"All our future money is gone": The impossible task of providing child care in rural Illinois

Why it’s so hard to start a child care center in rural Illinois

Though the governor promised to make Illinois “the best state” to raise young children, child care continues to disappear. And, as one couple learned, there’s almost no help for those building a child care facility from the ground up.

Heather and Stephen Casner sat across from the loan officer in the fall of 2022, a stack of papers between them. The building they were trying to buy — a 21-room, one-story motel in rural Anna, Illinois — was overflowing with trash and would need a complete overhaul before they could reopen it as a child care center in a region where there were almost no such facilities. But after a long search, it was the best option they could find.

The Casners were about to sign the papers for a $600,000 loan, using their house as collateral and setting aside $200,000 from Stephen’s retirement to cover what the loan wouldn’t. It was a staggering sum in a southern Illinois town where the per capita income is about $25,000 — 40% below the national level. “I’ve never even seen that much money,” Heather said. “I wasn’t raised that way.”

But Heather, who grew up on a farm just up the road, channeled her late father’s philosophy: “My daddy always used to say he was going to just keep farming until the money runs out.”

With a firm handshake, they were the new owners of a 1950s relic, the Plaza Motel.

The clock on the project was already ticking: In order to survive financially, they’d need to start enrolling children within six months. They knew it would be tough, but they soon would be shocked by the magnitude of the challenges ahead.

Over the past decade, Illinois has lost nearly 4,300 licensed child care providers, a 33% decline. As a result, it has also lost nearly 38,000 licensed child care slots for kids, outpacing the rate at which the child population is shrinking.

In 2019, at the end of his first year in office, Gov. JB Pritzker acknowledged that child care providers in rural Illinois were closing at an “alarming rate” and promised to make Illinois the “best state in the nation for families raising young children.” In response, the state increased its payments to providers. But that funding had been slashed in previous years amid a state budget crisis, and the extra boost was too little, too late. When COVID-19 hit, those that were already fragile folded.

Read more at: https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/childcare-rural-illinois-challenges/