Nicole Streeter thought she’d had it tough when she found only minimal child care options for her daughter while living in North Hero, Vt. Then, she and her husband moved to Franklin County.
“There were no openings,” she said of child care operations around her new home in St. Albans Town, Vt. “We actually had to keep (our daughter enrolled) in Grand Isle County, so we were commuting over half an hour every day.”
To her, it seemed like word of mouth was now the only way to snag a decent spot for her child — and the place she finally found was a long time coming. Now, at 28, she’s expecting again, and options continue to be sparse. Toward the end of last year, she decided to quit her job (a decision also influenced by both care costs and return-to-office mandates for state employees, she said) and stay home with her daughter in preparation for the new baby.
Streeter’s experience is far from unique, according to a study released this month by Vermont First Children’s Finance. While the state as a whole is showing clear progress in closing the gap between supply and demand when it comes to child care, a few counties — particularly in more rural areas — are lagging substantially.
Since the passage of Act 76 expanded the state’s child care tuition assistance program in 2023, 50% more families are making use of its aid, according to a recent monitoring report from Building Bright Futures. Experts also told lawmakers this week that Vermont has seen 100 new child care programs open in the past three years, and 1,700 new child care slots have become available.
But Franklin and Essex counties show outstanding need more than double that of counties further south; both show that demand is over three times higher than the supply of child care slots. Orange County is also an outlier at more than 2.5 kids per available slot, compared with Chittenden or Bennington counties with less than 1.5.
In keeping with past reports from Let’s Grow Kids, the advocacy nonprofit that closed its doors this fall, First Children’s Finance sought data that focused on the gap between supply and demand in child care with a focus on workforce implications. The count of care slots only included full-time, year-round programs that would allow their parents to remain in the workforce. The team calculated need in each county based on the number of children in the appropriate age range who do not have a stay-at-home guardian.
Erin Roche, who leads Vermont First Children’s Finance, acknowledged the scale of regional imbalance was “a little surprising,” and said the causes may be complex. It’s something her office has been specifically working to solve recently, she said, as it distributes development grants to individual providers on behalf of the state.
“We have prioritized counties that have larger gaps than others in terms of funding,” she said.
Her team also plans to begin more targeted promotion of those opportunities in areas like Franklin County.
For parents like Chris Carter, 42, such efforts are welcome.
Both of Carter’s children experienced issues with the quality of their care after moving from center to suboptimal center in the St. Albans-Fairfax area as infants, he said. A yearslong search he called “a nightmare” involved the Colchester-based Little Saplings being shut down by the state amid fraud allegations in late 2024, as was reported by Seven Days.
“I think a big part of the problem here is staff — finding quality staff,” Carter said.
Earlier this week, advocates expressed similar concerns in Montpelier, and pushed lawmakers to pass a bill that would change the state’s approach to licensing individual child care workers.
Carter’s younger child, 2, still commutes to Chittenden County for care. In his community, Carter said, “everyone’s got a story” about child care.
‘Very slim to none’
Providers in Franklin County are feeling the strain — long waitlists weigh against a dearth of qualified employees.
Paulette Fedorishen, longtime director of Little Shepherd Child Care in St. Albans, Vt., said she has a waitlist of about 30 families looking for infant care alone. Parents commonly call before the child is born, she said, because otherwise, “the odds of you getting a spot are very slim to none.”
Several care providers told VtDigger about a bottleneck around care of very young children stemming from particular restrictions on in-home providers, as well as tighter rules in general surrounding staff-to-child ratios and group size.
Preschool slots, Fedorishen said, are much more widely available due to opportunities created by the state’s universal pre-K program. Her enrollments in that age group are “stagnant” by comparison, she added.
Fedorishen operates her center with 38 full-time slots, well under its licensed capacity, but said she has to turn parents away “all the time.” She needs to hedge her bets, she said, due to “never knowing if (we’re) going to have enough staff.”
Population density is also an important factor in determining pressure on or opportunity for particular businesses, some providers said. Franklin County’s relative concentration of child care facilities near St. Albans, its largest city, is a pattern that has appeared elsewhere in the state, with some educators moving away from rural areas to improve enrollment and make ends meet.
Suzy’s Little Peanuts, a small chain of child care centers, recently closed locations in Brookline, Vt., and Bellows Falls, Vt., due to rising costs and lower demand.
“Brookline was kind of in the middle of nowhere, so we didn’t have as high of enrollment that we wanted,” said Kayla Gralia, the Springfield, Vt., location director.
The business’ new location in Brattleboro, Vt., opened on Monday, and though enrollments are starting slowly, Gralia said she expects the center to be at capacity soon.
“Brattleboro will probably be one of our most successful sites,” she said.
While Windham County appears better placed in Roche’s study than Franklin and other counties further north, demand for care slots still exceeds supply by over 100%.
Roche said child care in Vermont may be entering a new phase in which advocates and grant administrators should look to solve particular deficits in particular communities.
“We’re not quite there,” she said of developing such a county or town-specific strategy, but “I think that’s where we’re going.”
It might not just be about investment, Roche said — some communities use alternatives to full-time child care more often based on their particular demands. Essex County in particular has an unusually large proportion of part-time care providers.
“Every family is different, and every child has different needs,” she said.
This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To learn more, visit vtdigger.org/community-news-sharing-project.