Stacy Smith, deputy commissioner for the Arkansas Department of Education’s Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, explains to the Arkansas Early Childhood Commission on Oct. 21, 2025 how federal funding for child care has decreased over the past several years. | Photo by Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate
By TESS VRBIN | Arkansas Advocate
Child care providers from throughout Arkansas continued to urge state officials for help in light of the ongoing federal government shutdown and changes to the state’s financial aid program for low-income families.
The Arkansas Early Childhood Commission voted with no dissent to create an emergency working group of researchers, lawmakers and child care providers with the goal of assisting and advising the state Office of Early Childhood on how to keep child care services afloat and sustainable by Nov. 1.
The vote came less than a week after a commission work session in which child care providers said layoffs and closures throughout the state are imminent. The Arkansas Department of Education currently does not have access to 80% of its federal Child Care and Development Fund money, said Chris Barnes, a State Leadership Development Coach in the department’s Division of Elementary and Secondary Education.
The division has about $16.3 million in CCDF funding on hand, which will last about five weeks because the pace of spending is about $13 million per month, Barnes said.
The CCDF supports the School Readiness Assistance Program, a financial aid system for low-income families to access child care. In September, the education department announced a new reimbursement structure and a sliding-scale copayment structure, with the goal of reducing the four-digit child care waitlist and making the program more financially sustainable.
The agency delayed cuts to providers’ reimbursement rates until Nov. 1 in response to pushback from providers, but moved forward with participant copayments on Oct. 1 as planned.
Those increased copayments have already forced some Arkansas child care centers to close because parents could not afford to pay anymore, Northwest Arkansas child care center owner Shahid Sheikh said at last week’s work session. The planned reimbursement rate cuts are expected to cost providers statewide $727,000 per week, according to a survey of providers in 50 counties presented at the work session.
Sheikh and Barnes were among the people suggested for the emergency working group by Debbie Mays, another Northwest Arkansas child care provider and a longtime member of the Early Childhood Commission. Mays said one lawmaker from each party should also be part of the working group.
Education department staff will reach out to the relevant parties to put the group together quickly, said Stacy Smith, deputy commissioner for the department’s Division of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Providers’ frustrations
The amount of federal child care funding the state has carried over from one fiscal year to the next has decreased year after year, Smith told the commission and the child care providers in the audience.
Fiscal year 2024, which began in mid-2023, saw $181 million carried over from the previous fiscal year’s allocation of $690 million. More than $111 million was carried over into fiscal year 2025. The state is now in fiscal year 2026 and only carried over $43 million, Smith said.
The drop in available funds required the department to “hit the panic button” and put forth a “very aggressive plan” to sustain the School Readiness Assistance Program, she said.
“I keep hearing people talking about the providers in this, which is important… but this program is set up as a program for working families to assist them in their child care,” Smith said. “It was never set up as a system for a business model.”
Several providers took issue with Smith’s statement during the meeting’s public comment period. They insisted that high-quality child care is not possible without solid financial support.
Jody Abernathy, who runs the DREAM child care centers in Sherwood, said providers should have been included in the education department’s conversations about how to make the School Readiness Assistance Program financially viable.
“There shouldn’t have been a program that was created for low-income parents without a business model that was created with it,” Abernathy said.
She and Dawn Colyer of Sheridan both said they have gone without pay in recent weeks while trying to keep their child care centers open. Colyer said she also stopped providing her employees with health insurance as of Oct. 1.
The survey of providers presented to the commission last week projected that 250 facilities would see a total of 400 layoffs by November. Sarah Wheeler of Malvern said Tuesday that she recently had to lay off the person who trained her center’s staff.
Wheeler pointed out that Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has often said education and children’s wellbeing are her top priorities.
“This is the most important part of education,” Wheeler said.
The commission agreed that the emergency working group should send its proposed solutions to Sanders’ office.
Sanders’ signature legislation in 2023, her first year in office, was an omnibus education bill that changed many aspects of Arkansas’ public school system. The LEARNS Act increased the minimum annual salary for K-12 teachers from $36,000 to $50,000.
This has led to staff retention problems in the early childhood education field, said Karen Marshall, who runs the Tender Loving Care child care center in Searcy.
“It was great for public schools, but for our teachers that are licensed, degreed teachers, [it had] zero impact, so our teachers of course are going to want to move to public schools,” Marshall said.
Discover more from
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
