As strong winds and heavy snow battered Lincoln, Shannon Hampson’s house was unusually quiet – absent the dozen kids who fill her in-home child care with laughter, cries and questions.

Between snow and sicknesses that week, Hampson said she’d be out $540. She’d have to rebudget: maybe she’d buy beans instead of chicken breasts, skip a field trip.

If the kids’ families paid full tuition themselves, absences wouldn’t affect her bottom line. But Hampson offers nearly all her slots to families who qualify for Nebraska’s federally funded child care subsidy. The state will pay for a handful of absences per kid. After that, it only pays providers if the kid shows up.

“Years ago, my family was in poverty,” Hampson said. “We were using food banks, we were using all those things – so I know those stressors … Families leaving their children with other people is a hard thing to do, and I want to be a trustworthy person, (so) people who already have a lot of stressors in their life are comfortable doing so.”

State lawmakers are considering a proposed fix for the issue facing Hampson. It’s one of several bills attempting to chip away at an intractable problem: a lack of affordable, high-quality child care.

But, as lawmakers face down a projected $289 million budget shortfall, advocates are instead focused on protecting what already exists.

“It’s a defense year,” said Elizabeth Everett, deputy director of the nonprofit First Five Nebraska.

****

Nebraska had about 17,600 fewer child care spots than young children with working parents as of last July, according to the Buffett Early Childhood Institute, which does nonpartisan policy analysis and is part of the University of Nebraska. 

That gap has narrowed since 2020, according to the institute, in part due to women leaving the workforce.

“If there’s not enough child care to go around to support working families, working families stop looking for it because they don’t think that there’s enough and they pull out of the labor market,” said Walter Gilliam, executive director of the institute.

As of January, nine counties had no licensed child care facility, according to First Five Nebraska. And there were 13% fewer child care providers statewide in 2024 than pre-pandemic, a decline that was more pronounced for in-home providers than centers.

There is a child care crisis, said Gilliam, and like many crises that go unaddressed for a long enough period of time, “it starts feeling like the status quo.”

On a call last year with members of the Nebraska Early Childhood Collaborative’s Parent Ambassador Program, caretakers from across the state shared how difficult it was to find good, affordable care in both urban and rural areas – and providers shared how challenging it was to keep their doors open.

Holly Hoeppner, who runs two in-home child care businesses in Hartington, said she’s required to pay staff minimum wage but doesn’t make minimum wage herself.

“I do it for the kids, or I wouldn’t be doing it,” she said. “But it is hard, and as groceries go up and everything else goes up, it’s only going to get harder.”

In an email this week, she added that a ballot initiative voters approved last year requiring employers to offer paid sick leave could add new costs. Lawmakers are debating whether to exempt some employers, including those like Hoeppner who employ fewer than 11 people.

For Cory Quimby, who with his wife operates three child care centers in Lincoln, the issue isn’t offering enough spaces – they have open slots – but keeping tuition affordable.

“The gap definitely comes with the expenses,” he said, noting factors like a requirement that there be one teacher for every four infants. “Everyone wants to pay teachers more, but nobody wants to pay more for child care.”

For center-based care, it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for a family to pay $1,200 a month, especially in urban areas, according to First Five Nebraska Policy Research Manager Katie Bass.

Affordability is a common concern among providers in the area, said Anne Brandt with the nonprofit Lincoln Littles. As the cost of care has increased, some families have decided to piecemeal together the care they need until their kids are old enough for school.

Access to quality care is a continuing challenge, she said, in part because it takes money to pay for things like training or hiring experienced teachers.

In 2024, Lincoln Littles tallied about eight center closures. Brandt said they haven’t heard of any yet this year.

“It’s not working the way it is right now, so we’ve got to reimagine it,” she said.

****

Over the past half-decade, many states started investing more in early childhood because they knew it was important to recovery, Gilliam said. Nebraska was not one of those states.

“As a matter of fact, Nebraska has not invested much, hardly at all, in early care and education,” he said.

But several state policymakers and politicians have taken up child care-related efforts in recent years – and they’ve tallied a few wins.

Tax credits that the Legislature passed two years ago kicked in this tax season, including a child care tax credit for families. Requests for that credit have exceeded the annual $15 million cap, according to the Department of Revenue.

Sen. Eliot Bostar, a Democrat from Lincoln who proposed the credit, called its success “bittersweet.” 

“It’s encouraging to see that the program we created is able to help so many … but it’s also sad to recognize that it isn’t able to help as many people as we want to,” Bostar said.

Tax breaks help with the demand side of this equation, Gilliam said, but they don’t boost the number of providers. 

“If there's no supply then it doesn’t matter if you have resources for it or not,” said Gilliam. 

Last year, Republican Gov. Jim Pillen requested a bill, also sponsored by Bostar, that created two child care-related grant programs. Advocates considered it potentially “game-changing.”

But lawmakers ultimately did not put any money into the programs. At the time, Pillen’s office and Bostar said the state would look for other ways to fund them. That hasn’t happened, the governor’s Budget Office said in a statement this week.

Bostar doesn’t have any major child care proposals this year, but said the work isn’t over.

“The state of Nebraska can’t be done with this issue,” Bostar said. “We’ve done some good things, we’ve made some real progress, but we’re not finished. So my hope is that we recommit ourselves to prioritizing this issue.”

Laura Strimple, Pillen’s spokesperson, said in a statement that kids remain the governor’s “top priority,” despite a need to address “competing budgetary priorities” this year. 

She said, “the Governor remains focused on pursuing all avenues possible for supporting Nebraska kids and their families.”

Most lawmakers and advocates who spoke with the Flatwater Free Press didn’t sound optimistic about forward momentum this year.

Pillen’s proposed budget includes transferring $3.25 million from the Early Childhood Education Endowment Cash Fund – known as Sixpence, which focuses on helping at-risk children under 3 – into a fund used for public education. 

Sen. Jason Prokop from Lincoln, a Democrat and director of First Five Nebraska, serves on the Appropriations Committee that writes the state’s two-year spending plan. He said there are constitutional questions around transferring money from that fund, which collects interest from public and private investments.

The governor’s budget office said that the transfer would have “no operational impact” and aligns with a constitutional requirement that the money go to early childhood education through public schools.

The committee didn’t include that recommendation in its preliminary budget, Prokop said, but the budget-writing process is still ongoing.

The bill that would ensure the state reimburses providers like Hampson based on enrollment, not attendance, got first-round approval from the full Legislature. Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh of Omaha, a Democrat who introduced the bill, designated it as her priority this session.

Federal guidance already directs states to reimburse this way, but Nebraska has been using a waiver that expires next year. Due to uncertainty with the new administration, Cavanaugh said she wants to stall the bill’s passage until there’s more solid information from the federal government and more certainty about state finances.

It’s a common thread: A different bill seeking to make permanent expanded income eligibility for a child care subsidy also is in doubt due to cost concerns, according to Sen. Wendy DeBoer, a Democrat from Omaha who introduced the bill.

“The money is just not there,” DeBoer said.

If it fails to pass by next year, it could cause around 2,500 families to lose access and would plunge Nebraska’s eligibility requirement to among the most restrictive in the country, according to a First Five analysis.

Appropriations chair Sen. Rob Clements of Elmwood, a Republican, said child care isn’t isolated in this. In just the committee he heads, he said, there are 40 bills requesting $300 million over two years.

“I don’t know how any of them will be funded right now,” he said.

For Hampson, the Lincoln day care operator, news that there will likely be little action to help people like her – and the families she serves – is disheartening. 

Families, providers, and organizations are saying they want help, she said: “Your whole state is saying this is a priority, and our senators aren’t listening.”

The Flatwater Free Press is Nebraska’s first independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories that matter.