Child Care Cuts Leave County Families Waiting

Montgomery County’s newest child care facility, a bright and carefully designed center operated by KinderCare, was completed with optimism — 124 seats, an emphasis on hard-to-find infant and toddler care, and an experienced new director ready to meet community needs.

Although only half the seats are full, the center is on target with its expected goals for a facility of its size. However, with state-level cuts to Child Care and Development Fund vouchers and On My Way Pre-K funds, its goal to serve low-income families — those most in need of child care in order to provide for their households — has been throttled.

One barrier, according to Montgomery County Community Foundation Early Learning Director Lisa Walter, is a staffing shortage, which might be addressed had the state not cut funding to train and support early child care providers. The second barrier is a funding crisis in Indiana’s child care voucher system that is rippling through every program in the county.

It all hit just when the county and city were on track to make huge strides in providing high-quality child care — the kind that creates enriching play and brain development activities that support children in social and emotional skills and readies them for kindergarten.

Statewide Crisis, Local Consequences

Vouchers are critical for numerous reasons. The Washington Post reports that states supporting increasing birth rates have prioritized high-quality child care as a key pro-family initiative. Why? Because child care can price a wage earner out of the job market. In a thread on Facebook, locals report costs, at the cheapest, around $175/week, which averages about $753 a month. For a low-income earner making $16 an hour, that leaves just under $2,000 for rent, utilities, car insurance, groceries, phone, clothes, medical expenses and emergencies. Needless to say, vouchers have been a critical lifeline for families.

Indiana’s Office of Early Childhood and Out-of-School Learning reported in August 2025 that there were 55,846 active child care vouchers statewide, down from almost 70,000 at the end of 2024. That’s a loss of roughly 14,000 vouchers in just six months, mostly due to an enrollment freeze that began last December.

The state now has 25,149 children on the waitlist for vouchers, most for the CCDF program. Many will age out before a slot opens, conceded Adam Alson, the director of the state’s Office of Early Childhood and Out-of-School Learning, during the August FSSA Quarterly Financial Meeting.

The numbers highlight why Montgomery County is feeling the pinch:

• 94 percent of voucher families statewide are working parents, and
• 88 percent are single-parent households.
• Almost two-thirds live below the federal poverty line — about $32,000 for a family of four.

Eligibility was recently cut from 150 percent to 135 percent of FPL, meaning some families who formerly qualified are now ineligible altogether.

Walter said Montgomery County providers are experiencing steep CCDF declines. One rural ministry program that used to have half its seats filled by voucher families now has only a fraction of that number. Her estimate is sobering — the county could serve up to 1,200 children with CCDF vouchers, with about 100 children holding active vouchers, mostly for On My Way Pre-K. Meanwhile, there are at least 125 local children on the waitlist, and one family has already been waiting 224 days — nearly a year — for help.

“When families come for a tour and the program director or administrator tells them there’s a waitlist for CCDF, they turn around and never come back,” Walter said. “Those vouchers are critical for families — without them, parents either can’t work or must choose less safe, unregulated care.”

The KinderCare Challenge

The new KinderCare center is a case study in how funding losses and workforce shortages combine to limit access. The building has three open infant rooms — a rarity in the child care world — but the ability to open more classrooms depends on hiring two qualified teachers per room. KinderCare is recruiting aggressively, but in a rural county, Walter says, “there’s just not a big talent base to pull from.”

As a result, the center is “at the halfway mark” in enrollment. While tuition is comparable to other local programs and the center accepts vouchers, it currently has just one CCDF-funded child enrolled. The original plan had been for 30–40 percent of seats to be filled by voucher families.

“The need is there,” Walter said. “But until voucher funding comes back, those children can’t enroll here or anywhere else — and programs lose revenue they count on.”

Pre-K Setback

The state’s On My Way Pre-K voucher, which funds one year of high-quality preschool for eligible four-year-olds, is also shrinking. Walter says that in 2024, Montgomery County had 60 children enrolled with Pre-K vouchers. This fall, there are only 15. That’s 45 children missing out on kindergarten readiness support.

Those missing early learning experiences can have lifelong consequences. Research consistently shows that children who attend high-quality early education programs are more likely to succeed in school and less likely to require costly interventions later.

“We are literally pulling out a proven tool for future success,” Walter warned.

Cuts Beyond the Classroom

To keep funding flowing to current voucher holders, the state is slashing other child care supports: ending contracts for Spark Learning Lab (the state’s technical assistance and quality coaching provider) and all regional Child Care Resource & Referral agencies. Both support systems will close September 30, 2025.

For providers, this means losing:

• Free, on-site coaching for classrooms with behavioral challenges.
• Help navigating CCDF compliance and quality rating improvements.
• Free or low-cost professional development hours required to maintain their licenses.

Walter says the Montgomery County Early Childhood Coalition will try to fill the gap with a local workshop series, but grant funding for that ends next year. Providers still need twice as many training hours as the coalition can offer.

“We were making solid progress,” she said. The cuts to vouchers make it feel like the situation is going backwards for some families.

The Workforce Trap

The funding freeze creates a vicious cycle. Without vouchers, many low-income parents leave the workforce or reduce hours because child care is unaffordable. That, in turn, reduces the labor pool for employers across industries — from manufacturing to health care — at a time when Indiana employers are already struggling to fill jobs.

In Montgomery County, Walter adds, the shortage of trained early childhood educators compounds the crisis.

“You can’t open a classroom without the staff ratios. And without CCDF families, there’s less revenue to hire staff. It’s Catch-22.”

Families Squeezed

Some parents manage by piecing together unpaid care from relatives or friends; others turn to informal, unlicensed providers. Those settings aren’t always unsafe, Walter stressed, but “they’re not regulated learning environments, and kids miss out on early development opportunities.”

The worst-case scenario is parents leaving children in unsafe conditions — a risk that grows when affordable, licensed care is out of reach.

Advocacy Ahead

Walter and her colleagues are planning advocacy events this fall, including hosting the No Small Matter documentary in November and participating in the Indiana Association for the Education of Young Children’s Statehouse Day in February.

Her message to legislators will be simple: the first five years are critical, child care is foundational to workforce participation, and rural communities can’t “do more with less” when less is already threadbare.

“At the very least,” she said, “let us send these kids to preschool.”

While the funding picture endangers the budgets of low-income wage earners, Montgomery County has worked hard to alleviate the lack of options altogether. Whereas the county once had seats for only 5% of the children, its hardworking childcare providers and supporters make it possible to serve over 50% of the childcare-aged population.  Want to understand the issue more fully? Join MCCF and partners for a No Small Matter documentary screening and panel discussion at 6 p.m., November 5, 2025, at Crawfordsville High School. The event is open to community members and will cover the importance of high-quality early childhood education.

The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan, multi-issue political organization which encourages informed and active participation in government. For information about the League, visit the website www.lwvmontcoin.org; or, visit the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County, Indiana Facebook page.