Kelly Dawn Jones is sick. But, despite her cough and general fogginess, calling off work isn’t an option.
The southeast Indianapolis day care provider has four kiddos to look after and if she has to call off, so do their parents. So, when the four children — ages 2 through 4 — arrive at her one-bedroom bungalow on Sloan Avenue, she’s got activities ready.
That includes indoor and outdoor playtime, potty training, lunch, naps and little time for her to rest in between. It’s a juggling act that Jones sometimes shares with a part-time staffer, who just also happens to be sick this week.
She would hire more help, Jones told Mirror Indy. But she just can’t afford to right now. Child care workers have been hit hard this year by a series of changes in state funding.
Last December, Indiana officials said they would put all new applicants on a waitlist, dramatically curtailing the number of new child care assistance vouchers issued this year. In the spring, state lawmakers lowered the maximum amount of money a household could make and still qualify for assistance. And, in September, Indiana officials said they would scale back reimbursement rates given to providers who take care of children relying on vouchers.
“It’s not necessarily about our bottom line or our pockets,” Jones said of the rapidly evolving environment. “We truly care about the children. What matters is that they’re in a safe environment with a caring person with knowledge and training.”
State officials say they had to make the changes to wind down spending after past leaders relied on temporary pandemic relief funds to grow Indiana’s child care programs. Voucher use increased more than 72% after the pandemic.
So much change, coming all at once after a period of encouraging growth, has cut into local providers’ bottom lines in an unexpectedly rapid way. Many of these small business owners say they were already operating at razor-thin margins and doing all they could to keep the cost to families low. Now, several child care directors told Mirror Indy, they’ve cut staff and declined to pay themselves to make ends meet.
The changes also come as the price of child care continues to rise. High quality seats in Marion County can cost as much as $300 to $400 a week. Some child care providers specifically cited the state’s changes when raising rates this year.
Now, as some families decide to forgo child care altogether, providers say their enrollment is dropping faster than they could plan for. There’s few signs of challenges letting up. Officials said in October they don’t expect to award new vouchers until at least 2027.
Hanan Osman, executive director of the Indiana Association for the Education of Young Children, said she’s tracked at least 50 child care providers across Indiana that have closed since June. She worries children will bear the real cost as the state pushes for gains in third grade reading scores and moves to hold back children who don’t pass state exams.
“This is huge, because you have children who need to be in a learning environment,” Osman said. “Ninety percent of brain development happens from 0 to 3 years old.”
How did we get here?
Shelly Weekley runs a small, home-based center on the far eastside.
About a year ago, every seat she offered was full. So she decided to expand her business, opening a second location in Evansville. The new ministry-based center met its 56-child capacity within two weeks of opening.
Then things took a dramatic turn this year.
Weekley lost about half of her students in Indianapolis and is down to just a dozen in Evansville. She’s had to let two staff go and has spoken with a bankruptcy attorney as she tries to figure out how she’s going to pay her bills. She said she’s never experienced such a swing in her career.
“I don’t know how much more anybody can actually take,” Weekley said. “I don’t have no words for what they’re doing to us. It’s ridiculous.”
She attributes the swift decline to changes the state has made in an attempt to shrink a ballooning voucher system. Prior to the influx in pandemic funding, the state supported around 40,000 children on vouchers. Last year that number grew to more than 69,000.
After the pandemic money ran out, the state opted not to replace it and to shrink the program instead. So it stopped issuing new vouchers. Then in the spring, lawmakers reduced the income level for families that qualify from 150% of the poverty line to 135% — or to an annual income of $43,000 for a family of four.
After those changes, enrollment took a nose dive even as more seats came online. By September 2025, voucher use dropped 21%.
Adding to providers’ pain several months later, state officials announced that the Family and Social Services Administration would also reduce the money it gives directly to providers who take care of children using the voucher program. Cuts would range from 10% to 35%, reducing a vital source of revenue for providers who serve large numbers of low-income families.
In reality, some providers saw little change when new checks arrived in October. Others saw a reduction of up to 65%, according to providers who spoke to Mirror Indy.
The blame for the bleak child care assistance outlook lies with the previous administration, according to Adam Alson, director of Indiana’s Office of Early Childhood and Out-of-State Learning.
Alson, who joined FSSA in February, said at an October meeting past leaders used $1.27 billion in federal pandemic relief dollars to expand the Child Care and Development Fund program too quickly with no long term plan for sustainability after the use of the one-time funds.
“This past year has been one of the most consequential in the history of Indiana’s Office of Early Childhood and Out-of-School Learning,” Alson said during the meeting. “This year’s events underscore the fragility of Indiana’s child care system, how quickly temporary funding can create unsustainable expectations, and how difficult it is to balance the need of families with the financial realities of child care businesses.”
Alson said he made cuts within his office to redirect funds to the voucher program. The office amended, terminated or chose not to renew $30 million worth of contracts for the coming fiscal year, the director said. And, within the last six months, he’s cut his office’s staffing by 50%.
But that alone was not enough to bridge the funding gap. As of September, more than 30,000 are on the waitlist for a child care voucher.
Are you a parent or family currently searching for child care in Indianapolis? Mirror Indy wants to learn more about your experience. Contact reporter Carley Lanich at carley.lanich@mirrorindy.org.
Is there any relief ahead?
In the same meeting, Alson applauded state lawmakers for passing a budget this spring that held funding steady for families already receiving the vouchers. He lauded it as “historic.”
There was no mention of how the budget reduced the number of people who were eligible for vouchers. Or how Gov. Mike Braun proposed greater funding for the vouchers — enough to resolve the waitlist — only for lawmakers to propose less amid a fast-moving budget session where a desire to decrease property taxes took center stage.
Osman, from the Indiana Association for the Education of Young Children, said she understands lawmakers are unlikely to open up the state’s biennial budget this legislative session. But she hopes they might consider leaning on emergency funds to help cushion the blow.
She worries about how many more child care centers could close between now and the next budget session in 2027.
“What is the cost of reopening the centers?” Osman said. “We have some programs who were open for 30 years and they are closing. This infrastructure, we will have to rebuild again.”
Rep. Greg Porter, D-Indianapolis, filed a bill in early December to redirect $300 million set aside in the current budget for state correctional facilities, Medicaid assistance and the Department of Child Services to child care vouchers. The bill has been assigned to the House’s Ways and Means committee, but it’s unclear how far the legislation will go.
During a legislative preview breakfast in November, top lawmakers Senate President Pro Tem Rod Bray, R-Martinsville, and House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, signaled any new money for child care would be limited.
“I think we said, now that we have to create this colossal structure and that structure comes with all these costs,” Huston said, “we’ve got to find an appropriate balance.”
‘Trying to survive’
In the same November conversation, Huston appeared to question the need for early childhood education.
“I guess I’m so old I remember when having a neighbor or family members or a friend watch your kid in a day care was OK,” Huston said. “Maybe I missed all the dramatic societal consequences of that.”
Lisa Bowling, co-director of DayStar Childcare in the Englewood neighborhood, was dismayed by that response. For many providers, the pandemic-era investments represented progress. It allowed child care directors to grow programs, increase pay for their staff, and feel their profession was valued.
“We have fought for years and years to be considered educators, not babysitters,” Bowling said. “It feels like we’ve stepped back in time 25 years.”
It’s not that families can’t watch children, the providers say. In some households, it’s not possible. Family members could live out of town, still be in the workforce or have physical ailments that prevent them from caring for small children.
On top of that, many child care providers are trained in their work. They’ve studied safe sleep practices, the state’s new literacy curriculum, and how to identify signs of learning disabilities, such as autism, which can dramatically increase a student’s performance in school when detected early.
Jones similarly wants the state’s decisionmakers to understand that she does more than watch children. She educates them. And, she says, she runs an efficient business.
Every corner of the home is maximized to its fullest — each item inside inspected for safety and chosen for its educational value. Her dining room doubles as a playroom. She sleeps on a couch pushed into the corner of the front room where kids also stretch out their yoga mats and settle down on cots for their naps.
Outside, Jones grows watermelon, okra and tomatoes. The garden serves as both a science lesson and a handy way to scale back on purchasing store-bought tomato sauce. She collects nonpotable water in a rain barrel in case the water main in her neighborhood breaks. It’s happened before, and always a good idea to have a back-up flushing mechanism with several potty trainers in her home.
When she looks around the property, she sees things she’d like to do. She’d love to renovate her small, single bathroom and build a shed for more storage outside. She also still wants to bring on another staffer, someone who can pick up children for after-school care and relieve Jones for daytime appointments. Recently, she’s been putting off dental work.
But Jones knows it all will have to wait.
“The people that do this work, incredibly, do not think of themselves; they lose who they are to what needs to happen,” she said. “We’re just out here trying to survive.”
Mirror Indy, a nonprofit newsroom, is funded through grants and donations from individuals, foundations and organizations.
Mirror Indy reporter Carley Lanich covers early childhood and K-12 education. Contact her at carley.lanich@mirrorindy.org or follow her on X @carleylanich.
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