In the eight years that Cindy Veeser has operated her childcare center in the Green Bay suburb of Bellevue, Forever Young, she has provided an essential service — but she has also faced almost constant challenges.
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic a few years ago, things got a little easier. Federal pandemic relief funds gave childcare providers like Veeser a new safety net — support and stability that they hadn’t known previously.
In Wisconsin the money went to thousands of providers, including Veeser, through Child Care Counts, a $20 million-a-month childcare stabilization fund that paid providers a monthly stipend.
The money helped childcare centers stay open and increase pay for childcare teachers, all without increasing costs for the parents depending on childcare so they could work.
“Federal stabilization funding prevented system collapse, supporting 5,762 programs, 75,740 educators, and more than 430,000 children, while helping reverse a decade long decline in licensed child care,” the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association states in a report issued in May.
“It made everything possible,” Veeser says of Child Care Counts. “My teachers were getting paid a little bit closer to what they should have been making at that time.”
The money didn’t just go to wages. “There wasn’t one thing that it didn’t help cover,” Veeser says.
At the end of this month, however, providers will lose the last vestige of that support. One year of “bridge” funding from the 2025-27 Wisconsin state budget ends June 30, and childcare providers across Wisconsin are unsure what happens next.
“We’re holding things together the best we can now,” Veeser says. “I just see us falling behind.”
One in four centers could close
More than a year ago one out of four Wisconsin provides told researchers that without Child Care Counts funding they could close down entirely.
More than one in three said they would probably reduce the number of hours they could provide child care. And nearly three out of four said they would have to increase the fees they charge parents.
The survey results were reported in March 2025 by the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty. At the time, Wisconsin child care experts were looking ahead to June 2025, when the federal funds that paid for Child Care Counts would run out.
2025-27 state budget childcare funds
In addition to the $110 million one-year childcare bridge program, the 2025-27 Wisconsin state budget included $66 million from general purpose revenue that will go to providers in a new preschool program for 4-year-olds starting later this year.
Another $123 million was directed for increases in the Wisconsin Shares childcare subsidy program for low-income families. Smaller amounts were funded to offer centers bonuses for infant and toddler care in return for agreeing to higher ratios of children to teachers, to provide grants to centers expanding their capacity and additional funding for childcare resource and referral agencies.
