Idaho day care remains a struggle. Why Boise says it could get worse

BOISE – Boise has long prided itself on the incentives it provides for child care workers.

City leaders bought into the idea that access to high-quality child care would help kids’ development, and bolster the local economy by allowing parents to stay in the workforce. So they tried to get creative to encourage child care workers to join and stay in the field. They incorporated child care into the city’s zoning plan. And they held providers to a stricter standard than the state required, with smaller child-to-provider ratios and more frequent background checks.

But starting July 1, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare is set to take over all child care licensing in the state, which will spell an end to most of those initiatives.

Without the ability to license and track child care providers, Boise must terminate many of the city’s incentive programs, such as property tax rebates for in-home child care providers, because of the heightened risk of fraud, Mayor Lauren McLean told City Council members at an April meeting when officials discussed the likely effect of a new state law to streamline child care licensing across the state. The program was popular, with 92% of eligible providers applying for this rebate, McLean said.

“We are disappointed in the recent legislation that has usurped our ability to provide this service to our community,” City Clerk Jamie Heinzerling told City Council members at the meeting.

As of early June, the city had licensed 200 child care facilities and about 1,800 child care workers, Heinzerling said. The city does not track the total number of children enrolled or child care spots available, but its centers can accommodate about 2,300 children, according to data Heinzerling shared with the Idaho Statesman. In recent years, Boise had offered a range of incentives to child care providers, including a one-time bonus of $1,500 for each child care worker, provisional licenses and waivers for first-time licensing fees. These incentives are also in jeopardy, city leaders said.

Still, AJ McWhorter, a spokesperson for the Health and Welfare Department, expressed confidence that the state agency was well-positioned to take on the licensing of Boise facilities.

The department “is well-equipped to manage this change, as it already oversees day care licensing across much of the state,” he told the Statesman in an email.

In March, lawmakers expressed concern that the bill’s fiscal impact statement claimed the new law would have no financial impact, asking how that could be possible given the increased workload of taking on Boise’s and other cities’ licensing. McWhorter said the Health and Welfare Department has reallocated resources to shoulder the extra work, and that some of the burden would be shared through the department’s partnership with nonprofit IdahoSTARS and local public health districts that inspect child care facilities.

It’s too soon to say what the transition will mean for the quantity and quality of child care in Boise, Heinzerling told the Statesman on Monday. The state enforces lower standards than Boise required, she said, but she noted that providers in the city could still choose to abide by the higher standards – maintaining smaller child-to-provider ratios, for example.

“I think that’s really yet to be determined,” she said.

But during public hearings over the bill in the Legislature, child care workers testified that the incentives were stacked against such an outcome, with programs already strapped for funding.

One provider, Sabrina Dunn, the owner of Kuna’s Little Beans child care center, at a legislative public hearing said she previously worked for less than minimum wage at another center that was desperately understaffed. There, she said, she watched the owners cut corners and spread their workers as thin as possible to save money.

“The safety of the children was no longer the No. 1 priority,” Dunn told lawmakers.

Child care in Idaho is ‘broken system’

Idaho lawmakers and Boise officials agree: Idaho’s child care industry is in crisis.

In 2023, Idaho lost more than 1,300 child care spots and 86 centers, due in large part to turnover among workers, according to a report by IdahoSTARS. Nearly 300 of those spots were in Ada, Boise, Elmore and Valley counties.

In 2020, the state had a nearly 30% gap between the number of children who needed care and the number of slots available, according to a study by the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center.

“Parents (are) paying so much of their income into child care, and yet the people that are working in it aren’t making what they need to stay in it,” Luci Willits, the lone Republican on Boise’s City Council, told the Statesman. “This is a broken system.”

The bill’s supporters argued that the state had tried spending more on child care, with little success. Since 2020, the Legislature has approved more than $574 million in federal and state funds for child care in the state, sponsors wrote in the bill’s statement of purpose.

“However, during that time, the number of licensed facilities in Idaho has gone down, the number of available seats has gone down, and even industry advocates say there is a child care crisis in our state,” they wrote.

The bill’s supporters argued that it was time to try deregulating the industry. “Onerous” regulations, such as Boise’s requirement for providers – not just facilities – to get licensed and to maintain smaller staff-to-child ratios, were impeding Idaho residents’ ability to start up day care centers at home, “where moms can stay home and supplement the household income and watch a few kids,” said sponsor Rep. Rod Furniss, R-Rigby.

Kate Nelson, Boise’s deputy chief of staff, acknowledged in a 2024 presentation to City Council that there was a “trade-off” between quality and cost, but that the city had tried to offset the price of day care through creative incentive programs and streamlining of its licensing processes.

Those efforts had seen some success, city spokesperson Maria Ortega told the Statesman in March. As of December, there were 240 more licensed child care workers in Boise than there were four years ago.

In April, Willits asked Heinzerling whether there was any way to salvage the city’s programs, especially its property tax rebate for child care providers, despite the licensing change.

“It could be done,” Willits told the Statesman on Monday. But at least at the time, “there was not an appetite to do that.”

“I think the attitude among the majority in that meeting was, ‘If the Legislature wanted it, they got it. They get to deal with it,’ ” she said. Instead, she said she planned to lobby lawmakers to explore a statewide tax incentive for child care workers.

She and Heinzerling said they were unaware of any conversations between Boise and Health and Welfare about carrying over Boise’s programs or incentives to the state level.

Asked whether the department may adopt some of Boise’s initiatives, McWhorter was noncommittal. The department and its stakeholders, he said, “are always looking for ways to expand child care access and look forward to partnering with Boise and other cities to encourage additional child care slots.”

Parents and providers can find more information about the transition to state licensing at cityofboise.org.