Parents, teachers, childcare workers and community members hold up handmade signs during a press conference at Nokomis Daycare Center in Minneapolis, Minn. on Wednesday, December 31, 2025 after a break-in the day before. (Photo by Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images)
“Anyone who steps into a daycare or preschool, you will see the dedication of people, how much they give of themselves to do the job,” says Eleanor Titcomb, who works for Just in Time Teachers as a substitute preschool teacher for early childcare centers across the Twin Cities metro. “You come into work, set aside what’s going on outside of those doors, and you’re there for the kids.”
Titcomb says she cannot name the specific schools she works at due to privacy reasons, but says she has worked at 15 different private childcare centers since she first started in September, and many of them have a high percentage of students in the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), which provides financial assistance for low income families in Minnesota to afford childcare.
She is worried about how federal cuts to CCAP are going to affect the children she works with, and the workers who provide for them. “Many centers are barely hanging on as it is,” Titcomb says. “This would be detrimental. If CCAP is cut, and a parent or guardian is not able to afford childcare, you will have all of these ripple effects that go into every part of society that can be connected back to early education.”
“Everybody will be affected.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday they will be freezing more than $10 billion in federal funds for five Democrat-led states, including Minnesota, where $185 million will be withheld. The federal agency is also calling for an audit of each childcare center in Minnesota.
In a statement released December 31, 2025, Kids Count on Us, a coalition of community-based childcare centers, said, “This decision turns childcare into a political football. A single misleading video has been elevated into a justification to freeze federal funds, while long-standing dog whistles about Somali communities are used to make people suspicious of an entire group of providers and parents.”
“That is reckless and dangerous,” the group continued. “Over 20,000 children in Minnesota rely on the Child Care Assistance Program. When childcare collapses, parents cannot work. Hospitals lose staff. Businesses shut down. Entire sectors grind to a halt. This is how you manufacture chaos, not public trust.”
According to the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF), CCAP serves 23,000 children in Minnesota and is made up of state and federal funds. The DCYF says that state funds will be able to support services for “several months” while the agency responds to requests from the federal administration.
In the meantime, providers are facing uncertainty and a lack of information, and recent federal actions like Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) “Operation Metro Surge” are stoking more fear in people who are already overburdened. “A lot of educators and directors are bracing for the unknown,” says Titcomb. “Right now, daycares and preschools are being targeted as a kind of scapegoat to make other political things happen, like the additional ICE agents that have just been deployed. And now they have to worry about whether or not CCAP will be funded.”
Many of the schools she is sent to are understaffed, she says. According to a 2023 statewide study from Wilder Research on early childhood education in Minnesota, the turnover rate for early childhood educators and childcare workers, who face burnout and financial stress, is 30%. “Staff retention in early education is a major problem because of low pay, low or no benefits,” she says. “You are also physically and mentally giving so much of yourself every day. That takes a toll on people, especially when you’re not being supported in society.”
At a press conference on Tuesday about Minnesota’s new paid family and medical leave benefit program, Governor Tim Walz called out the Trump administration for using the fraud allegations to target Minnesota on multiple fronts. “We are under assault like no other time in our state’s history because of a petty, vile administration that doesn’t care about the wellbeing of Minnesotans,” said the governor, one day after announcing the end of his campaign for reelection.
Childcare center director Amanda Schillinger said at a press conference hosted by Kids Count on Us at the state capitol that the freeze could impact care for 20,000 children across the state. Schillinger said, without the funding, her center would close within a month. Childcare centers already operate on thin profit margins.
Meanwhile, for Titcomb, the work continues. She says that working every day in childcare, you can help a child learn how to do something they couldn’t do the day before. “I think that is a really special thing. One of my favorite parts is working with families, especially new parents. They can be overwhelmed and anxious, and to be able to help make sure they have the support they need, and we figure out these challenging things together. To work with communities like that is another part of being a preschool teacher that I love.”