Johnson County doesn’t have enough day cares. The shortage cost one mom her savings

Jessica Alaga made the decision to leave her job and stay home for the first 18 months of her son’s life rather than send him to day care.

When she was pregnant, she called several local facilities, each of which told her it would be a 10- to 15-month wait before a spot would be available for her son, who is now 4. The high costs for infant care limited her options even further.

“I stayed home as a single mom and lived off my savings,” said Alaga, who lives in Spring Hill in southern Johnson County. “I did that knowing the value of me being the one with him versus child care. I exhausted my savings as long as possible to the point where it was like, ‘Hey, it’s time.’”

She knew of several in-home care centers, but Alaga wanted to send her son to a facility rather than someone’s home. To have him with a group of peers who are his age rather than a few infants and several other kids outside of his age group was important to her, she said.

“He does really well with routine, we like to know what we expect every day and what they expect from him,” she said.

By the time he was 2, Alaga found space at a day care in north Olathe where her son established a rhythm and made friends. But the drive adds an hour to her commute every day.

“My work is in Olathe, I’m in south Olathe — I’m only 11 minutes from my home. My day care is 30 minutes past my work, so completely out of the way,” she said.

Alaga isn’t alone in the scramble to find affordable and safe child care. Throughout Johnson County — and across Kansas — parents have been struggling for years to keep up with high costs of child care, to find a place that’s nearby, or to get in without having to wait for months.

That’s partially because there aren’t enough spots available for all the children and families who need them.

Johnson County is only meeting 56% of its child care needs, with 14,295 additional slots needed to serve everyone, according to Child Care Aware of Kansas — a nonprofit that collects data and information on child care in the state. Wyandotte County is short 6,528 slots.

In Missouri, Jackson County has just under 53,000 children under age 6, but the licensed child care programs in the county only have just over 23,100 slots, according to Child Care Aware of Missouri. Clay County has a little under 18,000 children under 6 and about 5,300 licensed child care slots. Platte County has 7,460 children under six and 1,662 licensed slots.

And the long-standing child care shortage in Kansas is getting even more extreme in areas where population growth is outpacing an increase in available services — like the southern and western parts of Johnson County where more people have suburbanized the historically rural areas.

“With those growing numbers you are going to figure out there’s not enough day cares,” said Shirley Allenbrand, Johnson County’s 6th District Commissioner, who represents De Soto, Gardner, Edgerton, parts of Olathe, parts of Spring Hill and the unincorporated western parts of the county.

“For example, you’ve got right now — unless there’s another coming in — you have one day care in De Soto and one company opening up with 4,400 employees,” she said. “That doesn’t account for firefighters, people working in De Soto. There’s not enough day care for people to work.”

Child care providers face their own challenges keeping up with the shifting populations, rising costs of operating their centers and finding qualified caregivers to run their programs.

In response to mounting pressure to address the child care crisis, Gov. Laura Kelly signed a bill aimed at opening more child care spots in homes with unlicensed providers after lawmakers passed it this month.

Loosening regulations

Kelly helped roll out the Kansas bill that would consolidate the state’s child care services that are administered by multiple different departments into a “one-stop shop” for families and providers as a sort of compromise.

At the request of Republican lawmakers, the bill includes language that would lessen some of the regulations around child care licensing and inspection requirements. That worries some parents and child care advocates who say those regulations have saved lives in the 15 years since they went into effect.

The bill — which passed both the House and Senate — would double the number of children unlicensed providers can care in their homes for from two to four, and it would allow them to watch each child for up to 35 hours a week, or a combined 140 hours.

The measure would also lower the cost of a license, reduce the number of mandatory training hours and allow providers to request exemptions from certain state child care requirements.

Kelly signed the bill in April.

“I’m not educated enough on the bill or anything, but what I’ve heard about licensing is it’s very scary,” Alaga said. “There’s still challenges in child care with the current regulations. I cannot imagine there being less to take care of children.”

Allenbrand said she supports the state legislation in order to help make more child care slots available and serve more people.

“I think it’s a common issue all over,” Allenbrand said. “What I’m hearing from people is the cost of day care is sometimes more than what somebody makes, and that’s why the state was looking at opening up day cares in people’s homes.”

Average costs range depending on a child’s age, with infants 12 months and younger being the most expensive. Prices drop as kids get older.

According to Child Care Aware of Kansas, child care for children 12 months and younger costs $325 per week at a center and $200 a week at a family’s home.

Growing, changing needs in Johnson County

Johnson County’s large population and rapid growth makes the state’s challenges more daunting.

More than 43,000 of the 630,000 people who live in Johnson County are 6 or younger. Of those children, more than 32,000 of them have parents who work and need child care support, according to Child Care Aware data.

But the county is only meeting a little over half of the child care needs in the community. For every one spot open in a Johnson County child care center, there are 21 to 30 children who could fill it.

And there are even fewer providers available in the county than there were a few years ago. In 2025, Child Care Aware counted 729 total child care centers in Johnson County, a decrease from 772 in 2023.

In order to get a better understanding of her constituents’ needs in her quickly changing district, Allenbrand is working with cities to compile data of new employment coming into town, its starting pay, and what day cares are in the area.

Like De Soto, Spring Hill also projects large growth in the next 10 years, and residents are seeing now that they don’t have enough child care facilities to keep up.

According to Spring Hill Schools data, 160 single-family and 22 multi-family units were built in 2024. In the next 10 years, the district identified more than 165,000 potential units in development stages

“When I moved to Spring Hill in 2020 from Olathe, there was 6,000 and some change,” Alaga said.

Now the city’s population is on the brink of 10,000 residents.

According to 2023 data, 9,689 residents live in Spring Hill, with children under 5 making up 10.6% of the city’s population (a little more than 1,000 children).

The city, which spans Johnson and Miami counties, only has one licensed day care facility that is staffed and can serve infants, according to data from the Kansas Department of Health. Spring Hill has 14 in-home day cares registered with the state, one preschool and three after-school programs through the YMCA.

“It would be so nice to have another child care center open,” Alaga said.

One spot in town

Dana Broockerd opened Daybrook Learning Center in Spring Hill in August 2004.

Almost 20 years later, it remains the only licensed and staffed child care facility that can serve more than 12 children at a time, including infants and kids too young for preschool, she said.

“Lots of people call, but a lot of times they’re younger families moving in and infants and toddlers is really hard, there’s always a waitlist,” Broockerd said. “We’re a little further south, our rates are way less than further north, but if you can’t bring both of your kids, you’re not going to bring one here and take the other somewhere else.”

Day Brook charges $345 per week for infant care (16 weeks to 12 months); $290 per week for Toddler I (ages 1 to 2 years old); $285 per week for Toddler II (2 to 3 year olds); and $255 for preschool and pre-k (ages 3 to 5). She gives a 10% off discount for the oldest kids if more than one child in a family is enrolled.

Despite the state moving to loosen regulations, she said she isn’t sure if she’ll change her center’s standards. She thinks it could be hard to maintain the same quality of care for her families with more relaxed rules.

“Parents are going ‘That opens more spaces,’ but is that a good idea? I don’t know,” she said. “We need more (facilities) but property is expensive out here, rent is expensive. As far as a place to open up to serve more people, I don’t know how you’d do it. I don’t know.”

Adding more kids per staff member, for infants in particular, would make it extremely difficult for her staff to do their jobs, she said.

“One-to-three is hard,” Broockerd said about the current state requirements for infants. “If everybody is crying, you gotta have somebody to hold them.”

Email toconnor@kcstar.com if you want to share your experiences searching for child care, coping with costs, or any takeaways from your at a facility in your community.

This story was originally published April 24, 2025 at 6:00 AM.