This story was reported and written by VPM News.
Some Northern Virginia child care providers that rely on families paying full tuition to offset the cost of subsidized slots are concerned they may have to close if a significant number of unemployed federal workers pull their children out of child care.
That was one message Fairfax County Supervisor Jeffrey McKay had for state lawmakers Tuesday — during a House of Delegates hearing about the impacts of federal workforce and funding reductions.
“I'm hearing from a lot of child care providers that they may have to close their businesses,” McKay said during the Emergency Committee on the Impacts of Federal Workforce and Funding Reductions meeting. The Fairfax board chairman added the main concern is “that the people who are paying for that child care will be gone.”
With reduced enrollment, McKay said, providers stand to lose state and county dollars — in addition to private dollars from families paying the full cost of tuition, which are often used to offset the cost of subsidized slots.
There’s also a concern about the potential loss of currently subsidized slots because of these factors.
“And the [subsidized] slots we do have, people are concerned, will be vacated by paying customers,” McKay added.
J. Glenn Hopkins, CEO of Hopkins House in Alexandria, said he recently surveyed enrolled families to gauge the impact of federal job and contract losses and to ask what assistance would be helpful to families.
Of the respondents, around one-third of parents currently work for the federal government as employees or contractors — while over a dozen respondents who are no longer in federal jobs cited “recent layoffs, buy-outs, or contract terminations” as the reason for their unemployment.
Hopkins said assistance paying for food and preschool tuition were among the top things families said they needed help with in the wake of the cuts. Some will become eligible for subsidized child care — depending on how long they’re unemployed — while others will likely pull their kids out of care.
Hopkins said his child care center hasn’t felt the impacts of this just yet.
“Some of these terminations and contract expirations are just happening, the paycheck is still on the way to them, so they haven't pulled their kids out,” Hopkins said. “Our kids should be insulated from this, and that’s our focus.”
To help ease the strain on providers and families, McKay recommended two temporary changes to the Child Care Subsidy Program, one of Virginia’s largest subsidized child care programs.
One recommendation is to delay implementation of a time limit to shorten the amount of time parents can keep their kids in a CCSP slot while looking for work. Right now, there’s no limit; the new policy — set to take effect July 1 — would shorten this window to 90 days.
The second recommendation involves bringing back a pandemic-era policy that allowed providers to be reimbursed for up to 180 days when kids receiving a subsidized slot are absent: According to Virginia’s Child Care Subsidy Program manual, providers now can only be reimbursed for up to 60 days a kid is absent.
Leah Fraley, CEO of United Community Early Learning Center in Alexandria, said these recommendations would make a big difference in helping sustain the center’s subsidized child care slots: Fraley said around half of the center’s kids receive subsidized care.
According to Fraley, some parents with legal immigrant status have been keeping their kids home more often too.
“There is an element of fear,” Fraley said. “When things get shaky, they want their family close to them. That's changed the way people are using day care.”
Those increased absences impact her center’s bottom line, because providers sometimes don’t get paid when kids in the CCSP are absent for an extended period of time.
She estimates that at least one-quarter of the center’s families paying full tuition are either federal employees or contractors. Fraley is already hearing from those who’ve lost their jobs that they can’t afford to keep paying the full cost of child care.
Fraley said the day care business model was already operating on a slim margin, and when one area is adversely impacted it puts a financial strain on other aspects of the center’s work: “It ultimately starts to challenge the business model.”
Hopkins said he’s already feeling a strain on his nonprofit’s budget: In December, individual donations were down 40% for the first time in 30 years. He thinks the election of President Donald Trump impacted people’s willingness to give amid so much uncertainty.
He said it’s difficult and stressful right now just to figure out how to pay for current programming and staff – and he can’t easily raise tuition rates because families are struggling. And on top of that, the organization lost $2 million in federal funds for a new preschool center.
The promised funding for a 13,000-square-foot center — part of a public housing redevelopment project in Alexandria — was pulled from the continuing resolution that Congress recently approved.
“I don't have answers yet,” Hopkins said. “I'm just swirling right now. It's just trying to figure it all out.”
Daniel Hains with the National Association for the Education of Young Children said he’s heard from some providers in other states that are considering taking on fewer subsidized child care slots because of the fear of federal funding cuts to key programs like the Child Care Subsidy Program and Head Start.
“That was concerning to see that programs were considering their relationship to federal funding,” Hains said. “For many programs that are serving families that are receiving subsidies … that's the only way those families can afford child care.”
The continuing resolution federal lawmakers passed, which funds the government through September, doesn’t include cuts to programs providing subsidized child care. But Hains said the fear of future cuts is still very real.
Project 2025, a policy blueprint for a future Republican presidential administration published in 2023 by the conservative Heritage Foundation — specifically calls for the elimination of Head Start; local providers had funds frozen temporarily earlier this year. More recently, some staff who help administer Head Start have been put on leave — and others let go amid another round of federal layoffs.
Hailey Gibbs, of the Center for American Progress, said the current federal climate is causing fear and uncertainty about what’s to come for child care providers.“We're definitely seeing a lot of really frightening rhetoric around the Head Start program, and there have been explicit threats to its continued existence in Project 2025,” she said.
Gibbs said that in many rural communities across the country where there are child care deserts, Head Start programs provide the only licensed options for families.
“These are vulnerable families who, without these kinds of supports, are made even more vulnerable,” she said.
Copyright 2025 VPM
