Little Makers Academy, a childcare center in Raleigh that primarily serves low-income families, is already beginning to feel the impact of federal funding cuts. Its teachers lost access to a federally funded English language tutoring program in March, and now, ongoing funding for food assistance and childcare vouchers is up in the air.
With potential cuts on the horizon, Little Makers director Krys Remaley says people need to understand that “childcare is not a luxury, it’s an infrastructure.”
“It’s a whole domino effect,” she says. “If people don’t have a place to take their kids, they can’t go to work.”
Little Makers emanates cheeriness before you’ve even stepped inside. Plastic sunflowers and rainbow-colored pinwheels flank the doorway. A bright blue awning offers shade, and a yard sign announces in several languages, “You are our neighbors.”
The childcare center’s interior is equally charming, with little kids’ artwork covering practically every vertical surface.
Inside one classroom, lead teacher Mariela and her assistant Loubna are taking care of the one-and-under set, who are beginning to scoot, crawl, and clap. Down the hall, Pat, who’s been working in childcare for more than 40 years, is teaching the pre-kindergarten class to read and write their ABCs. Outside, in a fenced-off play area, lead teacher Kayla and her assistant Mia are overseeing a group of curious one- and two-year-olds as they explore the play equipment and the fascinating array of twigs and leaves on the ground.
Little Makers employs nine full-time teachers, five substitutes, and five administrators to take care of between 70 and 80 kids aged five and under. Many of the kids are enrolled full-time—the childcare center is like their second home. They eat breakfast, lunch, and a snack here every weekday. They’re bonded with their teachers and their classmates. Three-quarters of them attend at a free or reduced rate thanks to a state- and federally funded childcare voucher program.
Little Makers goes out of its way to hire a diverse, multilingual staff that reflects the community it serves, Remaley explains. Some of the teachers were learning English through a tutoring program funded by a federal grant from the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, but that grant was recently canceled and the tutor was laid off.
“We think it’s very important for children to get diversity at school,” Remaley says, adding that the school employs teachers from countries across the world, including Afghanistan, Morocco, Peru, the Congo, Honduras, and El Salvador.
Some of the staff who lost access to the tutoring program have found alternatives. Sara, the facility care specialist at Little Makers, whose first language is Spanish, just started taking online English classes at Wake Tech. But she had to reduce her work hours from full- to part-time to accommodate the change. Nillab, a substitute teacher whose first language is Dari, hasn’t found an alternative to the English tutoring program that works for her.
Losing access to the tutoring program will directly impact teachers’ professional development. In order for them to get promotions and raises, they need to complete trainings and certifications that North Carolina offers only in English.
“We have teacher assistants that have been with us a long time; they show great potential. We’d love to make them lead teachers, but on paper, we can’t,” Remaley says.
The Trump administration’s immigration policies worry Remaley too, since many of Little Makers’ staff and students are immigrants.
“I go to bed every night scared, if ICE were to come, what would we do?” she says.
Little Makers also receives about $4,000 a month through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) to pay for food. The program hasn’t been impacted by federal cuts so far, but in March, the USDA eliminated a different $1 billion program that helped schools and childcare centers pay for food.
“Lots of times, the only food a child gets [in a day] is at our center,” Remaley says. If Little Makers loses funding to purchase food, “rates of hungry families will go up.”
The future of the childcare vouchers Little Makers relies on to serve low-income families is also tenuous. There’s a waitlist for the vouchers in Wake County right now, Remaley says, and North Carolina isn’t issuing any new ones.
“When it comes time to enroll new students, it’s going to be a little difficult for the low-income families, because they’re not going to be able to get a voucher if they don’t already have one,” she says.
Little Makers’ sticker prices range from $847 to $1,356 per child per month, depending on the child’s age. That’s lower than most other options in Raleigh, according to Remaley. But it’s still inaccessible for low-income families without help from the voucher program.
“A lot of people think that kids going to day care is a privilege,” says Kayla, one of the lead teachers. “I think that every child deserves to go to school no matter what age, and they should be treated fairly and equally.”
“We as educators can be underrated,” adds JaMeka Johnson, the assistant director at Little Makers. “Especially when we’re trying to diversify the learning perspective for the children. At the end of the day, when things that are being offered are [then] being taken away, everybody loses.”
Remaley has been vocal about the importance of early childhood care as potential cuts loom. On May 12, she and her staff will participate in the nationwide Day without Child Care. Instead of opening Little Makers, they’ll go to the state legislature to speak with lawmakers about the need for better childcare funding.
Earlier this month, Remaley addressed the Raleigh City Council during a public comment session to raise awareness.
“Childcare is the backbone of our economy and community, but it’s cracking under pressure,” she said.
This story is part of an INDY series looking at the impacts of federal funding cuts on the lives of Triangle residents.
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Chloe Courtney Bohl is a corps member for Report for America. Reach her at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].
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