More than 5,700 children from low-income families have been shut out of child care programs across Colorado, where 23 counties have, as of May 1, frozen enrollment or set up waitlists for the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program, according to data from the Colorado Department of Early Childhood.
It’s a kind of gridlock with far-reaching impacts for kids, families and child care providers — and a crisis, some early childhood education officials say, that is stranding families, raising alarm about where children stay during the workday and straining some community providers until they may have no choice but to close their doors.
“In my eyes and from what I’ve seen in the community, kids are being kind of pushed to the wayside,” said Amie Cinkosky, director of Little Eagles Child Development Center in Colorado Springs. “They don’t have a safe place to go.”
Funding challenges began affecting the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program last year and have escalated in recent months, putting both families who rely on the government subsidized child care program and providers whose seats are mostly filled with the program’s students on an uncertain track. The halt in enrollment, which could last three to five years, stems mostly from a slew of federal rule changes adopted under the Biden administration in March 2024. The federal government is mandating that parents whose children benefit from the program pay a smaller fee out of pocket — 7% of the family’s income, down from 10%. The new rules also dictate that counties pay providers in advance and dole out funding based on enrollment rather than attendance.
Additionally, Colorado must compensate child care providers at a higher rate than a few years ago after a routine federal review determined that Colorado was falling short in how much it paid providers.
The changes are designed to move the child care industry in a positive direction, said Sarah Dawson, the program’s division director for state early childhood department, but they also introduce unfunded mandates with no new money coming in to implement the new policies.
Paying providers more — to reflect the true cost of care — will add nearly $26 million to the state’s tab every year, Dawson said, while reducing family copays will cost Colorado more than $9.8 million per year. Meanwhile, shifting from paying providers based on attendance to paying them based on enrollment will amount to a projected $33 million annual expense for the state.
The slate of changes will dramatically increase how much Colorado pays per child to cover the cost of care — from about $6,600 per child per year before the new rules to an estimated average of $18,000 per child per year, according to Dawson.
“So that’s why we’re in the crisis that we’re in,” she told The Colorado Sun. “At the end of the day, our goal is to be able to serve any eligible family that wants the service, and with this large of a jump in cost to the program without additional funds, the only kind of option is to serve less families.”
Pre-K students listen as their teacher gives instructions May 9, 2025 at Little Eagles Child Development Center in southeast Colorado Springs. (Mark Reis, Special to The Colorado Sun)Mirroring private-pay practices — the goal of these changes — is intended to make sure all families have access to high-quality providers and that they can choose the program that works best for them.
The Colorado Child Care Assistance Program on average serves 28,730 kids a year, starting with infants up to age 13 for students who need before- and after-school care and up to age 19 for those needing additional care. Dawson anticipates the state will have to drop nearly 19,300 kids from its caseload. Under the freeze, counties will no longer be able to accept new families into the assistance program or, once children currently in the program phase out, fill their slots with other kids in need of care.
“It is something that I think is keeping all of us up at night,” Dawson said, “how we can get creative, look and advocate for additional funding because families who are eligible for the program deserve to get access to the program and providers who have made their business model and who have decided to serve the (program) population need to be able to stay in business and need to have the funds to cover the cost of care.”
“We are going to fight tooth and nail”
The federal rule changes won’t go into effect until August of 2026, but counties are pausing enrollment so they don’t end up with more kids on their rolls right before program costs will soar for the state.
Providers whose bottom lines hinge on program funding are facing their most precarious months leading up to the new rules taking over, Dawson said. That’s because their student counts are declining as they walk a fine line between filling the seats they have approval for and where they think the program changes will lead them in August 2026. At that point, they will begin getting paid based on enrollment over attendance, which will buoy their finances.
To help facilities cope in the interim, the state is phasing in pay rate increases over three years, with one pay boost last October, another this October and a third next year.
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4:25 AM MDT on May 12, 20256:18 PM MDT on May 9, 2025That will offer them some relief, Dawson said.
“But I don’t want to give the impression that that will solve the problem,” she added, “because it won’t.”
The federal changes introduce another layer of complexity in the child care industry after it has long run on a fragile business model, early childhood education experts say.
“The reality is they’ve been pivoting for years due to various policies,” Dawn Alexander, executive director of the Early Childhood Education Association of Colorado, wrote in a text to The Sun. “There’s nowhere else to pivot now. Any fiscal hit can have a terminal impact.”
Turning off the lights for good at Little Eagles Child Development Center in Colorado Springs has become a nagging fear for Cinkosky, the director.
“I don’t even want to think about that,” she said. “We are going to fight tooth and nail.”
El Paso County issued an enrollment freeze in November as part of its budget planning and since then has accumulated a waitlist of nearly 1,200 children — though not all of them may qualify for assistance, according to Yesenia Torres, division director of adult and family services for El Paso County Department of Human Services.
Before the freeze, Cinkosky said 75% of the children her staff cared for relied on the assistance program. Little Eagles Child Development Center, which is licensed to look after 61 children ages 1 to 6, in December served 30 students covered by the assistance program. That number has since dropped to nine. Some of those children lost out on the program because their parents or guardians did not complete the annual redetermination process and submit paperwork to the county indicating they still qualified for a subsidy. Other kids relocated to other centers.
Director Amie Cinkosky works with Pre-K kids in a class May 9, 2025 at Little Eagles Child Development Center in southeast Colorado Springs. (Mark Reis, Special to The Colorado Sun)The tuition of 24 other Little Eagles Child Development Center students is unsubsidized.
Cinkosky said the enrollment plunge has taken a significant financial toll on the center each month since the freeze started. The facility’s leaders have been assessing every part of the business in search of ways to scale back costs. That includes skipping raises for teachers, sending them home without pay on days attendance is low and revising menus without diminishing nutrition — spacing out purchases of beef, preparing more salads and buying cheaper products like beans.
Little Eagles Child Development Center is considering raising tuition in August, which Cinkosky said she worries will force some of her families to find child care elsewhere.
Preschooler Azriel Evansgets a high five from director Amie Cinkisky May 9, 2025 at Little Eagles Child Development Center in southeast Colorado Springs. (Mark Reis, Special to The Colorado Sun)Just a couple miles away, Little Foot Learning Center is working to stay afloat after losing about a dozen students whose families toured the center but could not secure a spot since the freeze kicked in. Without those students, the child care facility is down an estimated $3,000 per week, said Anizza Velasquez, a director.
The center, which has one facility for babies up to 18 months old and a neighboring facility for infants and kids up until they enter kindergarten, is located in a low-income stretch of Colorado Springs. Most of its students end up in its classrooms through the assistance program.
Little Foot Learning Center, which is licensed to care for 117 students, has faced rounds of challenges since El Paso County enacted an enrollment freeze. The center recently remodeled one of its rooms to accommodate 10 infants who use the assistance program. Staff look after five babies, but they cannot add any more because Velasquez can’t open the room up to new families.
Another problem looms: In August, 11 4-year-olds in the assistance program will transition to kindergarten, leaving open slots that cannot be filled by newcomers as long as the freeze is in place.
The center currently serves 96 kids with a waitlist of about 85 children. Families of 65 of those kids have applied for help through the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program and been informed that they will be assigned to a child care facility when the freeze is over, Velasquez said. Meanwhile, those families can’t afford child care out of pocket.
Only 10 of the center’s families pay tuition — nowhere near enough to help the center keep all its staff employed or continue paying its monthly rent of $13,000, Velasquez said.
The uncertainty has rattled Velasquez and her staff. They don’t know how long they can remain in business and at what point they should start looking for other jobs.
But they are willing to do whatever it takes to continue operating — even accepting extra children from centers whose licenses have been revoked and caring for those kids under a state of emergency with state approval.
“If that’s what it takes for us, yes it would be hard, yes everyone will be tired, yes it’s going to be a struggle,” Velasquez told The Sun, “but if it comes between that and closing our doors that’s just what we’re going to have to do.”
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