Tag: child

  • Welcome to Mississippi Child Care Crisis – The 74

    Welcome to Mississippi Child Care Crisis – The 74


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    Child care worries have been made worse this summer by federal cuts and depleting pandemic funds, and they aren’t expected to ease by the first day of school. While their kids might have gotten a rest, parents reported longer commutes and newfound stress.

    A dozen parents from across the state told Mississippi Today about summer child care plans for their toddlers and elementary school-aged children. They shared a mix of anxiety about finding care and frustration with existing options.

    Parents have had more reasons to be anxious about those options this summer than in previous ones. A loss of federally funded summer programming for youth, added fees for day care tuition and the loss of vouchers to subsidize tuition costs have changed the landscape of child care.

    Shequite Johnson poses with newborn Noah on a work trip in Jackson, Miss., on Feb. 12, 2025. (Shequite Johnson)

    For Shequite Johnson, a professor at Mississippi Valley State University, it has meant driving 45 minutes in the opposite direction of her job for day care.

    “I’ve had to leave my 13-year-old with my 4-year-old,” she said. “And you’re put in a situation where you have to make these decisions. Some are even leaving their babies at home by themselves for five hours and checking on them during lunch hour.”

    She had to pull her 4-year-old boy from a day care in her hometown because of excessive fees. She was charged a $20 late fee at pickup, a $100 registration fee for each of her two boys, and a $150 supplies fee that was announced in June on top of the $135 weekly fee.

    The Mississippi Department of Human Services recently announced a cutback on vouchers that subsidize child care costs. Without Johnson’s child care voucher, her nearby options were limited to a city-run program in an unsafe neighborhood and three programs in aging facilities.

    Delta Health Alliance runs free and reduced summer programming for elementary-aged children. But Johnson makes more than the income cut-off.

    “It’s a crisis right now in Mississippi,” said Carol Burnett, executive director of Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative. “The lack of affordable child care prevents employers from keeping their workforce. And yet the state of Mississippi wants people to go back to work.”

    “Parents are having to make choices. And none of them are good,” she added.

    The Child Care Initiative operates a program that connects single moms with higher-paying jobs and covers the costs of child care during the transition. The organization is also advocating for the Mississippi Department of Human Services to spend some of the $156 million in unspent Temporary Assistance for Needy Families on Mississippi’s Child Care Payment Program.

    The Child Care Development Fund, which nationally supports these voucher state programs, relied on pandemic-era funding that ran out in September. The Department of Human Services asked the Legislature for $40 million to continue serving the same number of families – but received $15 million.

    In April, the department put a hold on renewals for child care vouchers except for deployed military parents, parents who are TANF recipients, foster children guardians, teen parents, parents of special needs children and homeless parents. As a result, 9,000 parents lost child care assistance.

    The department will keep the hold until the number of enrollees drops to 27,000 or its budget goes below $12 million in monthly costs. As of Friday, it had no further update but said it will have an announcement in the next couple of weeks.

    Using TANF funds unspent from past years regardless of whether they were allocated for child care assistance is prohibited, according to federal guidance. However, the TANF state office can use the leftover funds to form a direct payment program. Ohio and Texas enacted this policy.

    U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regional manager Eric Blanchette shared this idea with Mississippi Department of Human Services Early Childhood Director Chad Allgood, according to an email obtained as part of a records request filed by Mississippi Today into communication regarding TANF funds. As of Friday, there were no plans to enact a similar policy in Mississippi.

    A second rent

    Monica Ford pays nearly $1,600 in monthly child care costs for three kids. She works as a Shipt delivery driver in addition to her day job as a Magnolia Guaranty Life Insurance Co. auditor. She, her husband and their children recently had to move in with his parents.

    Monica Ford poses with children Tahir, 7, Kian, 4, Nuri, 1, at Freedom Ridge Park in Ridgeland, Miss., July 19, 2025. (Monica Ford)

    “It’s more than I’ve paid in rent,” she said. “It’s why I live with my family now.”

    She uses a Jackson day care that charges $10 per minute for late pickup. The fees must be paid by the next morning.

    Nearly all of the single mothers interviewed said they take on extra work to cover the rising costs of child care in their area. It’s extra work that sees them spending less time with their children.

    Ashley Wilson’s child care voucher wasn’t renewed in the spring. She works 55 hours a week at a bingo hall and at Sonic Drive-In.

    “We don’t get help. That’s what I don’t understand,” said Wilson, an Indianola parent.

    Her preferred day care option in Indianola charged $185 per week and $20 late fees, which Wilson could not afford. Her sister was able to afford monthly costs because of an arrangement with an Angel – a benefactor who helps local families with tuition at day care providers.

    Wilson tried other day cares in town. Several were in dangerous neighborhoods with staff that left milk bottles to spoil. Her toddler came home wet some afternoons and with cuts another. She gets help from family when she can.

    Whitney Harper lost her child care voucher in April. She is lucky when a relative is willing to watch her 2-year old. Lately, she has considered hiring a sitter off care.com, a website that connects parents with local babysitters. In Jackson, where she lives, the hourly rate is $14 per hour.

    Most of the day cares in the Jackson metro area charge between $150 and $250 per week, which is more than she can afford as a sales associate at Home Depot.

    “It has been harder this year. They won’t work around my schedule, but I need the job,” she said of her employer.

    ‘This is the worst I have seen it’

    Day care centers are left on the brink when families lose child care vouchers. Making up the lost revenue has meant higher tuition and fees for some centers and reaching out to private donors for others.

    “These are small businesses,” Burnette said. “The big story in child care is how much it costs to run it. It requires adequate public investment.”

    Level-Up Learning Center leadership team poses in front of their Greenville, Miss., location on July 26, 2024. Left to right are Chief Operating Officer Adrienne Walker, CEO Kaysie Burton and COO/Athletic Director Kwame Malik Barnes. (Level Up Learning Center)

    This week, Level Up Learning Center owner and CEO Kaysie Burton visited Greenville’s Walmart, seeking to persuade the manager to sponsor his employees’ child care tuition. She submitted two grant applications and is working on at least three others. Burton’s business survived flooding and relocation. But the latest voucher cutback could shut her banner-adorned doors to the community

    At Level Up Learning Center, 75% of parents rely on child care vouchers. In the last three months, 20 Learning Center parents have lost their child care vouchers yet most have stayed. Burton has a policy of not turning parents away if they are willing to contribute a portion of the weekly rate. She has not increased her tuition or instituted punishing fees.

    But making up the lost revenue can be a challenge. Since the cutback, she has let seven teachers go, or roughly a third of her staff.

    “We’re down to skin and bones right now,” Burton said. “I am willing to take anybody that is willing to come partner with us and help us help parents so that their kids can keep coming in.”

    When Burton started her business during the COVID-19 pandemic, she saw the need in the Mississippi Delta for affordable, quality child care. She remains committed to helping prepare a future generation of Greenville leadership.

    “We’re in the thick of it with our parents,” Burton said. “And we all just need help and we need prayer.”

    SunShine Daycare owner Barbara Thompson has greeted each parent at the door since she started babysitting neighbors’ kids in her living room. The former banker has long had a passion for raising neighborhood children regardless of their parents’ status or income. She raised her seven siblings when her mother died when Thompson was 12.

    But for the first time in 30 years of running a business in Greenville, Thompson is losing families by the dozen as well as longtime staff. She has leaned heavily on prayer and has reached out to state representatives for help. She fears more departures and the downsizing of her business.

    In the last two months, 12 parents pulled their kids from SunShine. She will have to let three teachers go as a result.

    “We won’t have any children if this continues,” Thompson said.

    She regularly informs parents of the child care voucher waitlist and of the process for renewals. Besides caring for children, Thompson advises many young parents in her community. She noticed that state agencies communicate primarily through email, which a lot of her parents don’t check regularly.

    Children who leave her stoop festooned with cartoon characters can face hours alone without parental supervision. Some children will sit and watch television with their grandparents. For Thompson, child care is about raising children to be “productive citizens.” The youngest years are some of the most important, she stressed.

    “They didn’t take it from us,” Thompson said. “They took from the children. That’s the world’s future.”

    Waitlisted

    Vennesha Price is waitlisted at nearly every day care in Cleveland, where she lives. She’s been on some of the lists for eight months.

    “If you haven’t been a resident for five years and you haven’t navigated the waiting list for five years, it’s harder to find a spot,” she said.

    She found it difficult to both have a productive work day and watch her elementary-aged children. Eventually, she found a day care that was 40 minutes away. She wakes up an hour earlier to make the commute in time before work.

    “I’m a single mother so it’s very difficult,” Price said. “After my grandmother went on to the Lord, it became a struggle trying to get to the day care in time.”

    She started factoring late fees into her monthly budget. She’s also including the gas money needed for the extra legs of her commute. Her child care costs doubled for June and July.

    “It’s almost like private school tuition now,” she said.

    This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.


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  • New book argues child care is a ‘societal imperative’

    New book argues child care is a ‘societal imperative’

    The other day, I came across an article about child care that felt so familiar I let out an exasperated sigh. Child care, the article announced, is now more expensive than college tuition and rent in most states. Many of us had just read another version of the article in March. And before that, in November 2024. Then there’s the one that dates back a little further — to 2013. 

    Many of these stories, which seem to come out on an annual basis, fail to mention that this is a problem that spans decades. The real news is that it hasn’t gotten any better, and many American lawmakers don’t seem to care enough to take action. 

    I asked Elliot Haspel his thoughts on this a few weeks ago when I interviewed him about his new book, “Raising a Nation,” which will be available Aug. 11. In the book, he presents 10 arguments — some of them well known and others less intuitive — for why child care needs to be a more supported part of American society. His book starts with an anecdote that echoes my observation on the dispiriting lack of momentum around the issue: In 1998, President William Jefferson Clinton stood in the Rose Garden and declared in an address that child care was essential to the nation’s economy. President Barack Obama made the same argument in 2015. President Donald Trump did the same in 2019. Yet as the years go by, little changes.

    “We have been having many of the same child care battles for a long time, for decades and decades and decades,” Haspel told me.

    Haspel’s arguments in “Raising a Nation” include “The Economic Case,” where he digs into how child care affects business productivity and the labor force; and the “The Patriotic Case,” where he presents parenthood as patriotic and argues child care is important for American democracy.

    He cites numerous worrisome examples of the consequences of insufficient policy and investment. In making “The Community Case,” for instance, he tells a jarring story from Montrose, Colorado, where the lack of child care has led to difficulties recruiting and retaining police officers. That, in turn, negatively affects the city’s crime rate and response time to emergency calls. And in arguing “The Antipoverty Case,” he highlights extensive research on how a lack of child care is a key theme for families who are unable to move out of poverty.  

    “Care is, in fact, just as important to our social infrastructure as having a public education system, having public libraries, having public parks,” he told me.

    As he writes, it’s clear why we haven’t made much progress as a nation, and why we remain behind nearly every other wealthy country in investing in child care: “We have never established that good child care belongs among the pantheon of American values.” 

    While Haspel’s book focuses more on why we need more robust child care policy than how we get there, he provides a few ideas for the latter: giving child care educators a wage that could support their own families, investing in stay-at-home parents and informal caregivers along with licensed care, and including before- and after-school care and summer care in the system. While those seem like lofty goals, Haspel argues it is indeed fully “American” to embrace such policies. Access to high-quality child care, he argues, is not an “individual family obligation but rather a societal imperative.”

    Contact staff writer Jackie Mader at 212-678-3562 or [email protected]. 

    This story about child care was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • Some States Are Seeking to Deregulate Child Care. Advocates Are Fighting Back – The 74

    Some States Are Seeking to Deregulate Child Care. Advocates Are Fighting Back – The 74


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    Content warning: This story includes details of an infant’s death.

    After Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan in 2021, states were flush with federal funding to help prop the child care sector up. But that money is now all gone, and as Republicans in Congress threaten to pass spending cuts that could further shrink state budgets, lawmakers are trying to find solutions to the child care crisis that don’t cost money. 

    Many have proposed changing the mandated ratios that require a certain number of early educators to care for young kids. Nearly a dozen states have considered rolling back child care regulations, including those governing staff-to-child ratios.

    But while these deregulatory bills are common, it’s not a foregone conclusion that they will pass. Advocates in three states have been able to beat back these efforts in the legislative sessions that just wrapped up by mobilizing a wide variety of people to speak up against these proposals and deploying research-backed arguments about child safety and child care supply.

    Eliminating Ratios Entirely 

    Idaho advocates faced down the most extreme bill. In its original form, HB243 would have eliminated all requirements that limit the number of young children an early educator can care for, leaving it up to individual providers. It would have been the first state in the country to take such a step. 

    Advocates had very little time to fight back. The bill got fast tracked; there was less than 24 hours’ notice before the first public hearing on it in the House. “You can’t get child care providers and parents there in that amount of time,” said Christine Tiddens, executive director of Idaho Voices for Children, a nonprofit that advocates for child-focused policies, noting that it requires moving work schedules and getting people to cover shifts. The bill sailed through the House.

    Eventually, Tiddens said, they were able to put parents and providers in front of lawmakers to warn of the negative consequences. One of those parents was Idaho resident Kelly Emry. On June 10, 2024, she got a panicked call from the home-based child care provider where she had just started sending her 11-week-old son Logan. She dashed to the provider’s home and was told he was dead. The coroner’s report later confirmed he died from asphyxiation. According to Emry, the coroner said the provider put him down for a nap between a rolled up blanket and a pillow and left him there for hours. The provider was caring for 11 kids by herself that day, putting her out of compliance with state regulations that, at the time, required at least two staff members. 

    “It was completely preventable, and that’s what’s so hard for me to come to terms with,” Emry said in a podcast interview in January.

    Emry wasn’t the only one who spoke up. Once the bill got to the Senate, advocates packed the hearing and overflow rooms with several hundred people. Among the 40 people who signed up to testify, 38 opposed the bill. Baby Logan’s uncle spoke, as did pediatricians, fire marshals, nurses, the state police, child welfare experts, child care providers and parents. Lawmakers were flooded with thousands of calls and emails from the opposition. Tiddens made sure every senator was sent the podcast interview with Emry.

    The bill passed the Senate committee by a single vote. Advocates decided to try to stop the worst elements, knowing that the bill was likely to pass in some form. They asked a senator who opposed it to “throw a Hail Mary,” Tiddens said. When the bill came to the Senate floor, he asked for unanimous support to pull it and move it into the amending process. He got it. The original elimination of staff-to-child ratios was stripped out; instead, the bill preserved ratios, albeit higher ones than before. Under previous law, Idaho ranked at No. 41 among all states for how high its ratios were; now it has dropped even further to No. 45.

    The victory is “bittersweet,” Tiddens said. She attributes it almost solely to one thing: putting parents, not just businesses and child care providers, in front of lawmakers, which led to the moving account of Logan’s family, still in the midst of raw grief. “How could you listen and not have your heart changed?” Tiddens asked.

    Doubling Family Child Care Ratios

    Advocates in Maryland have fought back against legislation to loosen staff-to-child ratios twice now. Last year, lawmakers introduced a bill to raise the ratios in family child care settings, but it died thanks to “a lot of advocacy,” said Beth Morrow, director of public policy at the Maryland Family Network, a nonprofit focused on child care. As in Idaho, the American Academy of Pediatrics and fire marshals warned about what would happen in the case of emergencies. Children under 2 years old are “not capable of self-preservation,” Morrow pointed out; they might hide when a fire alarm goes off and can’t evacuate on their own. “If there is an emergency you have to be able to get these kids out,” she said.

    The idea returned this year in House Bill 477, this time coupled with looser ratios for center-based care. Family providers are currently allowed to care for eight children but no more than two under the age of 2; the legislation would have doubled that, allowing providers to watch as many as four children under the age of 1. That was a “nonstarter,” Morrow said. It would also have been the first time that these rules were dictated by lawmakers rather than by the Maryland State Department of Education, which would have been barred from changing them in the future. 

    So advocates marshalled research, with the help of national groups including the National Association for the Education of Young Children and Center for Law and Social Policy. They highlighted that there has been no evidence that stricter child care regulations lead to reduced supply. Lawmakers seemed moved by the argument that lower ratios support better health and safety for children.

    During the markup session, the chief sponsor amended the bill by striking the language about higher ratios; instead, the version that passed requires the Department of Education to study child care regulations with an eye toward alleviating barriers for providers.

    Ratio Increases by Another Name

    In Minnesota, lawmakers took a different approach to proposing changes to the number of staff required to care for young children this session. Their legislation avoided mentioning the term “ratios” at all. Instead, the issue was presented as an exemption for in-home child care providers caring for their own children as well. The legislation originally would have exempted as many as three of the providers’ own children from the number they are licensed to watch. “That’s a direct ratio increase, no way around that,” said Clare Sanford, vice president of government and community relations at New Horizon Academy, a child care and preschool provider. “You still have the same number of adults but you’re increasing the number of children that adult is responsible for.”

    In later drafts, the number of children who could be exempted kept being reduced. In the end the legislation didn’t get a standalone vote and the language was left out of the final state budget. The argument that Sanford thinks worked the best was that increasing ratios wouldn’t actually increase child care supply. That’s because, as a brief by NAEYC argues, they will lead to more burnout among providers, which will push them to leave and, in the end, reduce available child care spots.

    The fight is far from over. Advocates in all three states expect lawmakers to try to loosen staff-to-child ratios again next session. Tiddens fears that, although Idaho didn’t eliminate ratios, the idea could spread. “Idaho has often been a frontrunner for harmful legislation,” she said. On the whole, more of these laws have been signed than stopped, said Diane Girouard, state policy senior analyst at ChildCare Aware of America. Ratio deregulation bills pop up “in some states every single year,” she said. “This isn’t just unique to red, conservative states. It has happened in blue states, it has happened in purple states.”

    Advocates who oppose raising these ratios are formulating responses to the child care crisis that preserve safety standards without requiring state funding. In Maryland, for example, Morrow’s organization helped pass a bill that removes legal barriers to opening and operating family child care programs. The hope is that with more solutions on the table to increase child care supply, states won’t look to options that erode safety standards, such as increasing ratios. 

    Tiddens has vowed to fight back. “We’re not going away, and we’re going to show up next session with our own proposal,” she said. Her coalition plans to formulate a bill for next year that “prioritizes child safety at the same time as dealing with the child care shortage,” she said.


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  • America’s child care system relies on immigrants. Without them, it could collapse

    America’s child care system relies on immigrants. Without them, it could collapse

    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Maggi’s home in a suburban neighborhood here is a haven for local families. It’s a place where after just a few weeks in Maggi’s family-run child care program this spring, one preschooler started calling Maggi “mama” and Maggi’s husband “papa.” Children who have graduated from Maggi’s program still beg their parents to take them to her home instead of school.

    Over the past few months, fewer families are showing up for care: Immigration enforcement has ramped up and immigration policies have rapidly changed. Both Maggi and the families who rely on her — some of whom are immigrants — no longer feel safe. 

    “There’s a lot of fear going on within the Latino community, and all of these are good people — good, hard-working people,” Maggi, 47, said in Spanish through an interpreter on a recent morning as she watched a newborn sleep in what used to be her living room. Since she started her own child care business two years ago, she has dedicated nearly every inch of her common space to creating a colorful, toy-filled oasis for children. Maggi doesn’t understand why so many immigrants are now at risk of deportation. “We’ve been here a long time,” she said. “We’ve been doing honest work.”

    Immigrants like Maggi play a crucial role in home-based child care, as well as America’s broader child care system of more than 2 million predominantly female workers. (The Hechinger Report is not using Maggi’s last name out of concern for her safety and that of the families using her care.) Caregivers are notoriously difficult to find and keep, not only because the work is difficult, but because of poverty-level wages and limited benefits. Nationwide, immigrants make up nearly 20 percent of the child care workforce. In New York City, immigrants make up more than 40 percent of the child care workforce. In Los Angeles, it’s nearly 50 percent. 

    The Trump administration’s far-reaching war on immigration, which includes daily quotas for immigrant arrests, new restrictions on work permits and detainment of legal residents, threatens America’s already-fragile child care system. Immigrant providers, especially those who serve immigrant families, have been hit especially hard. Just like at Maggi’s, child care providers nationwide are watching families disappear from their care, threatening the viability of those businesses. In America, 1 in 4 children under the age of 6 has at least one foreign-born parent. Some kids who could benefit from experienced caregivers are now instead at home with older siblings or elderly relatives, losing out on socialization and kindergarten preparation. Some immigrant workers, regardless of status, are too scared to come to work, exacerbating staffing shortages.  And in recent days, the administration announced that it would bar undocumented children from Head Start, the federally funded child care program for children from low-income families.

    Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues. 

    “Anti-immigrant policy can and will weaken our entire caregiving infrastructure,” said Karla Coleman-Castillo, senior policy analyst at the National Women’s Law Center. Home-based programs in particular will feel the squeeze, she said, since they tend to serve more immigrant families. “Anything that threatens the stability of families’ ability and comfort accessing early childhood education — and educators’ comfort entering or remaining in the workforce — is going to impact an already precarious sector.”

    For Maggi, the fallout has been swift. In February, just a few weeks after the first changes were announced, her enrollment dropped from as many as 15 children each day to seven. Some families returned to Mexico. Others became too nervous to stray from their work routes for even a quick drop off. Some no longer wanted to give their information to the state to get help paying for care.

    Maggi plays with a child in the back yard of her child care program. Maggi runs one of a few child care programs that provides 24/7 care in her town. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report

    By May, only two children, an infant and a 4-year-old, were enrolled full time, along with six kids who came for before- or after-school care. She accepts children who pay privately and those who pay with child care subsidies through the state program for low-income children. She brings in about $2,000 a month for the infant and preschooler, and a couple hundred more each week for after-school care — down significantly from the $9,000 to $10,000 of late 2024. For parents who don’t receive a state subsidy, she keeps her rates low: less than $7 an hour. “They tell me that I’m cheap,” Maggi said with a slight smile. But she isn’t willing to raise her rates. “I was a single mom,” she said. “I remember struggling to find someone to care for my children when I had to work.” 

    Related: 1 in 5 child care workers is an immigrant. Trump’s deportations and raids have many terrified

    Like many child care providers who emigrated to the United States as adults, Maggi started her career in an entirely different field. As a young mother, Maggi earned a law degree from a college in Mexico and worked in the prosecutor’s office in the northern Mexico state of Coahuila. Her job required working many weekends and late evenings, which took a toll on her parenting as a single mother. “I really feel bad that I was not able to spend more time with my daughters,” she added. “I missed a lot of their childhood.” 

    For a year when her girls were in elementary school, Maggi enrolled them in a boarding school, dropping them off Sunday nights and picking them up Friday afternoons. On some weekends, she took the girls to her office, even though she knew it wasn’t a place for children. Maggi longed for a different job where she could spend more time with them. 

    She started thinking seriously of emigrating about 15 years ago, as violence escalated. Her cousin was kidnapped and police officers she worked with were killed. Maggi received death threats from criminals she helped prosecute. Then one day, she was stopped by men who told her they knew where she lived and that she had daughters. “That’s when I said, this is not safe for me.”

    In 2011, Maggi and the girls emigrated to America, bringing whatever they could fit into four suitcases. They ended up in El Paso, Texas, where Maggi sold Jell-O and tamales to make ends meet. Three years later, they moved here to Albuquerque. Maggi met her husband and they married, welcoming a son, her fourth child, shortly after. 

    In Albuquerque, Maggi settled into a life of professional caregiving, which came naturally and allowed her to spend more time with her family than she had in Mexico. She and her husband went through an intensive screening process and became foster parents. (New Mexico does not require individuals to have lawful immigration status to foster.) Maggi enrolled her youngest in a Head Start center, where administrators encouraged her to start volunteering. She loved being in the classroom with children, but without a work permit could not become a Head Start teacher. Instead, after her son started elementary school, she started offering child care informally to families she knew. Maggi became licensed by the state two years ago after a lengthy process involving several inspections, a background check and mandatory training in CPR and tenets of early childhood care.

    It didn’t take long for Maggi to build up a well-respected business serving an acute need in Albuquerque. Hers is one of few child care programs in the area that offers 24/7 care, a rarity in the industry despite the desperate need. The parents who rely on her are teachers, caregivers for the elderly and people answering 911 calls.  

    In Maggi’s living room, carefully curated areas allow children to move freely between overflowing shelves of colorful toys, art supplies parked on a miniature table and rows of books. Educational posters on her walls reinforce colors, numbers and shapes. She delights in exposing the children to new experiences, frequently taking them on trips to grocery stores or restaurants. She is warm, but has high expectations for the children, insisting they clean up after themselves, follow directions and say “please” and “thank you.”

    “I want them to have values,” Maggi said. “We teach them respect toward animals, people and each other.” 

    By the end of 2024, Maggi’s business was flourishing, and she looked forward to continued growth. 

    Then, Donald Trump took office.

    Related: Child care centers were off limits to immigration authorities. How that’s changed

    Data has yet to be released about the extent to which the current administration’s immigration policies have affected the availability of child care. But interviews with child care providers and research hint at what may lie ahead — and is already happening. 

    After a 2008 policy allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to check the immigration status of people taken into custody by local police, there was a marked decline in enrollment in child care among both immigrant and non-immigrant children. There was also a decrease in the supply of child care workers. Even though women were the minority of those deported, researchers found the policy sparked fear in immigrant communities, and many pulled back from their normal routines.

    In the child care sector, that’s problematic, experts say. Immigrants in the industry tend to be highly educated and skilled at interacting with children positively, more so even than native workers. If a skilled portion of the workforce is essentially “purged” because they’re too afraid to go to work, that will lower the quality of child care, said Chris Herbst, an associate professor at Arizona State University who has studied immigration policy’s effect on child care. “Kids will be ill-served as a result.”  

    Home-based programs like Maggi’s are among the most vulnerable. Children of immigrants are more likely to be in those child care settings. In the decade leading up to the pandemic, however, the number of home-based programs declined by 25 percent nationwide, in part due to financial challenges sustaining such businesses. 

    Related: Trump’s deportation plan could separate millions of families, leaving schools to pick up the pieces 

    On a recent morning, Maggi stood in her living room, wearing white scrubs adorned with colorful cartoon ladybugs. Last year, the room would have been buzzing with children. Now, it’s quiet, save for chatter from Kay, the sole preschooler in her care each day. (The Hechinger Report is not using Kay’s full name to protect her privacy.) While Kay sat at a table working on a craft, Maggi cradled the infant, who had just woken up from a nap. The baby’s eyes were latched onto Maggi’s face as she fawned over him. 

    “Hello little one!” she cooed in Spanish. He cracked a smile and Maggi’s face lit up. 

    As one of her daughters took over to feed the newborn, Maggi followed Kay outside. The preschooler bounced around from the sandbox to the swings to a playhouse, with Maggi diligently following and playing alongside her.

    Advocates and experts say upticks in immigration enforcement can cause stress and trauma for young children. In America, 1 in 4 children under the age of 6 has at least one foreign-born parent. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report

    Finally Kay came to a standstill, resting her head against Maggi’s hip. Maggi gently patted her head and asked if she was ready to show off her pre-kindergarten skills. The pair sat down at a small table in the shade and Kay watched eagerly as Maggi poured out small plastic trinkets. Kay pulled three plastic toy turtles into a pile. “Mama, look! They’re friends!” Kay said, giggling. 

    Kay came to Maggi’s program after her mother pulled her out of another program where she felt the girl wasn’t treated well. Here, Kay is so happy, she hides when her mom comes back to get her. Still, a key aspect of the child care experience is missing for Kay. Normally, the girl would have several friends her own age to play with. Now when she is asked who her friends are, she names Maggi’s adult daughters.

    Maggi worries even more about the children she doesn’t see anymore. Most are cared for by grandparents now, but those relatives are unlikely to know how to support child development and education, Maggi said. Many are unable to run around with the children like she does, and are more likely to turn to tablets or televisions for them.

    She has seen the effects in children who leave her program and come back later having regressed. “Some of them are doing things well with me, and then when they come back, they have fallen behind,” she said. One child Maggi used to care for, for example, had just started to walk when the mother pulled them out of full-time care earlier this year, at the start of the immigration crackdown. In the care of a relative, Maggi found out they now spend much of the day sitting at home. 

    Related: They crossed the border for better schools. Now some families are leaving the US 

    Before the second Trump administration began, the child care landscape looked bright in New Mexico, a state with a chronically high child poverty rate. In 2022, New Mexico started rolling out a host of child care policy changes. Voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a right to early childhood education, with sustained funding to support it. The state now allows families earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, or nearly $125,000 a year, to qualify for free child care. That includes the majority of households in the state. Among the other changes: Providers are now paid more for children they enroll via the state’s assistance program. 

    The increase has been helpful for many providers, including Maggi. Before the pandemic, she received about $490 a month from the state for each preschooler enrolled in her program, compared to $870 a month now. If she enrolls infants who qualify for child care assistance, she gets paid $1,100 a month, nearly $400 more than pre-pandemic. She needs children enrolled to get the payments, however. Running her program 24 hours a day, seven days a week helps. She earns extra money from the state when caring for children evenings and weekends, and she is paid monthly to cover the cost of housing foster children.

    Child care advocates in New Mexico are concerned that immigration policy will affect the industry’s progress. “I am worried because we could be losing early childhood centers that could help working families,” said Maty Miranda, an organizer for OLÉ New Mexico, a nonprofit advocacy organization. “We could lose valuable teachers and children will lose those strong connections.” Immigration crackdowns have had “a huge impact emotionally” on providers in the state, she added. 

    State officials did not respond to a request for data on how many child care providers are immigrants. Across the state, immigrants account for about 13 percent of the entire workforce. 

    Many local early educators are scared due to more extreme immigration enforcement, as are the children in their care, Miranda said. They are trying to work regardless. “Even with the fear, the teachers are telling me that when they go into their classrooms, they try to forget what’s going on outside,” she added. “They are professionals who are trying to continue with their work.”

    Maggi said she’s so busy with the children who remain in her care that there is no extra time to work an additional job and bring in more income. She won’t speculate on how long her family can survive, instead choosing to focus on the hope that things will improve.

    Maggi’s biggest fear at the moment is the well-being of the children of immigrants she and so many other home-based providers serve. She knows some of her kids and families are at risk of being detained by ICE, and that interactions like that, for kids, can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, disrupted brain development and behavior changes. Some of Maggi’s parents have left her with emergency numbers in case they are detained by immigration officials. 

    Many of the children Maggi cares for after school are old enough to understand that deportation is a threat. “They show fear, because their parents are scared,” Maggi said. “Children are starting to live with that.” 

    Amid the dizzying policy changes, Maggi is trying to keep looking forward. She is working on improving her English skills. Her husband is pursuing a credential to be able to help more in her program. All three of her daughters are studying to become early childhood educators, with the goal to join the family business. Eventually, she wants to serve pre-K children enrolled in the state’s program, which will provide a steady stream of income. 

    In spite of all the uncertainty, Maggi said she is sustained by a bigger purpose. “I want them to enjoy their childhood,” she said on a sunny afternoon, looking fondly at Kay as the girl flung her tiny pink shoes aside and hopped into a sandbox. It’s the type of childhood Maggi remembers from her earliest days in Mexico. Kay giggled with delight as Maggi crouched down and poured cool sand over the little girl’s feet. “Once you grow up, there’s no going back.” 

    Contact staff writer Jackie Mader at 212-678-3562 or [email protected]. 

    This story about immigrants in New Mexico  was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • Child Care Worker Detained by ICE Leaves a Community Reeling – The 74

    Child Care Worker Detained by ICE Leaves a Community Reeling – The 74


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    This story was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of The 19th. 

    Two years ago, Nicolle Orozco Forero walked into an in-home day care in Seattle, Washington, looking for a job. She was barely 22, a whole five feet tall — if that. But she was calm, focused. Her presence struck the owner, Stephanie Wishon, because it’s not easy to find qualified staff who can work with children with disabilities.

    Orozco Forero had experience working with kids who had autism back in Colombia, so Wishon had her come in for a trial run and hired her after the first day. The children, who needed someone who had love and care to give in abundance, gravitated toward her. She was good at the hardest stuff. She changed diapers and outfits the moment they were soiled. She was vigilant; her kids stayed pristine. And she got them to do the things they wouldn’t do for other people, like say “ah” when it was time to get their teeth brushed or sit still long enough for her to twist a braid down their back.

    Some people just have that way about them.

    And people like Orozco Forero are exceptionally rare. Already, the staffing shortage in child care is near crisis levels. It’s far worse for children with disabilities — about a third of those families say they face significant difficulty finding care for their kids, partly because there are too few people with the ability, expertise or desire to work with their children. Immigrant women like Orozco Forero have been helping to fill that void. They now make up 20 percent of all child care workers.

    At home, Orozco Forero was also caring for her own young boys, one of whom started to show symptoms of a serious illness over the past two years that doctors have not yet been able to diagnose. She took some time off to care for him last year, before returning to the kids at Wishon’s day care.

    Her work has kept an already precarious safety net together. Without women like Orozco Forero, families who have nowhere else to turn for care have to make difficult decisions about how to survive and keep their children safe. Without her, the safety net snaps.

    And that’s exactly what happened on June 18, the day she was detained.

    It was supposed to be a routine meeting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Orozco Forero and her husband had been to all their monthly meetings for the past year and change, since their asylum charge was denied in April 2024.

    The family — Orozco Forero; her husband, Juan Sebastian Moreno Acosta; and their two sons, Juan David, 7, and Daniel, 5 — fled Colombia two years ago. Moreno Acosta, a street vendor, had been persecuted by gangs who target vendors for money.

    After arriving in the United States, they sought the help of a lawyer with their asylum claim, but when they couldn’t pay his full fee ahead of their hearing, he pulled out. They represented themselves in court and lost the case. With no knowledge of the U.S. court system, they didn’t know they had 30 days to appeal the ruling, either. Ever since, ICE has been monitoring them, requiring they wear a wrist tracker and meet with an immigration officer once a month, sometimes more, according to a family member. (The 19th is not naming the family member to protect their identity.) It’s unclear why ICE has allowed them to stay in the country all this time, though it’s not necessarily uncommon; ICE typically prioritized immigrants with felonies for deportation.

    Orozco Forero had seen the reports of illegal immigrants being rounded up at their immigration appointments. President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort has led to the detention of about 30,000 migrants with no criminal record, like Orozco Forero, who now make up about half of those detained. Her husband does have a misdemeanor reckless driving conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol on his record, but he completed a court-mandated alcohol course for that and has no other convictions.

    Still, Orozco Forero wasn’t worried when she headed to her appointment on the morning of June 18. If ICE planned to detain her, Orozco Forero thought, they would have asked her to come with the boys, right?

    And she had been doing everything right: She’d gone to all her appointments, taken documentation to show she was going to school at Green River Community College taking courses in English and early childhood education. She had completed a child care internship that trained her to open her own licensed in-home day care. Her licensure approval was set to arrive any moment, likely that same week, and the day care was just about ready to go.

    But that morning, her family was still wary, asking her to share her location just in case.

    Shortly after 10 a.m., Orozco Forero texted her family member: “They are going to deport us”

    “Nicolle what happened? Nicolle answer me,” they texted back. “What do I do?”

    “I can’t speak I feel like I’m going to faint,” Orozco Forero replied. And then: “I’m sorry it wasn’t what we expected.”

    Two-and-a-half hours west, on the coast of Washington in a town called Southbend, Wishon was frantic. Orozco Forero had texted her, too. ICE was asking for the boys.

    In two years, Wishon had grown incredibly close to Orozco Forero, who had cared for her own kids. After her family moved to the coast, Wishon rented out her house in Seattle to Orozco Forero, whose boys were excited to have a home with a yard.

    Wishon’s husband, Gabriel, hopped into his truck and headed to Seattle. Wishon, meanwhile, got on the phone with the Orozco Forero family’s ICE agent and every lawyer she could. They were going to take them into detention at a facility 2,200 miles away in Texas, a facility that was reopened earlier this year by the Trump administration to detain families. Wishon wanted to find a lawyer who could stop the deportation order, and she wanted to make sure the boys would be reunited with their parents if they took them to meet the ICE agent.

    Nicolle Orozco Forero’s sons play with a child their mother takes care of. (Stephanie Wishon)

    And that was especially important, not just because they were young children, but because Juan David is still sick.

    For the past year, he’s been seeking treatment at Seattle Children’s Hospital for an illness that is turning his urine muddy. So far, doctors have determined he’s losing red blood cells and protein through his urine, indicating a possible kidney issue, but they haven’t yet zeroed in on what is causing the problem. They likely need a kidney biopsy to be sure.

    “Given the complexity of his case, it is essential that Juan remain in the United States for continued testing and treatment,” his nephrologist Jordan Symons wrote in a March letter to ICE. “We kindly request that you consider this medical necessity in your review of his immigration status and grant him the ability to stay in the United States until his treatment and evaluation are completed.”

    Juan David’s care team has been monitoring him closely to ensure his red blood cell and protein levels never drop too low. His condition could become serious quickly.

    “You can die from that,” said Sarah Kasnick, a physician’s assistant who is familiar with his case. Kasnick is also a foster parent, and Orozco Forero provided care for her family.

    When Gabriel Wishon arrived to pick up the boys, they were confused and disoriented. Where were their parents? Why was everyone crying? They didn’t want to go to Colombia, they told him on the drive. They wanted to stay in the United States.

    Around 5:30 p.m. that evening, he met with the ICE agent, who had waited past her work hours for them to arrive.

    “Bye boys, you are going to see your parents right now. They are right inside,” Wishon told them. He watched them walk in carrying two stuffed animals, a Super Mario doll and Chase, the popular cartoon dog dressed as a police officer.

    The families Orozco Forero cares for are now in a free fall.

    Jessica Cocson, whose son has been in Orozco Forero’s care for more than a year, described her in a character letter to ICE as a “blessing to us in ways I struggle to fully express.”

    Orozco Forero and her husband “support working families, provide quality childcare, and demonstrate compassion and commitment every day,” Cocson wrote. “It is heartbreaking to think that someone who gives so much and asks so little could be forced to leave.”

    Tamia Riley, whose two sons with autism were also in Orozco Forero’s care, said losing her was like watching “a father walking out the door.”

    “These people, these day care providers, sitters, they are a form of family members for me and my children,” Riley said.

    Now, the day care she was set to open lays empty. Inside, the walls are plastered with posters listing colors and sight words. There are cushioned mats on the floor and play stations. Tables with tiny chairs. A tall pink dollhouse. High chairs and a pack and play for the babies. Outside, two play houses, a ball pit, toys to ride on and little picnic tables set across an artificial turf. But no children to enjoy any of it.

    Big Dreams Day Care she was going to call it, for the dreams she wanted the kids in her care to strive for, and the ones that were finally coming to fruition for her.

    Orozco Forero’s detention has rattled child care workers across the country. In Texas, workers represented by the Service Employees International Union have been rallying in her name. U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, spoke in support of the family’s release at a rally on June 29 in San Antonio. And a group of union workers is attempting to deliver supplies to the family. It’s an effort Orozco Forero knows little about; she only has limited communication with those on the outside.

    Tricia Schroeder, the president of the Seattle-based SEIU chapter that represents care workers, said that, for years unions like hers have been working to improve quality, access and affordability in child care, a system in such deep crisis it’s been called by the Treasury Department “a textbook example of a broken market.”

    Immigrant women like Orozco Forero were part of that effort to improve access, doing jobs few Americans want to take on.

    “Detaining child care providers, especially those who care for kids with special needs, just deepens the crisis in early learning,” Schroeder said.

    A woman holds a baby in her lap.
    Nicolle Orozco Forero was going to community college for early childhood education and planned to open her own daycare before she was detained by ICE. (Stephanie Wishon)

    Orozco Forero was also the connective tissue that kept families employed. Her loss has rippled across industries.

    Kasnick, the foster parent, said one of the children in her care had been tentatively set to start at Orozco Forero’s day care as soon as it opened. Orozco Forero had been the only provider who would take the child, who has autism and is nonverbal.

    Orozco Forero had cared for the girl at Wishon’s day care as if she was her own, even taking her in once when the child’s care had fallen through and no foster family in the entire county would take her in because of the complexity of her needs. The girl arrived at Orozco Forero’s house at midnight on a weekend “with no clothing, toys, medication or any of her belongings … this did not [deter] Nicolle and Sebastian instead they immediately went and purchased all the things” the child needed, a social worker wrote in a letter to ICE. Kasnick said Orozco Forero was even considering becoming a foster parent.

    Without her, Kasnick is out of options: She quit her job as a physician’s assistant to care for the child after Orozco Forero was detained.

    “There are now 44 patients a day who don’t have anyone to provide their health care, and I can’t go to work because Nicolle’s day care didn’t open,” Kasnick said.

    In the weeks since, Kasnick has had an overwhelming feeling of helplessness, she said. How could this happen to someone who gave back so much?

    “The security of knowing that you can be in your home one day and in a prison the next week, and you didn’t do anything except exist?” she said. “It makes you feel like there’s no good left in the world.”

    Orozco Forero’s family has now been in ICE detention for nearly a month awaiting a bond hearing that could buy them time in the United States. Orozco Forero and the boys are together; her husband is in the same facility but separated from them.

    Juan David hasn’t been eating. It took three weeks for him to receive medical care, Orozco Forero told her attorney, James Costo.

    Costo has been working to get the details of why ICE allowed the family to stay in the country with monitoring after they lost their asylum case last year. There has been an order for their deportation since then, but ICE never attempted to deport them until the Trump administration ramped up efforts. The number of immigrants without criminal convictions who have been detained has doubled since May.

    The process to fight an asylum claim and appeal a denial is complicated — there are court deadlines, documents that need to be submitted and translated.

    “They think maybe they can do it themselves and go in and say what happened but they are not understanding the whole legal process,” Costo said. “The system isn’t made for things to be easy.”

    Costo is hopeful a judge will allow them to stay in the country temporarily as Juan David seeks care. They have almost no family left in Colombia, and no way to obtain care for him there, their family said. If they can stay, then perhaps Orozco Forero could try to obtain a work visa as a domestic worker.

    He has gathered letters of support from numerous people whose lives the Orozco Forero family touched, and Wishon set up a GoFundMe to cover her legal expenses.

    In the letters, Juan David’s first grade teachers call him an exceptional student who went from one of the lowest reading levels in the class — 10 words a minute — to one of the highest at 70 words a minute.

    “He shows the qualities of a model citizen at a young age — dependable, ethical, and hard-working,” wrote his teacher, Carla Trujillo.

    They were all on their way to shaping a better future, Wishon wrote in hers. The couple “worked tirelessly to build a better life for their children and to open their own licensed child care business. In all my years of employing and mentoring caregivers, I have rarely met a couple as responsible, driven, and capable as Nicolle and Sebastian.”

    “This family is not a threat,” she concluded. “They are an asset.”


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  • How to Expand Family Child Care in NC from CCR&R Team – The 74

    How to Expand Family Child Care in NC from CCR&R Team – The 74


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    State legislators from both parties want to expand family child care — the home-based sector of licensed child care, which has shrunk by more than a third since 2018. Both the House and Senate budget proposals include pilots to open new programs to meet the needs of families and employers.

    For the past two years, a team from the nonprofit Southwestern Child Development Commission (SWCDC) has done just that, creating North Carolina’s first statewide system of support for family child care. In the past year, the organization has helped launch 27 new family child care programs, 20 of which are open, creating at least 160 new slots for children. Two are the first family child care programs in their counties.

    Since September 2023, the team has awarded start-up grants to another 26 programs and business sustainability grants to 38 programs. It has created the first statewide family child care mentorship program, regional communities of practice, and a marketing campaign that has garnered interest from more than 200 prospective providers since April.

    The funding to do this work — from a state legislative pilot in the 2023 budget and a state contract through the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) — ends at the end of June.

    As state leaders ask how to improve child care access and affordability, the project’s lessons should carry forward, said Daniel Bates, the statewide project’s manager.

    “I just really felt like we’ve done something here, and I hope that, no matter what, it still continues, because family child care is so incredibly important,” Bates said. “And they are part of early childhood education.”

    ‘People that will be around for a while’

    Expanding family child care takes one-on-one support for new providers who often bring a passion for children but little knowledge of the complex regulations and business challenges that come with starting and operating a program, the project leaders said. It also requires funding.

    In 2024, SWCDC, a nonprofit focused on early care and education based in western North Carolina, was awarded $525,000 from the Division of Child Development and Early Education (DCDEE) from legislative pilot funding to expand access to family child care. The project’s expected output was to help 18 programs get started. Instead, it has helped launch 27 programs by awarding grants to cover start-up costs.

    The grants ranged from $5,000 to $20,000 depending on the providers’ needs and the strategic goals of the project. The average grant was about $13,000.

    Providers also spent their own money to open their programs outside of the grants. A survey of some of the providers found that most had spent between $1,000 and $5,000 before receiving grants to prepare their homes and buy materials.

    The new providers are in 19 counties. In Alleghany and Montgomery counties, grant recipients will be the only family child care providers in their counties. Two providers speak Spanish fluently, according to the project leaders. At least 18 have college degrees. Four of the new providers were under 30 years old. Six were in their 30s; 10 were in their 40s.

    “These are people that will be around for a while,” said Vickie Ansley, SWCDC’s Child Care Resource & Referral (CCR&R) regional programs manager and family child care in-home program activity coordinator.

    Danielle Dixon wakes up students from nap time at Helen Cole’s Day Care. (Liz Bell/EducationNC)

    That grant funding was layered onto a larger statewide family child care project the organization has been leading since February 2023 through a separate $3 million contract with DCDEE from the CCDF, the federal funding stream that helps states raise the quality of child care and helps working families afford it.

    The statewide project had many components, including start-up grants of up to $10,000 and business grants of up to $5,000 for access to business training, software, or devices to manage programs. It provided 64 professional development workshops to providers on a range of issues. It also created a framework for family child care substitute pools and a database of zoning contacts and information.

    Hands-on support from regional consultants

    The crux of the project, however, was all about hands-on support and community building, the project leaders said. The project funded 17 family child care consultants who reached 477 providers in 73 counties with coaching and consultation.

    The consultants, trained in the specifics of owning and operating a family child care program, were embedded in the 14 regional CCR&R hubs covering all 100 counties.

    “We’re talking about people located in those communities,” Ansley said. “They know the (providers), or they know somebody who knows them.”

    Helen Cole, a family child care provider in Taylortown, says the grants she received from Southwestern Child Development Commission helped her buy high-quality materials. (Liz Bell/EducationNC)

    The PDG contract is in process but will be awarded to Acelero Charitable Foundation “in collaboration with multiple agencies that support family child care.” It will focus on increasing quality and family engagement, the spokesperson said.

    DCDEE employs licensing consultants who meet with all types of potential child care owners to begin the licensure process. The licensing consultants began recommending reaching out to the regional family child care consultants to new providers.

    The family child care consultants then could provide knowledge specific to family child care, dedicate time and energy to decipher the complexities of starting and sustaining a business, and offer support that was independent from regulatory oversight and compliance. Some of the consultants were former family child care providers themselves.

    “Prior to that, if an agency had capacity, then they provided support,” Bates said. “The services were somewhat limited, whereas this was full 100% dedication for family child care.”

    The regional consultants received business training to advise providers on budget planning, financial reports, marketing, and recruiting and retaining staff.

    Kathleen Hoffler, a regional consultant at the Partnership for Children of Cumberland County who once owned a family child care home, described the role as her “dream job.”

    Hoffler said she has helped providers take better care of their businesses, their children, and themselves. She encouraged providers to take time off and to reach out for help.

    “If you’re having issues with enrollment, if you’re having issues with collecting payments from parents, if you’re having behavior issues with kids or you’re worried that one of your kids might need some developmental screening, and you don’t have anybody to talk that out with, it’s real easy to get discouraged and possibly decide it’s not for you and you’re going to close your program,” Hoffler said.

    The family child care consultants connected providers to the pilot grant opportunities and helped them budget what they needed and how they should spend the funding.

    Since the consultants were embedded in CCR&R agencies, they could connect providers with a variety of professional development opportunities and resources.

    And they connected providers to mentors — seasoned family child care providers who provided a listening ear and advice on overcoming obstacles — and to communities of practice, regional teams that met to share ideas and support one another.

    Annette Anderson-Samuels, owner of Phenomenal Kids Child Care Services, a family child care home in Kings Mountain, was one of those mentors. She said her advice to two new providers on how to advertise their programs kept them from closing. She recently helped a provider navigate a tough conversation with parents who were not following her policies.

    “It’s to help each other become better at what we do as child care providers,” Anderson-Samuels said.

    There were 22 mentors and 44 mentees across the state. In his decades working in early childhood, Bates said the group has been a standout.

    “They’ve crossed county lines to go help each other in person,” he said. “The interest and the willingness, wanting to improve themselves, is really out there if they have the opportunity to do that.”

    ‘The lost segment of early childhood education’

    The number of family child care programs, child care businesses within a residence, has fallen by about 36% since 2018, compared with an overall 15% decline in all types of licensed child care.

    Eighty-five percent of licensed child care closures from February 2020 to June 2024 were home-based programs.

    As a generation of providers age out of the work, a lack of awareness, funding, and support — along with increased regulation — has kept new providers from entering the field, project leaders said.

    The team was intentional about listening to providers’ experiences and needs before developing a system of support.

    Helen Cole said her family child care home has better equipment and provides higher-quality care because of the support she received from the Southwestern Child Development Commission’s family child care projects. (Liz Bell/EducationNC)

    Many brought up the low rates that family child care providers receive per child to participate in the state’s subsidy program. These rates, the state has found, do not cover the full cost of providing child care in any setting. Home-based programs receive lower amounts per child than centers. And providers in rural and low-income areas often receive lower rates than those in higher-income counties.

    In rural areas where market rates are lower, “even though we need family child care in those communities desperately, market rates are a hindrance,” said Lori Jones-Ruff, SWCDC’s regional programs manager.

    Jones-Ruff also sits on Gov. Josh Stein’s Task Force on Child Care and Early Education, where members have discussed the need for higher subsidy rates and a statewide floor rate that would level the playing field among counties. Research has shown the geographic disparities are wider than place-based differences in cost.

    “That’s not just a center issue,” she said. “It’s for family child care as well.”

    Low funding from public sources and private tuition leads to low compensation for family child care professionals. The median wage for home-based providers in 2023 was $10.20.

    The team also heard about obstacles due to HOA rules and zoning regulations. They found that local ordinances were putting up barriers to new programs in some places. Septic tank requirements were among the most common and most expensive problems.

    “(Providers) have recognized, ‘I don’t really need to run to Raleigh; some of the challenges I have are really just in my own backyard, and I just need to talk to my town or county,’” Bates said.

    The team heard about the isolation many providers feel, being alone in their homes all day without a network to air ideas or lean on when challenges arise. Providers said they did not feel respected or supported by the state.

    “Historically, there was a huge emphasis put on center-based care in North Carolina,” Jones-Ruff said. “Homes did not feel that they were as valued and as supported as center-based. And so there was a period of time where they really felt like they were kind of the lost segment of early childhood education in North Carolina.”

    So the team built a strategy based on both funding and relationships.

    ‘Like a prayer answered’

    For Helen Cole, that assistance and funding was key to opening her family child care home in Taylortown in Moore County.

    “I just feel like this wouldn’t have been possible without the support and the funds,” said Cole, who recently earned her four-star license to care for children from infancy to 12 years old at Helen Cole’s Day Care.

    She received more than $17,000 to start her program from the legislative pilot funding. She bought new outside equipment, furniture, dramatic play sets, age-appropriate toys and books, a new kitchen faucet, a state-approved curriculum, and a new laptop.

    Cole heard about the potential grant funding for start-up costs from the state licensing consultant. She was also connected with Hoffler.

    Students at Helen Cole’s program work on their counting skills. (Liz Bell/EducationNC)

    Cole was excited to open after hearing about a local demand for second-shift care. After retiring as a substitute teacher in her local school district, she needed more income and was eager to fill a community need.

    But after her initial meeting with a licensing consultant, she received a long checklist of everything she had to do. She said she felt overwhelmed.

    “It was just so much information,” she said. “There are things on the website, but how do you adjust it for your day care?”

    Plus, Cole had experience helping in her sister’s child care program, but she did not know the ins and outs of operating a small business. Even with a background in accounting, she knew the role would be challenging. So she reached out to Hoffler for an in-person meeting.

    “It was like a prayer answered,” Cole said. “She broke it down for me.”

    Hoffler helped Cole navigate the tough decisions that come with operating a business from your home, such as how much living space she was willing to sacrifice and what renovations were needed. And she helped Cole create a budget to apply for grant funding through the legislative pilot. She gave her ideas on high-quality and age-appropriate materials.

    She also connected Cole with a mentor, helped her with business skills, and connected her with other resources through the Smart Start partnership.

    Hoffler has helped her advertise her program and hold on through the ups and downs of enrollment, Cole said. Because she needed to hire another teacher, her niece Danielle Dixon, Cole said she is breaking even but has not started making a profit or been able to pay herself. She said she has been advised that it can take nine months to a year.

    She said low subsidy rates and parents’ inability to afford her private rates have also been financially challenging. She serves one student whose parents are both working, making too much to qualify for a subsidy, but cannot afford her private rate of $200 per week. She only charges that family $85 per week.

    Danielle Dixon, a teacher at Helen Cole’s Day Care, has worked in child care for 11 years. (Liz Bell/EducationNC)

    Dixon, who has been working in child care professionally for 11 years but informally since she was 16 years old, has both of her children enrolled at the program. Dixon said her grandmother and mother, as well as three of her aunts, have worked in child care. She decided to partner with her aunt, Cole, to return to working with young children in a creative, exploratory environment after working in public schools.

    Helen Cole’s Day Care opened in December in the home she was raised in, and where her mother used to take care of children whose parents were at risk of losing custody.

    “All of our lives, we’ve had other children here,” Cole said.

    Both Dixon and Hoffler have helped Cole strengthen her understanding and practice of early childhood care and education. Her program’s philosophy is based on relationships, exploration, and emotional and social development. Then academic foundations are added.

    “It’s that give and take between you and this child,” Hoffler said. “They’re going to learn more from you if you are actively engaging with them and talking to them throughout the day, than they’ll ever learn if you give them a coloring sheet and try to teach them how to stay in the lines. There are no lines in early childhood.”

    “That was a wow moment,” Cole said. “I understand that we have to have a curriculum, and we do, but the biggest thing is for them to develop on their own.”

    It is this one-on-one attention and intimate environment that make family child care appeal to so many parents. Rural children, low-income children, and children of color are more likely to access home-based care than center-based, according to national advocacy and research group Home Grown. It is often more affordable, more convenient and flexible for nontraditional working hours, and more culturally and linguistically relevant to diverse families.

    Inside Helen Cole’s child care program. (Liz Bell/EducationNC)

    Kailyn Green, whose daughter has been at the program for a month, said she toured other programs with open spots but they “didn’t feel right.” Then she visited Cole’s program and did a walk-through.

    “I was like, ‘I’m sold. I’m good,’” Green said.

    A licensed clinical social worker, Green said she has been able to return to work without worrying. She receives texts and videos of her daughter’s days and has been impressed by how much she has progressed, especially with eating more consistently.

    “I love that she truly gets the attention,” she said. “She’s been able to form a relationship with her. It’s been great.”

    Hoffler said she was excited to hear about Cole’s recent accomplishment: earning four out of five stars on the state’s quality rating scale.

    “I’m just so proud of her,” she said. “She handled it like a pro.”

    What’s next?

    There are multiple efforts to build different kinds of supports for family child care. DCDEE said the project with SWCDC taught them that “Family Child Care Homes (FCCHs) would benefit from additional funding, continued community engagement, and professional development to improve quality,” according to a DCDEE spokesperson.

    “FCCHs are a vital part of our state’s early care and learning network, and DCDEE is committed to continuing our support for these small businesses,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

    Though the contract for the statewide project ends on June 30, the spokesperson said the division will continue using CCDF funds and federal funds from the Preschool Development Grant (PDG) Birth through Five to provide business technical assistance and other services to family child care programs.

    The PDG contract is in process but will be awarded to Acelero Charitable Foundation “in collaboration with multiple agencies that support family child care.” It will focus on increasing quality and family engagement, the spokesperson said.

    DCDEE is also contracting with Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill to provide evaluation and coordination of the PDG Elevate FCCH project, which will provide extra subsidy funding to family child care programs to increase wages for providers.

    The House and Senate budget proposals direct DCDEE to use CCDF funds to expand family child care capacity. The House would allocate $7 million over two years for a pilot in three localities, and the Senate would allocate $6 million for a pilot in Alamance, Harnett, and Johnston counties. The funding would go to councils of governments in each of those counties to select a third-party vendor. Both proposals have specific requirements for the chosen vendor, including experience in establishing family child care homes in at least three other states and rural areas, experience in operating a substitute pool in another state, and technology that connects families with providers and includes billing and coaching functions. 

    Meanwhile, Jones-Ruff said SWCDC will continue supporting family child care by retaining a statewide team with organizational funding — and will seek outside funding to continue other aspects of the project. Some of the family child care consultants will continue their work through local CCR&R or Smart Start funding.

    “I can see just the monumental amount of work and the progress that has happened in such a short amount of time,” she said. “We’re not going away.”

    This article first appeared on EdNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.


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  • States try to tackle child care shortages — by lowering standards

    States try to tackle child care shortages — by lowering standards

    When this year’s legislative session launched in Idaho, early childhood experts and advocates were hopeful that the state, which has a shortage of child care, would invest more in early learning programs. Instead, lawmakers proposed what may be the most extreme effort yet to deregulate child care in America: The bill called for eliminating state required staff-to-child ratios altogether, instead allowing child care providers to set their own.

    While the effort was met with fierce opposition in the state, it represents a trend gaining momentum in the country. Rather than investing in the struggling child care industry, more than a dozen states have proposed lowering the minimum age to work with children, easing education and training requirements, and raising group sizes and ratios. (Read my December story on this growing deregulation movement. I investigated such efforts in states including Kansas and Iowa.)

    The deregulation measures come at a time when many early childhood programs face federal funding and staffing cuts. Head Start programs were hit by a federal funding freeze and struggled to draw down payments even after the Trump administration announced Head Start was exempt from the freeze. Then, earlier this month, the Trump administration closed five of the Administration for Children and Families’ (ACF) regional offices and placed staff from those offices on leave, threatening support for Head Start, which is overseen by ACF, as well as programs that receive federal child care subsidies. Last week, USA Today reported that President Donald Trump is considering a budget proposal that would eliminate funding for Head Start altogether.

    At the state level, Idaho lawmakers are not the only ones to propose child care deregulation legislation this year. Minnesota lawmakers also issued similar proposals, including increasing family child care capacity limits and relaxing ratios in rural areas. Another bill in the state proposes lowering the age requirement of assistant teachers from 18 to 16. In Kansas, where a lawmaker proposed hiring 14-year-olds to help in child care classrooms in 2023, a new bill aims to reduce training requirements. An Indiana measure would loosen staff-to-child ratios based on the ratios set in neighboring states, and one in North Carolina would increase maximum group sizes for young children. And in Florida, lawmakers have called for an abbreviated inspection plan for some child care programs.

    While deregulation is more common in red states, there have also been some recent efforts to invest in early learning programs that transcend the red-blue divide. In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp proposed an additional $14 million aimed at reducing preschool class sizes and $5.5 million to address issues with the state’s child care subsidy program for lower-income families. Indiana Gov. Mike Braun called for more spending to eliminate the state’s waitlist for child care subsidies. And South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster proposed $20 million to continue a program that provides wage supplements to child care workers.

    In Idaho, the deregulation legislation was eventually amended to loosen the state-mandated ratios — without eliminating them altogether. It also forbids municipalities from setting more stringent child care regulations than the state, something that was allowed in the past and allowed cities to set a “higher standard” for programs, said Martin Balben, director of strategic initiatives for the Idaho Association for the Education of Young Children.

    “I think municipalities are still kind of reeling with how to confront that reality,” he said. “It remains to be seen how [they] are going to handle their lack of local control in this area moving forward.”

    Experts say while deregulation is nothing new, the recent momentum is troubling. “We absolutely want to make sure that states are not rolling back their health and safety measures,” said Diane Girouard, state policy senior analyst at Child Care Aware of America. “We want to make sure that they’re not compromising children. … There are no quick fixes.”

    Contact staff writer Jackie Mader at 212-678-3562 or [email protected].

    This story about child care services was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • Head Start, the federal child care program for low-income families, is turning 60 this year. Will it make it to 61?

    Head Start, the federal child care program for low-income families, is turning 60 this year. Will it make it to 61?

    NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Bright morning sun is streaming through her home’s windows as Sandra Dill reads a picture book about penguins to a room full of busy toddlers. While listening, the kids blow kisses, plop in a visitor’s lap, then get up to slide down a small slide.

    Dill has been running a family child care business from her home for 15 years, and every one of her 13 grandchildren has spent time here — currently it’s 20-month-old Nathaniel, who has a puff of curly hair and a gooey grin.

    “My older ones started to call it ‘grandma school,’” she said. Another one of her granddaughters, now a teenager, is returning this summer to help out.

    Four of Dill’s eight available slots are funded through Head Start. This is the federal-to-local program that funds child care and other support for the poorest families in America. (Regular Head Start serves children 3 to 5 years old; Early Head Start is for those under 3.) The program — which began right here in New Haven, Connecticut — is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

    It’s also never been so at risk: First a federal funding freeze hit providers, then a chunk of Head Start federal support staff were fired by the Department of Government Efficiency. On March 27, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it was cutting a further 10,000 jobs, and reorganizing the Administration for Children and Families, which administers Head Start. As of April 1, Head Start employees in five of the program’s 10 regions — Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle — had reportedly been laid off, according to a LinkedIn post that day from Katie Hamm, a former official with the federal Administration for Children and Families. Hamm said there does not appear to be a transition plan laying out how Head Start programs in those regions will receive funding and support. Project 2025, the conservative policy handbook organized by the Heritage Foundation, which the Trump administration has been following closely, calls for eliminating Head Start altogether.

    “I think it’s terrible,” Dill said. “I just can’t imagine. It’s already not enough, and if this happens, it’s going to affect a lot of families that are already struggling.”

    Ed Zigler, the “father of Head Start,” was the son of immigrants from Poland. His father was a peddler and his mother plucked chickens to make a little money, according to Walter Gilliam, executive director of the University of Nebraska’s Buffett Early Childhood Institute, who counted Zigler as his closest mentor.

    When Zigler was a child, his family made its way to a settlement house in Kansas City, Missouri; these community-based charities offered a two-generation approach, caring for and educating children while also teaching English and job skills to parents and connecting families with medical care and housing help.

    “That made a huge impact on his and his family’s life,” Gilliam said.

    Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.

    As a young psychology professor at Yale, Zigler was hired as an advisor to President Lyndon Johnson to help design family programs for the federal War on Poverty. In creating Head Start, he turned to the same two-generation model he grew up with.

    To date, Head Start has served nearly 40 million children. In fiscal year 2023, the Head Start program was funded to serve 778,420 children. The program has always been underfunded: In 2020 Head Start served barely 1 in 10 eligible infants and toddlers and only half of eligible preschoolers. It’s limited to families making under the federal poverty level, which is just $31,200 for a family of four.

    The sand table at Dill’s child care is an opportunity to explore shapes, colors and textures. Credit: Anya Kamenetz for The Hechinger Report

    Still, for many of the families who do manage to make it through the doors, the program is life-changing.

    “Head Start is in every community in America,” said Cara Sklar, director of early & elementary education policy at the D.C.-based think tank New America. “It’s the original two-generation program, with wraparound support for kids. It’s really held up as a model of quality in early learning.”

    The “wraparound support” for Dill’s Early Head Start families is funded by the United Way of Greater New Haven, and comes via a network for family child care educators called All Our Kin. The network helps mothers enroll in community college and apply for housing subsidies. Dill has had mothers who lived in their cars and one who was living with her mother “six to a room,” she said. She also does regular home visits with families to talk about children’s development and support parents in goals like potty training.

    Thanks to Early Head Start, a nurse, a mental health consultant and a nutritionist all help Dill keep the kids healthy and safe. And the program also provides extra funds she can use to get back up and running if, for example, the furnace needs fixing.

    But Head Start is now facing funding challenges that go far beyond a broken furnace. “The past month has been harrowing for child care providers,” said Carolina Reyes, director of Arco Iris Bilingual Children’s Center, a preschool in Laurel, Maryland, that is a Head Start partner, and also a member of the nationwide advocacy group MomsRising. 

    The first blow to Head Start in this administration was President Donald Trump’s January 27 executive order calling for a federal funding freeze. Since Head Start is a direct federal-to-local grant program, even temporary interruptions in funding can cause programs to close their doors.

    “ Programs like mine operate on razor-thin margins,” said Reyes. “I don’t have any reserves to pull from if funding is delayed or slashed.”

    Related: Is Head Start a failure?

    While funding for most programs has resumed, Joel Ryan, the executive director of the Washington State Association of Head Start, said in a recent press conference that as late as the week of Feb. 17, one in four of his programs still had trouble accessing the Head Start payment website. 

    That same week of the 17th, almost 70 Head Start staffers were pink-slipped in the federal government’s sweep of “probationary” employees — about one-fifth of the program’s workforce. One laid-off employee, who didn’t want to give his name because he is still fighting his dismissal and fears reprisal, said he spent five years as a contractor before switching to full time this past summer, which accounted for his probationary status. He wore many hats at Head Start, doing data analytics, working with grant recipients and serving as a liaison for state partners.

    “They say we’re bloated; we could have used two more full-time people,” he said.

    The cuts, he feared, will lead to further delays in programs getting the payments they rely on, not to mention the oversight that keeps kids safe.

    “I come from the private sector. I will find another job,” he said. “The issue isn’t us, it’s the children and the families. We’ve got all these people in poverty who are getting screwed over by what’s happening.” 

    A third blow came on February 25, when the House passed a budget resolution calling for $880 billion in cuts to discretionary spending programs over the next decade, with Medicaid the prime target, along with the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Head Start families overwhelmingly rely on these safety net programs. The White House’s gutting of the Department of Education also threatens many services for preschoolers, especially those in special education. (This process, which maps out the next fiscal year, is separate from the recent vote to fund the government until Sept. 30.)

    “This is going from the precipice of disaster to decimating the system,” Sklar said. “All the parts that help families, from Head Start to child care to food to health care, are all being destabilized at once.”

    Gilliam said that threats to eliminate Head Start are nothing new. After designing the program during the Johnson administration, Zigler was appointed to run it under the presidency of Richard Nixon. “Some folks told him that his job was to destroy, essentially, the program that he had created,” Gilliam said.

    Related: In 2024, Head Start programs are still funded by a formula set in the 1970s

    Head Start advocates said the program has been able to fight off political challenges in the past because it is widely distributed geographically and has bipartisan support.

    “I agree that Project 2025 is a real threat to Head Start, as well as to other programs that we all care about,” said Ryan, with the Washington State Head Start association.

    “But I will say this: We have great research. We have great data. We have a great track record. We have a lot of bipartisan support in Congress. And we have parent power.”

    By coincidence, the week the House passed its budget resolution, a group of 150 Head Start parents were on Capitol Hill lobbying as part of a group called Start Early, and they met with many Republican senators.

    Tommy Sheridan, the deputy director of the National Head Start Association, struck an almost defiantly optimistic tone after the visit to lawmakers: “We still believe and have seen indicators that this administration is supportive of Head Start. And Congress as well.”

    NaMaree Cunningham and her twin sister turned two on the day of our visit. Credit: Anya Kamenetz for The Hechinger Report

    Another potential bright spot is the growth of child care support and funding on the state level. Elizabeth Groginsky is New Mexico’s first cabinet secretary for the state’s new Early Childhood Education & Care Department, and she said the pandemic woke a lot of people up to the importance of early care and education.

    “People began to understand the impact that child care has on children’s development, families’ ability to work, the overall economy,” Groginsky said.

    Since 2020, New Mexico has gone through a major expansion in home visits, child care and preschool. Vermont has made similar moves, and New York and Connecticut are heading in that direction as well. Even the deep-red state of Kentucky has expanded access.

    What all of these state-level programs have in common is that they are much more widely available to middle-class families, rather than tightly targeted to families in poverty, as Head Start still is. Historically, with programs like Medicare and Social Security, universal access has meant durable support.

    Now those states are contemplating stepping in further if the federal government drops the ball.

    “Because the state has made such an impressive commitment to child care, we’re potentially in a better spot than others,” said Janet McLaughlin, deputy commissioner for Vermont’s Department of Children and Families. And Groginsky, in New Mexico, said firmly, “The governor and the legislature — I don’t think we’ll let New Mexicans go without. They’ll find a way.”

    Support for this reporting was provided by the Better Life Lab at New America.

    Contact editor Christina Samuels at 212-678-3635 or [email protected].

    This story about Head Start was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • A look at the kind of high quality child care many cannot find

    A look at the kind of high quality child care many cannot find

    Reading my colleague Jackie Mader’s latest story about the vital importance of warm, interactive exchanges between caregivers and children brought back the terrifying feeling that comes with leaving your baby in the hands of someone you don’t really know — and the relief when you see an experienced, loving educator taking charge.

    Mader’s story details how a growing number of cities and states — red and blue — are pouring resources into training teachers and even evaluating programs on how warm and responsive teachers are. As Bridget Hamre, a research associate professor at the University of Virginia, told Mader, other elements of quality, like teacher education are “only important to the degree to which they change the way that teachers interact with kids.”

    The story, as well as a documentary that I saw last week at the SXSW EDU conference on model child care programs, left me feeling inspired about the future of child care in America for the first time in a while. The documentary, “Make a Circle,” tells the story of highly trained and qualified child care workers in the California Bay Area, and their efforts to transform the way society views their industry. It will be available on PBS in the fall, and is being shown at film festivals and other events across the U.S.

    Throughout the film, you see the intricate and important work of early educators as they play with children, teach them letters, colors and sounds, and take them for walks in the woods. That might sound basic but, like the thoughtful interactions described in Mader’s piece, can ultimately make a huge difference in the lives and well-being of children. And sadly, this kind of child care is not widely available or affordable.

    Fortunately, it was for the children of the filmmakers, husband-and-wife team Todd Boekelheide and Jen Bradwell. They actually knew some preschool owners and teachers featured in the film: Their own two children attended one of them. Bradwell calls the documentary “a love letter to early educators and a rallying cry for a child care system in crisis.”

    The system needs all of the love it can get: a point that Isabelle Hau makes in her new book, “Love to Learn,” a deep dive into the importance of building quality relationships in early childhood care. (I’ll be moderating a discussion of some of her findings at the ASU+GSV conference in San Diego next month.)

    “Close, nurturing relationships in the early years are like the foundation of a house,” Hau writes. “If the foundation is not solid, the house may shake apart later in strong winds.”

    Both Bradwell and Hau had a chance to expound on their findings at another early childhood event: a celebration of Hau’s book at the Austin, Texas, home of Libby Doggett, who over the years taught me a great deal about the importance of quality early childhood education as the former director of Pre-K Now, a 10-year campaign to advance high-quality, voluntary pre-K for all 3- and 4-year-olds across the U.S.

    Here was a crowd committed to improving the way we teach our littlest learners and training their teachers during this difficult time for the early childhood industry. The Hechinger Report is documenting cuts to research and other shifts in early childhood spending under the Trump administration. We keep an updated Trump tracker on our site to catalog everything we know. We also love hearing from you on these issues, so please respond to this newsletter to get in touch!

    This story about responsive teachers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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