Out of reach
Colorado’s crumbling child care system
A NOTE ON THIS SERIES
Erica Breunlin
Education writer
The federal government recommends families spend no more than 7% of their income — before taxes — on child care. In Colorado, that means a family of four would need an annual income of $549,386 to truly afford child care for an infant and a toddler.
Child care providers face their own set of growing expenses, everything from staffing their centers with qualified early childhood educators to implementing rigid state regulations and paying their rent or mortgage plus utilities. One child care provider says that most of the time, he has no more than 10 days of cash in the bank to keep his centers afloat.
Colorado’s child care system — a patchwork of licensed child care facilities, in-home programs, churches, schools, and unlicensed settings — is failing both families of young children and providers. The state’s child care industry has long used on a funding equation that simply doesn’t work, and recent funding challenges with a government assistance program that covers care for kids from low-income families have made it impossible for many families to continue care and also forced some providers to the brink of closure.
Over the next several months, through grant funding from Gary Community Ventures, The Colorado Sun is taking a microscope to the state’s child care system — which one expert described as neither functional nor robust.
Our series, “Out of reach: Colorado’s crumbling child care system,” will unpack why child care costs have become so high for both families and providers and will also explore what it will take to make child care affordable and widely available across the state.
We’re talking to parents, child care providers, advocates, researchers and lawmakers to understand how this flailing system holds back not only individual families but also communities and the entire state. We’ll also report on the creative solutions that communities are testing to find their own fixes to a lack of affordable child care.
The stakes are high: When young children don’t have a safe, affordable spot to go during the day, parents often must choose between staying home to look after their kids or working and haphazardly figuring out care along the way. And when children don’t have the chance to be in a classroom in the years before kindergarten, they lose out on a foundation of skills that experts say will set them up for academic success later on.
Both these challenges take a consequential toll on communities, stifling the state’s economy to the tune of $3.8 billion a year and robbing kids of a strong start in school.
The problems are many, but so are the potential solutions.
