The school year is ending, and our summer programming opens this month. We could fill this post with the good stuff — the water days, the garden, the visiting naturalist, the way a room full of kids sounds in late June. All of that is real and we are excited about it. But if you have read anything we have written this spring, you know we want to lead with the hard part instead, because the hard part is what actually determines whether a family gets to say yes.
The affordability squeeze is real, and it is getting worse
This is not a feeling; it is a documented trend. The National Association for the Education of Young Children reported this spring that the child care affordability crisis is deepening for families and educators alike. ReadyNation has put a number on the broader cost: roughly $172 billion a year in lost earnings and productivity tied to child care challenges for families with young children. And surveys consistently find that around 80 percent of voters now describe finding and affording care as a crisis or a major problem.
For an individual family, those macro numbers show up as a very specific moment: opening a summer program's price page, doing some quick math, and quietly closing the tab. We see it happen. We would rather you not close the tab.
What we do about it
We cannot fix the national picture, but we have made deliberate choices about our own:
- A sliding scale. A portion of our summer slots are priced on a sliding scale tied to household size and income. The published rate is not the only rate.
- Scholarships. We hold a scholarship fund specifically for families for whom even the sliding scale is a stretch. It is funded by donors and by our annual campaign, and it exists to be used.
- Subsidy-friendly. In many cases child care assistance can be applied to summer programming, not just year-round care. We will help you figure out whether yours qualifies and how to apply it.
- No-surprise pricing. What you are quoted is what you pay. We do not add a stack of fees at the end.
The thing we most want you to do
Ask. The single most common reason a family misses out on a program they could actually access is that they assumed the answer was no before anyone said it. If cost is the wall between your child and a good summer, tell us directly. Email us, call us, catch us at pickup. The worst case is that we cannot make it work and we help you find something that does. The best case is that the summer you thought was out of reach turns out not to be.
We built a summer program because the school-year-only model strands working families for ten weeks, and a program nobody can afford does not actually solve that. So this is the invitation, plainly: come talk to us about cost first. Then we will talk about the bubbles and the garden and the rest of the good stuff.
