PORTLAND, IND — The classroom is ready, with a play kitchen, picture books and baby dolls. The windows look out on a newly built playground. But one thing is missing: The children.
The room has sat mostly empty since the Jay County Early Learning Center opened over a year ago.
“It's been devastating, and it's also heartbreaking to see this beautiful facility sitting empty,” said Dani Svantner, who leads Westminster Preschools, the nonprofit that runs it. The center has space for around 160 infants, toddlers and preschoolers, she said. But only about 30 are enrolled.
“Where are they? They're somewhere,” she said of the children who could fill those empty spots. “They're here in Jay County, but I know in my heart that they're maybe down the street at a neighbor's house, because that's all they can afford, and they are sitting in front of a TV all day.”
Communities across Indiana are struggling to solve one of the state's largest challenges: How to help families get access to high-quality day care and preschool. It’s a longstanding problem that’s become more urgent over the last year as Indiana slashed vouchers for low-income parents, after federal pandemic-era funding ran out.
This child care center in a rural community near the Ohio border, shows how quickly the tide has turned for day cares and preschools — and how declining state support means that whether many families have access to high-quality child care depends on how much local communities are willing and able to invest.
Jay County was something of a child care desert when the local Portland Foundation set out to renovate a former elementary school into a day care and preschool center a few years ago. Supporters believe child care access is crucial to helping employers keep workers, families achieve economic stability — and children prepare for kindergarten.
The Portland Foundation won wide support from other philanthropies. In the end, most of the renovation — which cost more than $4 million — was funded by outside grants, including nearly $750,000 from a state program meant to help high-quality providers expand.
“You know, God provided along the way. It was tremendous,” said Doug Inman, executive director of the Portland Foundation. But, he added, “once we got to where we could open, the landscape completely changed.”
Jay County is an agricultural and manufacturing community, where the family median income is about 23% below the state average. Because many parents cannot afford the full cost of tuition — $190 per week for infants with lower rates for older children — the center was counting on public child care vouchers to make care affordable.
Child Care Development Fund, or CCDF, vouchers are supposed to help low-income, working parents pay for day care. But Indiana used temporary federal pandemic aid to expand those vouchers. When that money ran out, the state froze enrollment in the program in late 2024.
That was just as the Jay County center opened. Now, when families call about the program, the price is often out of reach, staff say. And there’s no state aid to help them.
“We built it, and people aren't coming because they can't afford it, because of the, unfortunately, the changes in the policies of the state of Indiana around early childhood education right now,” Inman said.
The state made another cut to support for child care this fall, when it reduced reimbursement rates for children who were already in the voucher program. Research by Early Learning Indiana suggests the combined cuts have already pushed child cares to reduce the number of classrooms they operate or close altogether. Even Westminster Preschools — which runs the Jay County center — was forced to close one of its other locations in December.
Advocates say cuts to public support undermine the child care ecosystem, and even families who can pay full price will have fewer options.
But so far, Republican lawmakers dismissed calls to increase aren’t open to increasing state funding.
Lawmakers suggest deregulation
Rodric Bray (R-Martinsville), who leads the Indiana Senate, was blunt at a legislative preview hosted by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce in November.
While child care advocates say the solution is more state money, Bray said, “that's probably not going to happen. At least it's going to be very limited. So you all need to understand that.”
Instead, Bray said, the state is trying to make child care more affordable by cutting regulations.
“We tried to add quality and safety to the daycare, preschool programs, which is a laudatory goal, but when you do that, you make it more expensive,” he said.
In a follow up email to WFYI, a spokeswoman for Bray confirmed that when he mentioned deregulating child care, he was referring to two recent overhauls of child care in Indiana: a 2024 law reduced age requirements for child care workers and created a pilot of micro facilities, and a 2025 law that led the state to quietly increase the number of babies and children caregivers can watch as of December.
The state does not expect to give new child care vouchers until 2027, according to Adam Alson, director of the Office of Early Childhood and Out-of-School Learning at the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration.
Without more money, that’s not going to change, Alson told WFYI.
The state made another cut to support for child care this fall, when it reduced reimbursement rates for children who were already in the voucher program. Research by Early Learning Indiana suggests the combined cuts have already pushed child cares to reduce the number of classrooms they operate or close altogether. Even Westminster Preschools — which runs the Jay County center — was forced to close one of its other locations in December.
Advocates say cuts to public support undermine the child care ecosystem, and even families who can pay full price will have fewer options.
But so far, Republican lawmakers dismissed calls to increase aren’t open to increasing state funding.
Lawmakers suggest deregulation
Rodric Bray (R-Martinsville), who leads the Indiana Senate, was blunt at a legislative preview hosted by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce in November.
While child care advocates say the solution is more state money, Bray said, “that's probably not going to happen. At least it's going to be very limited. So you all need to understand that.”
Instead, Bray said, the state is trying to make child care more affordable by cutting regulations.
“We tried to add quality and safety to the daycare, preschool programs, which is a laudatory goal, but when you do that, you make it more expensive,” he said.
In a follow up email to WFYI, a spokeswoman for Bray confirmed that when he mentioned deregulating child care, he was referring to two recent overhauls of child care in Indiana: a 2024 law reduced age requirements for child care workers and created a pilot of micro facilities, and a 2025 law that led the state to quietly increase the number of babies and children caregivers can watch as of December.
The state does not expect to give new child care vouchers until 2027, according to Adam Alson, director of the Office of Early Childhood and Out-of-School Learning at the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration.
Without more money, that’s not going to change, Alson told WFYI.
Contact WFYI Education Reporter Dylan Peers McCoy at dmccoy@wfyi.org