For Krystal McFarlane, the news of losing extra grant funds to support her childcare facility early created “instant panic.”
When she heard that Idaho was cutting off funding from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to support childcare centers early, she was in Washington D.C. hoping Senator Jim Risch would support more federal relief funds to help the struggling industry and the parents who use it. Now, her facilities and others across Idaho would be on their own after September, with price increases squeezing in on all sides.
“I cried if I’m being honest,” she told BoiseDev in an interview. “And then I had to announce to our staff that our wage enhancements and all of that are just gone when we had all planned on that going to a certain timeframe. To be there doing that already asking for funding from September forward and then to find out that they weren’t even going to complete it was absolutely devastating.”
The ARPA funding was originally supposed to continue through September of this year, but the Idaho State Legislature decided last session to end it early in June — sending back millions of dollars in federal funding to Washington D.C.
Since then, childcare facilities around the state have shuttered their doors. Many of the still-open daycares hiked their tuition to stay open, putting an increased strain on families’ pocketbooks. Others had to forgo replacing staff members leading to increased child-to-worker ratios that some say have caused a decrease in...
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