Baltimore-area child care providers are feeling the loss of funding from the American Rescue Plan, a pandemic-era provision that expired on September 30.

Doug Lent, communications director for child care advocacy nonprofit Maryland Family Network, said use of the emergency stabilization funds were “very widespread.”

“Providers were able to use the funds for multiple purposes,” Lent said. “If they needed to invest in their employees, they could do that; if they needed to invest in their building, they could do that; or if they needed to pay their electric bill, they could do that, too.”

In a June report, The Century Foundation estimated that nearly 70 thousand Maryland children will lose access to child care without American Rescue Plan funding. Over 4,500 child care jobs are predicted to be lost – and nearly 2,500 programs projected to close.

But this trend isn’t new, Lent said. According to a report from the Maryland Family Network, many child care centers have shut down in the past five years.

The number of larger center-based programs slightly increased in 2022 – but are expected to fall by the end of 2023. Home-based programs dropped by 20% from 2011 to 2019.

“It was a downhill before it was a cliff,” Lent said. “And this cliff at the end of the hill is going to make it even worse.”

Lent says the effects will hit low-income parents the hardest – and take a significant toll on home child care centers.

“Another reason why that's so significant is these programs, these businesses, are mostly owned and operated by women and by women of color,” he added.

‘There’s no one but me’

Fatima Whitmore is the lead teacher at Tender Tots, a family-provided child care center in Baltimore County. She says three out of eight families dropped out of the program after pandemic-era aid expired because they could no longer afford the $250 weekly tuition.

“And it's not because they're at a bar or bowling. They really have to get gas; they really needed groceries,” Whitmore said.

Seeing this struggle firsthand takes a toll on family providers, Whitmore said.

“We're way more intimate with our families,” she said. “When they come into your home every day, you see what the impact is.”

Without full enrollment and full tuition, Tender Tots is being forced to cut expenses.

“What we offer the children didn't change, although the enrollment dropped. We still have to prepare meals, we still give them one on one learning time,” Whitmore said. “So, maybe we can't have hot meals every day, we may have to turn to cereal. It's just a balancing budget plan we do weekly.”

The center stopped paying for cable, and had to lay off the only other employee helping Whitmore and the director.

“I can't call out because there's no one but me,” Whitmore said. “If I call out just because I have a headache that morning, I have eight to 10 families that are going to be locked out of care.”

Home providers feel the financial strains more acutely than larger centers, Whitmore said, because they pay for most resources out-of-pocket.

“We have a mortgage, and you're paying extra for your electric, extra for your water, extra for your food,” she said. “And you just can't recover from that after so many weeks of not being paid.”

‘It feels like there’s no winner’

But larger child care centers are struggling to stay afloat, too. Hilary Roberts-King is the executive director of Downtown Baltimore Child Care, which serves around 275 children at three different city locations.

Roberts-King said that her center used American Rescue Plan funding to cover wages for teachers and staff as enrollment sharply declined during the pandemic.

Without that extra funding, the center now has to toe a difficult line: raising tuition enough to sustain wages, but not so much that families can’t afford it.

“Sometimes it feels like there's no winner,” Roberts-King said.

In Baltimore City, families spend over one-third of their annual income on child care on average.

Tender Tots leaders have raised tuition since the pandemic, and are now facing more financial pressure without the federal aid.

“We were living on razor thin margins prior to the pandemic,” Roberts-King said. “We cannot aspire to go back to razor thin margins. We can't aspire to go back to being one of the lowest paid professions that there is.”

Roberts-King said the center is working to find other partners and funding sources to fill the American Rescue Plan gap.

“When one budget line goes down, then another budget line has to be picked up,” she said. “And what we're trying to do is partner with anyone who we can to help get money to families to afford the best quality care for their children.”

What’s next? 

Lent said the Maryland Family Network will be advocating for more state investment in the child care industry during the next legislative session.

The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the state’s multi-billion-dollar education initiative, lists expanded daycare access as one of its primary goals.

“If childcare providers go away, or if there's a lack of them, we're going to see parents who can't go to work,” Lent said. “They're going to stay home and provide care at home for their kid. They're going to leave the workplace, and it's going to hurt the economy overall.”

Roberts-King said child care is “infrastructure,” and should be funded like it.

“During the pandemic, I kept seeing all this about essential workers,” she said. “None of them can go to work without us. We are the essential worker, we are the roads, we are the water source. We are what gets young families to work.”

Whitmore says she hopes state leaders will also expand technical assistance and support for home providers especially, who are operating often with small staffs.

Ultimately, Lent said, the goal is to fund child care for all.

“We would love to see child care for every family who needs it, with a big public investment to help make that happen,” he said.