Child care is one of the hottest topics in public discourse today, and for good reason. The sector is finally (if a bit slowly) getting the attention it deserves, and several universal truths have emerged:

1. Child care is a bipartisan issue. Although specific strategies and priorities may differ from right to left, all of society benefits from well-funded and well-functioning early care and education systems.
2. The ROI for early childhood investment is staggering. From a purely economic standpoint, few investments pay off as strongly or as consistently as early childhood. The National Forum on Early Childhood Policy and Programs estimates returns between $4 and $9 per every $1 invested in high-quality early childhood programs.
3. Child care is ripe for modernization. We're not going to see sustainable gains by pouring more money into the old way of doing things. Better data and technology infrastructure will reduce barriers to entry, improve efficiencies, and give policymakers the data they need to make informed decisions.

April 2025 Updates

Head Start Under Fire

On April 1, all staff in the Office of Head Start and Office of Child Care in Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle received Reduction in Force notices, effectively shuttering all five administrative offices. In total, Head Start has lost approximately ⅓ of its full-time workforce in the DOGE-led layoffs of government employees.

According to Kathleen Havey, Senior Director of Policy at the National Head Start Association, the organization is already starting to see signs of instability in various areas, with May 1 grant renewals looming. The Associated Press reported that Head Start centers have received nearly $1 billion less in federal funding year-over-year, and classrooms are closing as a result.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Washington Post reported on leaked budget drafts outlining the administration’s plans to propose the elimination of funding for Head Start altogether, a proposal that should come as no surprise to those who are familiar with Project 2025 and just how closely this administration’s agenda has adhered to that dystopian blueprint since taking office.

There is, to be frank, no good reason to eliminate Head Start and more than a million reasons (children) not to. The budget document leaked to the Washington Post includes a line “justifying” the cuts with the statement that “the federal government should not be in the business of mandating curriculum, locations, and performance standards for any form of education,” which just shows a shocking level of ignorance about what Head Start is and how it’s run.

While there have been questions over the years about Head Start’s effectiveness, mainly due to two controversial HHS studies showing what has become known as a “fade out” effect in outcomes for Head Start students in early elementary school, the overwhelming body of research shows significant and lasting social, emotional, health, academic, and economic benefits for Head Start participants (Read: NHSA Facts and Impacts). Is it perfect? No. Has it changed the lives of millions of Americans for the better? Undoubtedly.

I sat in on a policy and advocacy session at last year’s NAEYC annual conference the day after the Presidential election. When anxious conference attendees asked about Project 2025 and the plans to eliminate Head Start, NAEYC’s own policy experts dismissed the idea as extremely unlikely, pointing to the longstanding, broad, bipartisan support for the program. Sadly, as with so many things that seemed unlikely to come to fruition six months ago, that “support” has failed to keep the money flowing, and we find ourselves one step away from checking off yet another box in the Project 2025 game plan.

Decades of precedent will soon be put to the test when Congress takes up the administration’s budget requests. The Republican majority has not yet shown a willingness to push back on the President’s wishes/demands, but this one would deal lasting damage to communities everywhere, especially in the rural communities that have held such sway in recent elections. Just last year, 33 House Republicans signed a letter to Appropriators in support of Head Start, calling for it to be funded “at the highest level the Subcommittee deems possible.” Now is the time to hold true to those convictions.

The goal of these articles has always been to raise awareness of the forces shaping our early care and education system throughout the country—red, blue, and everything in between. But this particular development doesn’t have “two sides.” The elimination of Head Start would destroy a vital pillar in our early education system, while also ripping away the only viable childcare option for hundreds of thousands of families, forcing more people further into poverty, removing parents from the workforce, and ensuring that the next generation of children will be less prepared for kindergarten. We urge our readers to take action to protect Head Start at all costs. See below for more resources.

• Toolkit: PROTECT Head Start (First Five Years Fund)
  
• Advocacy Action Center (National Head Start Association)
• Stealing From Our Children: Trump's Dismantling of Head Start Harms Children and Families - A May 5 Panel Discussion (Center for American Progress)
• Here's why Trump's plan to gut Head Start will hurt you, even if you don't have kids (Elliot Haspel for Fast Company)

Push for Proxy Voting for New Parents in Congress Fails

The standoff on proxy voting between Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and House Speaker Mike Johnson ended when the two sides reached a deal on April 6 that replaced the idea of proxy voting with a proposed formalization of the “pairing” system “long used in Congress” that enables absent lawmakers to pair with an opposing voter to essentially cancel out both votes.

The issue largely revolves around new parents in Congress who need and/or desire time to recover and care for their infants, a challenge faced by millions of American families those legislators represent. Several states have taken steps to institute procedural support for both new mothers and fathers in state legislatures, including remote participation options.

Opponents of proxy voting argue that absent lawmakers miss important information and discussions and cannot effectively govern without being present. Proxy voting was temporarily enacted throughout much of the country at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but has largely been rolled back in the years since. Those in favor point to a legislative system that was not built with women in mind. Women currently make up only ⅓ of all state lawmakers, and just under that at the federal level.

Read more: As Congress Tables Proxy Voting, State Lawmakers Seek Solutions for Parents Who Serve in Office (U.S. News)

Ohio and Texas Houses Approve Child Care Budget Bills

The Ohio House passed a two-year budget bill on April 9 that included $213 in new money for child care programs. Of those funds, the vast majority ($200 million) will go toward child care vouchers for families in the income bracket spanning 146%-200% of the federal poverty level. The voucher program is currently serving about 8,000 children, but the federal funds that supported it are coming to an end. The new budget bill will allocate $100 million per year from TANF block grants to keep the program alive.

Also included in the bill was $10 million to spin up a Tri-Share program through which participating employers will pay 40% of their employees’ child care costs and the state will pay 20%, with the employees footing the leftover 40%. The remaining $3.2 million was allocated to a child care provider recruitment and mentorship grant to build more child care supply in a state with many child care deserts.

Read more: Ohio House approves $213 million for child care in budget bill (limaohio.com)

In Texas, $100 million was earmarked for expansion of the state’s child care scholarship program, which currently has a waiting list of 95,000 families. This is hopefully the first of many child care investments to come for this legislative session, as the state projects a 2026-27 biennium surplus of approximately $24 billion.

Read more: Texas House Passes Historic Child Care Investment (Texans Care for Children)

Montana Lawmakers Try to Get Child Care Proposals Across the Line

Montana’s 90-day legislative session ends on May 3. We’re keeping an eye on a number of child care-related proposals that look like they’ll be coming down to the wire over these next couple of weeks, including:

• House Bill 456 would allocate $5.4 million to cover tuition costs for up to 400 children of child care workers who don’t otherwise qualify for the state’s Best Beginnings scholarship program. (Update: This bill was tabled in committee on 4/16)
• Senate Bill 321 would establish an income tax credit for families, child care workers, and businesses that offer direct child care assistance to their employees. The credit stands at $600 per child for families, $1,600 for eligible child care workers, and $5,000 for qualifying businesses at the time of publication.
• House Bill 220 would create a separate $1,200 tax credit for children under the age of 5. That one concluded its second reading in the Senate on April 17.
• Senate Bill 565 represents the largest pending investment—a $150 million endowment fund to support workforce development, technical assistance, quality and affordability initiatives, and emergency assistance for the state’s child care sector.

Read: Bills targeting Montana’s child care challenges maintaining steam (Montana Free Press)

Other Developments Throughout the Country

Child Care Aware of America released an eye-opening report on state funding levels for child care and early learning. The report paints a picture of variable, overly complex, and disjointed administration and funding systems that are consistently coming up short for children and families. Read: An Uneven Start: 2025 State Funding for Child Care & Early Learning

Colorado amended and then eventually rejected a bill that would have required private equity-backed child care chains to post their tuition and fees online and give 60 days notice after purchasing a child care center before laying off staff or making enrollment changes.

The Florida Health and Human Services Committee unanimously passed House Bill 47, which updates licensing and compliance requirements, adds licensing exemptions for military facilities and employer-provided care, and reduces background check turnaround times.

Illinois Senate Republicans proposed two bills aimed at increasing access to care in rural and urban parts of the state. SB2382 would provide a tax credit for companies to build their own in-office child care centers, while SB1120 would offer student loan forgiveness for child care workers in existing deserts and extend the term of licensing renewals from three to four years.

Massachusetts’ House Committee on Ways and Means released their FY26 budget proposal, including over $1.6 billion in funds for early education. Neighborhood Villages put together an extensive breakdown of the proposal (including year-over-year comparisons) here.

The Pennsylvania House passed a bill requiring carbon monoxide alarms in all child care facilities. The alarms must be installed on every level of a facility and within 15 feet of any fossil-fuel-burning appliance, fireplace, or attached garage.

Wisconsin is trying to bring back a pre-k pilot idea that was originally passed into law a week before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The $500,000 investment would offer free pre-k options for eligible families in low-income school districts.

ICYMI: March 2025 Updates

Britt-Kaine Takes the Headlines

In the first major test of the new Congress’s appetite for ECE reform, Senators Katie Britt (R-AL) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) reintroduced the Child Care Availability and Affordability Act with a litany of new co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle. The bill, alongside its house companion introduced by Representatives Salud Carbajal (D-CA) and Mike Lawyler (R-NY), is a bipartisan, bicameral package that modernizes three existing tax provisions with the goal of helping more families afford child care.

Highlights of the bill, originally introduced in July 2024, include:

• Broadening the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) by raising maximum amounts to $2,500 for families with one child and $4,000 for families with two or more children. It will also make the credit refundable for low-and middle-income working families.
• Strengthening Dependent Care Assistance Plans (DCAP) by increasing pre-tax contribution limits for child care assistance plans from $5,000 to $7,500. The bill also ensures families can benefit from both DCAP and CDCTC when expenses exceed the DCAP threshold.
• Bolstering the Employer-Provided Child Care Tax Credit (45F) by increasing maximum credit to $500,000 from $150,000 and the percentage of covered expenses to 50% from 25%. Raises the incentive for small businesses and allows for joining applications from groups of small businesses.

Read: The First Five Things to Know About: The Britt-Kaine Bipartisan Child Care Plan (FFYF)

Alarm in Idaho as Legislators Pass Extreme Deregulation Bill Backed by Wonderschool

The push-pull of regulation and supply is an ongoing debate in ECE spaces. Nobody wants to live in a child care desert, but how much safety and quality are we willing to sacrifice in the name of accessibility? While there is no easy answer in the absence of increased funding, Idaho’s House Bill 243 took things a step too far for many ECE stakeholders with language that would have completely eliminated maximum child-to-staff ratios, giving full discretion to providers.

The bill, curiously backed by Wonderschool (editor’s note: Wonderschool is a BridgeCare competitor), would have been an unprecedented escalation of deregulation initiatives, opening the door for bad actors to take advantage of families’ desperate need for child care.

Fortunately, despite the House passing the bill as written, the Senate amended it to remove the most alarming language, resulting in a bill that relaxed ratios without eliminating them entirely. The revised bill is expected to pass a second vote in the House before making its way to the governor.

HB 243 should stand as a cautionary tale, raising questions about how a for-profit company with a vested interest in increasing child care supply even got such a dangerous piece of legislation to the table in the first place.

Read: Idaho Moves to Deregulate Child Care in First-of-Its-Kind Legislation (EdSurge)

New York Mayoral Candidates Signal Support for Universal Child Care

Could the city that never sleeps become the first major city in the United States to roll out a universal child care program? This utopian vision is slowly starting to become a possibility thanks to the efforts of a parent-led organization and growing interest from lawmakers at the local and state levels.

A five-year plan unveiled at a November event hosted by New Yorkers United for Child Care, would come with a price tag of $12.7 billion/year, or 6% of the state’s budget. The organization calls for the initiative to launch in the city and spread throughout the state, preferably funded by taxes on capital gains, corporations, and high-income earners. It aligns closely with Governor Kathy Hochul’s state of the state address earlier this year, in which she called for putting the state “on a pathway toward universal child care.” Several candidates in the 2025 mayoral election have embraced the plan, or parts of it, as a staple of their respective campaigns.

There is still much work to be done and the outcome of November’s election will play a significant role in whether the plan moves forward, but the mere possibility of universal child care at such a scale is worth monitoring.

Read: Could New York Become the First Major City to Offer Universal Child Care? (The 74)

Party Lines Blur on Refundable Child Tax Credits

We’ve been covering a large number of state- and federal tax credit proposals over the past few months, including Georgia’s recent passage of a $250 nonrefundable credit for children under the age of seven. Americans of all political persuasions have shown overwhelming support for ECE-focused tax reform. But one of the interesting developments in 2025 has been the newfound willingness of republican lawmakers to consider refundable tax credits.

As reported by Stateline, Indiana and Ohio are considering proposals for refundable tax credits of $1,000 and $500, respectively, either of which would “mark the first time a GOP-led state implemented a refundable child tax credit.” Refundable tax credits, which can be claimed by taxpayers with little to no tax liability, typically have a much larger impact on low-income families, many of whom do not make enough money to meet the tax thresholds necessary for nonrefundable credits.

All 11 states that currently offer refundable credits are led by Democratic governors and legislatures. We’ll be interested to see if this is the year when that precedent changes.

Read: Child tax credits, long a liberal priority, find favor in Republican states (Stateline)

Other Developments Throughout the Country

South Dakota Governor Larry Rhoden vetoed House Bill 1132, which would have increased the income threshold for the state’s child care assistance program for child care workers. The bill received bipartisan support in the House and Senate, but faced strong opposition from the state's Department of Social Services.

New Mexico’s Senate Bill 175 was signed into law. The bill amended the state’s Child Care Facility Revolving Loan Fund, and is backed by $10 million in this year’s budget to support loans for childcare facilities in areas of need.

Montana will eye a couple of bills (HB 456 and HB 457) aimed at expanding the state’s Bright Beginnings scholarship program by slashing income eligibility thresholds and ensuring child care workers automatically qualify for the program. The bills appear to have early bipartisan support.

Tennessee governor Bill Lee has voiced his support for expanding childcare licensing exemptions for various types of programs. The proposal would attempt to balance child safety with the state’s need for “tens of thousands of new daycare spots across rural and urban Tennessee.”

New Jersey governor Phil Murphy announced a cross-agency effort to align preschool and child care square footage requirements to a single standard. This effort would enhance the state’s mixed delivery preschool model by potentially enabling thousands of classrooms in child care centers to be used as state-funded preschools.