About 16,000 families waiting for child care vouchers after pandemic funds run out

Cantrell Keyes is working 90-hour weeks and losing $15,000 a month at the child care center she directs in Jackson, Mississippi.

Nearly half of the 46 families attending Agape Christian Academy World last spring lost access to Child Care Payment Program vouchers, which are essentially coupons that make child care affordable, Keyes said. Ten families left the facility as a result, and another 10 of the remaining families are not paying Keyes the full tuition. Keyes says she will keep serving her families until the day the center’s faltering finances puts her out of business.

“I have been in the industry for close to 30 years now and never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would be going out like this,” Keyes said with tears in her eyes.

She worries that day will be soon if the state doesn’t come up with money to plug the hole left by depleted pandemic funds that were enhancing the Child Care Payment Program.

Keyes’ situation is far from unique. Overall, 16,000 Mississippi families are on a waitlist for child care vouchers as a result of expired COVID-era funding, according to the Mississippi Department of Human Services. During the pandemic, the federal government gave states $52 billion to enhance vouchers that help working families afford child care. Since the money has dried up, that stability is withering away. Parents are losing their jobs, children are suffering inconsistent care, child care workers are being laid off and providers are going without pay or shuttering their facilities, according to advocates and industry leaders who spoke with Mississippi Today.

“It’s a huge crisis for child care centers and parents, and we’re hearing from them every day,” said Carol Burnett of the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative. “This one center’s (Agape’s) experience times a thousand is really what’s happening in Mississippi right now.”

The Mississippi Department of Human Services has resumed vetting families coming up for redetermination — an annual review of eligibility, explained Mark Jones, chief communications officer at the agency. If families earn too much to qualify for the vouchers and fall off or leave the program, those families will no longer receive vouchers, and the department will begin working through the waitlist.

For the first time during the last legislative session, Mississippi lawmakers appropriated $15 million of state funds to the child care voucher program. However, that was less than half of what the department requested. Thousands of families were left on the waitlist.

Given the need, advocates hoped the Legislature would put more money toward the program this year. But in September’s Legislative Budget Committee hearing, MDHS did not ask lawmakers for money for child care.

Instead, Bob Anderson, director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, asked for $15 million to pay for the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Access Program after the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, which Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed into law in July, gutted the program and turned much of the costs over to states. If received, that $15 million that Anderson requested will go toward administrative costs of implementing new federally-mandated bureaucratic requirements for checking if SNAP recipients qualify to receive those benefits.

In the spring, the Legislature could choose to appropriate money for child care. But in light of Anderson’s request — and his silence on the need for more resources for child care despite ongoing waitlists — experts suggest the need to stop the bleeding after historic federal funding cuts has shifted the state’s priorities when it comes to making child care more affordable.

Meanwhile, nurturing the state’s youngest citizens remains a burden for child care providers like Keyes, who is having a hard time keeping her center financially afloat.

“I’m just handling it day by day by day by day right now,” she said. “And sometimes I feel like I’m underneath the water and just my face is up with my nose and I’m really trying not to come under because the community needs us.”

‘She grew up here’

Keyes said she has done everything in her power not to have to kick families out. She had to let six of her employees go, reduced four of her staff members from full time to part time and picked up the slack herself by taking on extra responsibilities such as bus driving and preparing lesson plans. She has also stretched resources further and offered discounted tuition to parents who offer work in exchange around the school, such as cutting the grass. She says that’s what community means to her.

“Putting them out is not going to benefit me because I’m going to just be sitting up here wondering, ‘Where are they?’” Keyes said with a laugh. “What benefits me is knowing they’re in a safe place and then the mom or dad can continue doing what they need to do — working or going to school.”

Many of the children she serves come from households of young, single parents or are being cared for by grandparents. Nearly two-thirds of the school’s families are currently receiving vouchers or have in the past.

“I recently just lost everything in an apartment fire,” said Jazmine Donerson, a single mom who interns as a medical assistant full time and works an evening shift at Family Dollar. “When I lost the voucher, it was hard for me to make payments. If my daughter wasn’t able to come to this daycare, I wouldn’t have anybody to watch her. I wouldn’t be able to go to school and try to better both our lives.”

She says the debt and the anxiety of getting kicked out or seeing the facility close weigh on her. But mostly, she said she is overwhelmed with gratitude for the consistency in care that Keyes has offered.

“My baby started here when she was nine months, not walking, not talking. Now she won’t stop walking — or stop talking,” Jazmine Donerson joked. “She grew up here.”

Consistency is critical for young children, explained Biz Harris of the Mississippi Early Learning Alliance, and it’s often the first thing to go when care becomes too expensive.

“To have to move around and have an uncertain child care situation, it causes anxiety and stress in the parents, and it causes anxiety and stress in the baby — even if you don’t see it, it’s there,” Harris said.

And it’s not just families or child care workers who are affected. Nationwide, the loss of pandemic funding for child care will cost states $10.6 billion in lost economic activity, according to a study conducted by the Century Foundation, an independent think tank in New York.

Child care is more expensive in the U.S. than any other country explained Elliot Haspel, a nationally recognized child and family policy expert based in Colorado. Haspel said that is because there is no coordinated public child care system like there is for K-12 education,

“We treat child care in this country much more like a private, individual commodity like a gym or a restaurant than we do more of a public or social good like public schools or fire departments or roads or parks,” said Haspel. “So, there’s very little public money in the system, and the economics don’t work without it.”

Keyes has never thought of what she does as babysitting, or anything other than a public good. She views herself as an educator of her youngest charges. Research backs up that perception. The first few years of life are the most critical years for learning and development.

“At the end of the day, we are an early learning institution,” Keyes said.

Getting creative

As of now, it’s not clear how long Keyes’ child care center will remain open or what approach state leaders will take to ensure funding.

Advocates have called on the state in recent months to use unspent welfare money to fund the voucher program. But using Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds outside of what was allocated for the Child Care Development Fund is prohibited, according to federal guidance.

The Child Care Development Fund is the federal block grant that primarily funds the voucher program. States can transfer up to 30% of TANF funds to CCDF, and Mississippi transfers the maximum amount.

Other states, such as Ohio and Texas, have set up direct payment programs to use additional funds carried over from previous years for child care. Jones with Mississippi Department of Human Services said the agency is committed to following official federal guidance regarding conversion of TANF funds to the child care voucher program.

The agency also has opened a Request for Proposals, Jones said, to use TANF funds for “work support” — programs that help those in low-income jobs remain employed. Proposals include child care, Jones said. The subgrantees will be announced in 2026.

Meanwhile, Gov. Tate Reeves asked lawmakers to provide $1 million this session to expand child care access for workers across the state. The program, according to his annual Executive Budget Recommendation, would be a public-private “tri-share model” in which employers, employees and the state government share the cost of child care.

“Any revenue to child care is welcome and wonderful, so that’s that,” said Burnett of the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative. “But it is a small investment, and the other effort Mississippi has put forward that involved businesses participating was an employer tax credit they could get for investing in child care — and there has been practically no take-up on that.”

Without the promise of help from the state, Keyes plans to start delivering orders for DoorDash in the coming months to earn extra income. Keyes said she doesn’t have the heart to lay anyone off before the holidays, but she doesn’t know how much longer she can hold out.

Keyes said she hopes that officials will get as creative as she’s had to get to stay open — and that they’ll follow through. She keeps praying because she believes care and education are the foundation to life.

“It’s not about money for me — I don’t pay myself a salary,” said Keyes. “I do it because I want to see the children grow. When you have a great beginning, you have a great ending. In child care, we’re the beginning for everything. We pour into them what they need.”

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This story was originally published by Mississippi Today and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.