a lot better.”

Hildebrand added: “We just need way more money in the system. This is not going to solve all the problems. It’s a little bit of Band-Aids. You’re giving free childcare to educators because you’re not paying them enough that they can afford childcare on their own. You’re still not paying people enough, and that’s the problem.”

CHIRENO — Every day, Courtney Bush has to figure out who can pick up her kids.

It’s not an easy decision, even after wrestling with it for years.

With no child care options or after-school programs in her rural East Texas town, Bush sometimes leaves work early. And when that isn’t an option, she calls her sister in Lufkin — which is about 34 miles away — or a friend in town.

Bush grew up in , otherwise known as Chireno, a rural community of about 1,300 at the south end of Nacogdoches County. Her children now go to public school there. Chireno is one of 263 chronic child care deserts in the state, according to , a nonprofit that advocates for greater access to child care, especially for the state’s youngest residents.

The report, released earlier this month, found East Texas is home to the most chronic child care deserts, ZIP codes that have lacked professional child care options for at least three years.

Children At Risk’s report has tracked child care deserts across the state. The lack of affordable, quality child care poses quandaries for Texas families — and the state’s economy. A U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation report estimated that the .

Kim Kofron, the executive director of early childhood education for Children at Risk and one of the researchers who analyzed the child care desert map, believes two things cause East Texas’ predicament: it’s mostly rural, so getting operations up and running, and keeping them so, is difficult; and while there is a population of younger families living in rural East Texas, there aren’t always enough children to keep a center open.

Child care, which often teaches children basic life skills as well as provides foundational knowledge in literacy, is to prepare children for kindergarten and the rest of their education. And more parents, moms especially, because they don’t have adequate resources. This is leading to a growing number of children in families who rely on state support.

Community members say there hasn’t been professional child care for younger children for more than a decade. Families often turn to friends and family to watch their children — a job that often goes unpaid and unregulated.

Jacqueline Woodson, a grandmother in Chireno, has become her family’s go-to child care provider.

“It’s been generational, us having families take care of the kids because there was nothing in the area for child care,” Woodson said. “People have to go all the way to Nacogdoches (city) to put their kids in child care.”

Improving access to child care is difficult. State lawmakers have tried to help parents pay for it, but that’s only one part of the equation. Kofron said the state needs to truly look at how the system operates and find ways to smooth speed bumps for providers and to simplify the process for parents.

Sherry Durham, the senior director of child care for Workforce Solutions Deep East Texas, doesn’t want to see regulations eased, because child care businesses deal directly with some of the most vulnerable Texans. But she does believe more can be done to tell providers about grant programs and mentorships that will help those people who want to open a child care center.

Kofron believes the state is on the right track to begin addressing some of these concerns. Lawmakers in 2025 called for to study the state’s child care landscape and come to the next legislative session in 2027 with recommendations for a path forward. Kofron hopes the new map will provide that task force with a foundation for those recommendations.

Child care deserts expanding

Using data from the Texas Workforce Commission, Children At Risk has published a map of child care deserts every other year since 2017.

A child care desert, generally, is a geographic region where families lack access to regulated child care centers. can be large-scale, serving dozens of children in classroom settings, or they can be home-based operations that serve only a handful of children at a time.

Children At Risk has four classifications for child care deserts.

The first is simply areas where the number of children who need child care is three times higher than the capacity of local providers. There are 413 of these across the state.

The second is a subsidy desert, where the number of children who need a scholarship, which is state-funded, is three times higher than the available scholarships. There are 884 of these.

The third is a Texas Rising Star desert, where the child care centers are not certified with the Rising Star program. Rising Star is a state program that enforces expectations for the quality of child care families receive. There are 938 of these.

And the fourth is a new classification this year: chronic deserts. These are areas where the need for child care has been three times higher than the available options for three years in a row or more. There are 263 of these.

There are four regions in the state struggling the most with chronic child care deserts: East, Deep East, Northeast Texas and the Brazos Valley. Combined, these regions stretch from the Louisiana border to College Station.

In the Deep East Texas workforce development region that includes Angelina, Nacogdoches and Polk counties, 52 of the 82 ZIP codes are deserts. Durham wants to eradicate those deserts, and she believes the way to do that is through improving communication.

Ideally, she would have the time to establish better connections with rural community nonprofits and churches so they can spread the word about what resources the state currently has to offer. However, she’s new to the job and came at a time when workforce solutions were undergoing some changes in leadership and mindset. But she believes that improved communication is on the horizon.

“Texas Rising Star and the Texas Workforce Development Group can offer support in the beginning to establish child care,” Durham said. “Whether it’s a larger center or a smaller home center with maybe five or six children, the same support is available to both.”

Parents may leave labor force

A lack of options in chronic deserts puts parents of young children in a precarious situation. Parents can either find a friend or a family member to watch their kids, or one parent can stay home.

The first option only works if there is someone around who can take on an extra child or two, and it’s not guaranteed. The second option is the path many families take, but it comes at a cost.

For Bush, whose children are now 6 and 11, a lack of child care options in Chireno over the years led her to job hop in search of a flexible schedule. At times, she could rely on friends or family members, often when they had chosen to stay at home to care for their own children, but she always felt guilty for asking so much of them.

She even left the workforce for six months because she didn’t have any better options. The small family relied on a single income, which just wasn’t sustainable.

“I feel like everybody has to work nowadays in order to make it,” Bush said.

More Texas children are growing up in low-income households. And this is putting a strain on Texas’ social safety net. There were 106 new subsidy deserts in 2025 that weren’t there in 2024, according to Children At Risk, which means the need for scholarships outpaced the available funding threefold.

Scholarships, also called subsidies, pay for part of the child care tuition for children who qualify. The child must be under 13, have working parents or parents in school whose income is below a certain threshold that is dependent on the number of children in the household. For example, the monthly income for a family with two children in must not exceed $5,216.

Income levels aren’t the only rule that governs who gets a scholarship. The providers who accept scholarships for kids must follow several protocols that govern a variety of topics, including pick-up and drop-off rules.

Lawmakers in 2025 designated to child care subsidies. The entire designation was eaten up by inflation costs and failed to provide any substantial improvement to the child care system.

Without adequate resources for employees, Durham worries companies won’t choose to move to Deep East Texas. And she worries that young East Texans won’t be prepared for kindergarten.

Child care can help prepare kids for school

Young children typically have five years before they go to a traditional school and those years are exceedingly formative.

“So if they live in a chronic desert for three or more years, that’s a majority of the child’s life in a desert,” Kofron said. “That is not only hampering mom and dad from going to work, it’s also hampering that child’s ability to get ready for kindergarten.”

Kindergarten readiness is a of a child’s success down the road. By the time a 5-year-old starts kindergarten, they should be able to speak clearly, recite their alphabet and correctly hold tools, such as pencils or scissors. They should also have some basic ability to regulate their own behavior.

While parents can ensure their children have these foundational skills, studies have shown that high-quality child care can give children a big step up. This is part of the goal of program — to establish a standard of education for children aged 0 to 5 that prepares them for that first day of school.

However, a growing number of counties lack child care facilities that are state-certified. There were 88 more rising star deserts in 2025 than there were in 2024, for a total of 938.

Improvements in South Texas

Despite the dire concerns registered by Children At Risk, there were some bright moments of success in Texas’ child care landscape.

Cameron, the Concho Valley and the Lower Rio Grande Valley saw the highest rate of providers being added to the Texas Rising Star roster. And 60 new providers were approved to accept child care scholarships in the last year, Children At Risk found, though the organization would like to see that number grow exponentially.

Plus, more home-based child care providers have opened across the state in the last year, which means there are more options for families seeking child care. There still aren’t as many providers as there were before 2020, but it is an improvement.

In Deep East Texas, Durham said she wants to hear from those at-home centers that aren’t registered yet, like Woodson, who takes care of her family’s youngest members. Durham wants to connect them with more state resources and which might provide a clearer picture of what options are available in rural communities.

Registering home-based centers could also give the state a better understanding of the region’s needs and make more informed recommendations for the future.

Durham said she’s optimistic for the future. She sees the conversation around child care growing and believes there is a legitimate interest in finding solutions.

Kofron is excited to see what the task force assigned to investigate the state’s child care subsidy program learns. She hopes that the task force looks at her organization’s data to inform their recommendations.

She wants them to deeply consider how the state governs early childhood education and what can be streamlined. Finding ways to simplify the process for child care providers and the families they serve could do a lot to improve the state’s system.

“And then it comes down to the funding,” Kofron said. “We have to make sure that we have enough funding in the system to give families the support they need so they can get back to work and support their families.”

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It would be nearly fifty years later before the country would again seriously consider building such a system, as proposed in the — though that attempt ultimately stalled when the childcare provisions from the final package that passed.

In the intervening decades, even as most families came to rely on and , childcare largely remained something families had to sort out on their own, with limited state and federal assistance.

But polling data shows that for publicly-funded childcare exists, even as federal legislative efforts have waned. In pockets of the country, there has been state-supported investment in childcare, often due to frustration with low wages, high turnover, poor outcomes and unworkable conditions. In the past three years, for example, New Mexico and Vermont have passed groundbreaking childcare policies, strengthened infrastructure and increased access. 

Childcare has gained visibility and some political leaders, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Vice President Kamala Harris and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, have elevated childcare as a key economic issue for voters. But childcare has more often been a secondary issue in political campaigns, rather than a career-shaping priority for candidates. It’s typically a bullet point for family policy or affordability, rather than the key legislative accomplishment vaulting a candidate to public office. 

That may be starting to change.

As more early care and education policies are enacted, the leaders involved in those endeavors have an opportunity to use their experiences to run for higher office. 

In Vermont, Aly Richards — who led a statewide advocacy organization focused on improving access to high-quality childcare for nearly a decade — this month that she is running for governor. She will compete in a Democratic primary in August, and the winner will face Republican Gov. Phil Scott in the general election this fall.

The organization Richards spearheaded, Let’s Grow Kids, drove efforts to pass Act 76, a landmark legislation that brought to Vermont’s early care and education system, funded largely by a new payroll tax. The state raised reimbursement rates for early childhood programs, and provided breaks to most families to cover the cost of care.

Could Richards’ success in passing childcare policy translate to support from voters in her run for governor? 

In a conversation with Rebecca Gale, Richards explains why childcare is an ideal upstream issue to tackle affordability for families, why other states keep calling her to ask for advice on their own childcare systems, and how the governor’s office might be the best next step for someone who knows just how central quality childcare is for families — and states — to thrive. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

You began with Let’s Grow Kids a decade ago. What was the intended goal at the time, both for the organization and for you personally?

The only focus was the mission. I really had no thought of what I was going to do with myself afterward, because I’m a really mission-oriented person and it was such a gift for me to have a goal and a deadline.

I like to think about what is the one thing a human can do to make the biggest positive impact in the world. And when I realized early childhood education was that lever just sitting there — where our inaction is causing all this detrimental harm to our society and the action [needed] is very clear and concrete — it felt obvious. It’s within our power to [change]. And when you do, it has this immeasurable impact downstream on all these things that we care about.

So the mission was to make that impact through Let’s Grow Kids — like an entrepreneurial-minded enterprise that would do whatever it takes to meet this deadline and this mission of putting in motion a system of high-quality, affordable childcare for the whole state. And we did that.

And while the job is not completely done, we set it in motion in the machinery of the state government. So we really were able to back away having done exactly what we hoped — creating the machinery, the dedicated funding, the ecosystem that will carry it forward and an aspirational model. We showed it’s possible to do this.

What are two or three key changes that you view as central to the state’s early care and infrastructure system?

The No. 1 change is dedicated public investment, because the problem with childcare in this country, since the beginning of time, is that there’s not enough money in the system from parents, who are the only payers.

To fund the system to be functional, to pay early childhood educators a livable wage, to have enough supply to meet the demand — you need a dedicated permanent funding stream. You can have more childcare, it can be higher quality, it can pay wages and it can meet the needs of your community. But that’s the No. 1 thing.

Two and three are the mechanism by which we did it. We basically took a system that already was in place and pushed the public investment into the hands of Vermonters through reduced childcare costs. By going up to that [the threshold in which a Vermont family can now qualify for childcare subsidies], you’re making and you’re seeing reduced childcare costs, which is making life more affordable. We also increased the reimbursement rate to programs.

It put money in the hands of Vermonters to make it more affordable. It put money in the hands of early childhood education programs so they could actually run their programs, pay higher wages and meet the needs of their families. And that’s why I think we’re seeing the implementation work so well. It’s adding more spaces, adding more businesses and reducing costs for families at the same time, which is what’s spurring our economy. It’s the one area of growth we’re sort of seeing in Vermont right now.

There are still very few leaders who’ve built their careers around childcare policy. Do you see this as a structural roadblock to progress? I envision it as sort of a “Lego ceiling” — a barrier built piece by piece through fragmented policy and underinvestment, that could be taken apart if priorities shift. What would change if more leaders made childcare a signature issue?

Yes, yes and yes. Let’s bust that Lego ceiling into a million pieces so they’re on the floor when you step on them accidentally, like in my family all the time.

Look, it is exhilarating for me to be moving into this new world of politics from that background in early childhood education and policy, because it’s not just early childhood education. It’s problem-solving in a dynamic way for the issues we face in the 21st century.

I spent my last decade working to solve this deep crisis that dogged Vermont and has dogged the rest of the country. I grew up in Vermont. I went out of state to change the world, working on Obama’s first campaign. I was so excited by his leadership potential, and yet I was so dismayed by the lack of action in D.C. because people who didn’t agree with each other didn’t speak to each other anymore.

I know enough to know that’s not how real change happens. You have to be in the room together. You have to be able to have reasonable agreement and disagreement.

So I raced home to Vermont and started working for the governor, and started realizing — talking to Vermonters from all walks of life — that what was broken in D.C. was not broken here in Vermont. We still talk to each other, and at the end of the day we can get pizza together and a beer even if we disagree. I quickly realized that early childhood education was one of these rare things where if you go upstream, it will solve all these other problems. It’s a way of viewing the world that I think we must focus on in the 21st century. We have real structural issues in Vermont and in this country. We have to go upstream, understand what those structural issues are and change them.

Childcare is a perfect example. Take Vermont. We have jobs. It’s a misconception that we don’t. We just don’t have anyone to fill them. A large reason is because we can’t find or afford childcare.

I paint this picture for you because to me that is the whole basis of the answer to your question. [Childcare] needs to take the country by storm, and it’s starting to in places like Vermont. 

You’ve mentioned that other states have reached out to you about making childcare more affordable. How do you see this conversation changing if you become governor?

Well, it puts it out in the universe in a very different, meaningful way. Affordability will make or break this country right now. And here’s a concrete example of making life more affordable tangibly for your citizens.

So I’ve been all over the country, honestly — in person and on webinars in the past couple of months — spreading the model of what we did in Vermont through Let’s Grow Kids.

Can you imagine the National Governors Association having a childcare meeting where we all say: What’s worked in your state? What hasn’t worked in your state?

Who are the leaders? Get them together, accelerate this — because it’s great for your citizens and great for your economy. And it’s now a low-risk proposition because states have already done it and showed it’s possible.

I think there’s an amazing opportunity there.