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

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.

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The motel the Casners bought as it looked in 2022, before it was remodeled (first image), and in December 2024, after they turned it into a child care center (second image). (Julia Rendleman, for ProPublica and Capitol News Illinois)

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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.

With increased state and federal funding, the closures have now slowed slightly, but Illinois has still lost roughly 1,300 providers since Pritzker took office.

Over several months, Capitol News Illinois spoke with more than 50 parents, employers and child care experts to understand how the child care crisis has reshaped their lives.

 

People who have sought to open new facilities say they’ve faced monumental difficulties, especially in rural areas where properties are scarce and often require costly repairs. Launching a child care center, even in rural areas, can cost upwards of $1 million, experts say. “We typically think about the cost of care as being much less in our rural communities, and I think that’s a false narrative,” said Ariel Ford, a senior vice president with Child Care Aware of America, a national advocacy organization.

Adding to the difficulties in Illinois, prospective providers say they struggle to navigate a maze of complex requirements largely on their own, leading to delays in opening. They also point to regulations that are contradictory or outdated. One directs providers to place a blanket in every crib, even though the state  prohibits using blankets to reduce the risk of SIDS. The state also directs providers to carry coins on walks so they can use a pay phone in an emergency, a relic Heather Casner called “ridiculous.”

Providers also say their applications can get stuck in limbo for weeks or months, with little explanation for the delays or news about when they’ll be licensed. The state’s own data supports this claim: For more than a third of applicants, the state misses its 90-day timeline to approve applications.

Part of the challenge is that the Illinois offices that oversee child care centers are severely short staffed, with a roughly 20% vacancy rate. On average, each state licensing representative is responsible for about 120 facilities, while the National Association for the Education of Young Children recommends a caseload of 50. “Is a rep with 150 cases going to take 30 minutes to explain, step by step, how to fill out a form for somebody? It’s possible,” said Janet O’Connell, a 30-year veteran of the Department of Children and Family Services who recently started a consulting business, Licensing Navigators, to help providers find their way through the system. “But when you’ve got 149 other day care providers tugging at your coat, it’s really hard.”

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“The application timeline and the timeline to actually open would shock you,” said Jill Andrews, a longtime child care provider and president of the Southern Illinois Early Childhood Action Team, a nonprofit child care advocacy organization. Centers must hire staff before opening, but without a clear timeline for when they will be allowed to open, she said, they often end up paying staff for weeks or months while waiting for clearance. “Most get into so much unnecessary additional debt due to the long process.”

Child care is urgently needed throughout the country, but particularly so outside urban areas. In one of the few nationwide studies of child care access, the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, found that about 60% of rural Americans live in a child care desert — a region with too few licensed child  care spots for the children who live there. In rural Illinois, it’s nearly 70%.

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The sun sets over Anna, a town of about 4,000 people in southern Illinois. (Julia Rendleman, for ProPublica and Capitol News Illinois)

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Parents in southern Illinois said they have been forced to rely on a patchwork of family and neighbors, drive long distances — sometimes over 100 miles — or bring children to work. Some have left the workforce, unable to find affordable care.

Alex Gough, a spokesperson for Pritzker, said that since the governor took office in 2019, the state has expanded access to subsidized child care, sought to stabilize the industry with cash infusions during the pandemic, and started the Smart Start grant program to raise worker wages and provide ongoing support as federal pandemic assistance runs dry — one of only 11 states to do so.

Pritzker has also promised to streamline the state’s red tape with a new Department of Early Childhood. But most changes won’t begin until mid-2026, and what impact they will have on providers is not yet clear. Additionally, Illinois’ child care system relies heavily on federal funding, and there could be significant changes under the new Trump administration. But what he’ll do is unclear: In his first term, President Donald Trump both sought deep cuts to child care subsidies and touted historic increases.

Heather Casner said that throughout the licensing process, she felt “alone in the middle of an ocean, just bobbing and looking for land.” Opening a child care center had long been her dream. After graduating with a degree in early childhood education, she faced a job market that couldn’t pay the bills. Instead, she took a job working with troubled teens. “I loved them,” she said, but their struggles reminded her of her true calling: “I’m like, man, if I had known you earlier, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have thought you were worth nothing.”

The Casners intended to serve families across four rural Illinois counties, among the poorest regions in the state. According to the plan they developed with a business expert at a local university, they would need 48 children enrolled for a full year to break even.

“And this looked good, on paper,” Stephen said.

“On paper,” Heather echoed.

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Heather Casner. (Julia Rendleman, for ProPublica and Capitol News Illinois)

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“Somebody Has to Care”

People talk about the Illinois divide: Chicagoland and the rest of the state. But in far southern Illinois, the economic chasm widens and becomes more visible near Anna, where the Casners bought their motel. The back roads wind past struggling towns, crumbling buildings and boarded-up storefronts, toward the state’s southernmost tip, which The Wall Street Journal called the fastest-shrinking place in America.

Here, infrastructure and vital services are vanishing at an alarming pace. In recent years, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has demolished four public housing complexes, displacing hundreds of people, while flooding forced others out. Grocery stores disappeared too, creating a food desert until Rise Community Market opened in Cairo in 2023. That facility is now temporarily closed, but the founders are planning a reopening.

For parents of young children, life here can be especially daunting. And that has been true for a long time: Heather faced the same shortages 30 years ago when she returned to work when her daughter was 9 months old.

What finally made her plan possible was Stephen. The couple had been dating off and on for 10 years when Stephen learned in 2014, at 40, that he had early-onset Parkinson’s disease. Not long after, Stephen popped the question. He was also determined to get her business off the ground.

“I had a little bit of extra money,” he said. He could have spent it on himself, but he remembers thinking, “Somebody has to care about the families around here.”

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Stephen Casner watches children on the playground at OWL. (Julia Rendleman, for ProPublica and Capitol News Illinois)

Stephen Casner, center, was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease, and Heather is his primary caregiver. The couple and Stephen’s father, Fred Casner, spend time in a motel room they converted into a break room where Stephen can be near Heather during the day.

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The first challenge they encountered was finding a building. The region hasn’t seen much new construction for decades, and in each place they found, their licensing representative from the Department of Children and Family Services pointed out problems that would cost more to fix than they could afford.

Searches like the Casners’ for an affordable building in decent condition are “incredibly common, especially in rural communities,” said Brittany Walsh, senior associate director at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a  think tank that has focused on the rural child care crisis. The largest source of child care funding in America comes from the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant funds administered by the Department of Health and Human Services. But most of it goes to offset payments for low-income parents; only a few exceptions allow spending federal funds on the buildings themselves.

A proposed expansion of loans and grants from the Department of Agriculture that rural child care providers could use to offset steep startup costs is pending in Congress, Walsh said. But it’s tied up in the long-delayed new farm bill.

Illinois has sought to help but has barely made a dent. The multiyear Rebuild Illinois infrastructure program, launched in 2019, included $100 million for early childhood facilities. But in the first round of funding, 238 applicants vied for grants with only eight programs receiving $55 million between them in January 2023. Most of those were in Chicago and its suburbs, and no grants went to any providers in the bottom half of the state. A second, $45 million funding round is forthcoming, though no timeline has been given, according to the Capital Development Board.

Stephen was the first to spot the listing for the old Plaza Motel, built by community leaders decades ago during a boom era for this Midwestern factory-and-farm town.

When they went to visit, the place smelled musty, with soiled carpeting and midcentury wood paneling. The broken furniture, old clothing, drug paraphernalia and stacks of lottery tickets inside would eventually become 22 truckloads of trash. A decrepit shack where squatters had lived sat where the Casners envisioned the playground.

But it did have some things going for it, including its manageable size and flat playground area. Heather invited their Department of Children and Family Services representative to walk through it with her again.

“I talked to the DCFS person, and she’s like, ‘Oh, I love it. I can see it. This works,’” Heather recalled with a chuckle. “And I’m like, Really, all those other places for two years didn’t work, but an old run-down motel, you’re like, ‘Yes, this is where the kids need to be’?”

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Mary Pender, a teacher at OWL, pushes snow off an awning. (Julia Rendleman, for ProPublica and Capitol News Illinois)

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The Money Pit

Heather is drawn to things that sparkle and shine, like bedazzled clothing and glittery nail polish, and she has a contagious laugh that can fill a room. In September 2022, in her typical upbeat fashion — her short bob of curly hair dancing in the breeze — Heather took to Facebook Live to share her vision: “In this great building behind us, we are going to be able to have students from 6 weeks old to 6 years old in hopefully a matter of three months!”

Things didn’t go as planned. It turned out that years-old fire damage had left hidden destruction in the interior walls. Then they paid the water bill and turned the water on for the first time: “The building started crying,” Stephen recalled. For a time, the prior owners had not heated the building but had left the water on, causing the pipes to burst. The entire plumbing system had to be replaced.

Each day brought new costs: $47,000 for an HVAC system; $170,000 to the general contractor; $130,000 to stock the playground and furnish the building.

They tapped into part of the $200,000 taken from Stephen’s retirement account and borrowed additional money from Stephen’s dad. They quickly blew through their budget and their timeline — and then some.

They also pored over rules, highlighters in hand. They needed articles of organization, operating agreements, budgets, staffing plans, job descriptions and the details of every teacher’s and aide’s educational background. Then there were lesson plans, radon measurements, lead tests, plumbing and fire safety checks, and blueprints, each done according to very specific requirements where any mistakes would set them back months more.

“Everybody jokes that all of our rules have been written by some 85-year-old man who never dealt with kids a day in his life because that’s how it reads,” Heather said. The back-and-forth with their DCFS licensing representative felt endless, correcting paperwork, resubmitting forms that got lost in the shuffle, hoping each submission would be the last one.

In December 2022, Heather wrote to her licensing representative: “I am hoping for a March opening. Eventually I need some money coming in on this deal instead of just flying out.”

In February, Heather started interviewing staff and preparing to open. It was admittedly a leap of faith, but the system is also a catch-22 for providers: They can’t predict when their license will be approved, yet they need to complete background checks and hire staffers for each classroom before that can happen. This can take weeks to months because of teacher shortages and the often-lengthy process for background checks.

March came and went.

Top row – First image: Bryce Clemons and Harper Watkins play with bubbles as Heather cleans toys. Second image: Heather comforts Raydyan Taylor, 2. Bottom row – First image: Heather Casner walks Royce Lingle to his mother’s car. Second image: Heather rests in the break room at the end of the day. (Julia Rendleman, for ProPublica and Capitol News Illinois)

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In April, she informed DCFS of their plan for a grand opening of the Our World of Learning Child Development Center, which the Casners called OWL for short, on May 22, hoping that would encourage DCFS to complete her paperwork. But that day, too, came and went without a license approval.

DCFS’ licensing division, chronically understaffed for years, currently faces a 20% vacancy rate. There’s a 45% vacancy rate for supervisors, who must review and approve all license applications. A DCFS spokesperson said the agency is working to fill vacancies in its licensing division, but said delays are not due to staff shortages but rather are the result of a range of issues including missing paperwork from applicants.

Providers frequently post on a Facebook page, Illinois Child Care in Crisis, about frustrating delays. One woman told Capitol News Illinois she has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into expanding her Chicago-based child care business into suburban Oswego only to be stuck in limbo for months awaiting approval of her licence while paying a full staff.

“I’m paying people to sit around and do nothing,” Doyin Ajilore said in late November. She has been paying a center director since August and several teachers since September. She received her license on Dec. 13. But Ajilore said the delays still forced her to borrow additional funding. Heather, however, couldn’t afford to pay her staff until children enrolled. And she couldn’t enroll children without DCFS’ final approval. When Stephen’s patience ran out, he made an angry phone call, demanding the licensing representative finalize the paperwork. Heather still shudders when she remembers that call. But by the following week, DCFS signed off on their license.

It was late July by this point, and by then most of their staff had lined up other jobs. They scrambled to rehire staff.

Few Kids, Small Subsidies

OWL’s doors finally opened on July 31, 2023, the place filled with pint-sized tables and chairs, shelves stocked with brightly colored toys and books for playing and learning. They’d transformed the old motel into an inviting space decorated with owls, their license now proudly on display near the entrance.

But the problems didn’t end. A few months before opening, Heather had asked parents on Facebook to add their names to a form if they were interested in care. The response seemed promising: Nearly 100 parents put their names down. When the Casners opened OWL, there were only two other centers serving children in an area with about 2,600 kids under 6. But filling classrooms still took months, a common issue in rural areas, experts said, because parents may live far away, be unaware of a new facility or need time to secure a job if they’re returning to the workforce.

The Casners’ business plan had little margin for error, especially given the subsidy payments they were relying on.

Illinois has long faced issues with its subsidies, which the state pays to child care providers on behalf of low-income families who qualify. The federal Administration for Children and Families recommends that states pay providers 75% of the market rate for care, but Illinois pays less than 45% for child care centers, according to federal data from April 2023, the latest available. That was one of the largest gaps in the nation, and it violated the equal access provision of the federal government’s block grant funding program, according to a news release from the federal agency. State officials noted that the data lags behind recent subsidy increases and said Illinois is now compliant in all but one category.

Providers could charge parents who receive these subsidies additional fees to help make up the difference, but most — including the Casners — don’t, knowing that many parents simply can’t afford it.

Today, a year and a half after opening, OWL is at just over half capacity, serving about 45 children. The vast majority of their care is paid for by government subsidies, and the center would need to maintain that population for a full year to break even.

Several OWL parents have no backup plan if Heather’s center doesn’t survive. Before the center opened, Jala Wilson of Carbondale had spent over a year driving 100 miles a day to drop her son at child care, head to her nursing classes in the opposite direction, and then do it again in reverse at pickup time. She spent $600 a month on gas alone. “That was insane, but it’s what I had to do,” she said.

Rachel Clover, another OWL mom, is effusive. Her daughter’s father died by suicide last summer, and Heather treated her and her daughter, 3-year-old Aizlyn, kindly. “They’ve been there for me emotionally,” she said, adding that having child care has allowed her to work full-time as an aide for the elderly and disabled. “It’s given me a chance to be more than just a welfare mom,” she said.

 

Heather feels this pressure profoundly. Originally she had planned to pay herself a salary of $40,000, but since opening in July, she has yet to take a full paycheck. Every two weeks, she prays that there’s enough for payroll, and her staff has never missed a check. In early October, she was $1,000 short. To pay her staff, Heather had to transfer funds from an account that barely covered her $4,000 mortgage. Paying back Stephen’s retirement account seems out of reach. “Steve and I are broke by now,” Heather said. “And all of our future money is gone.”

Heather blinks a lot when she’s stressed, and there’s been a lot more blinking lately. “I can’t give up,” she said. She plans to keep the center open until the money runs dry, just as her father did with his farm.

“Sure,” Stephen added, “until she drops dead just trying to make a go.”

“Yep,” she concurred, “Just to make it go one more day.”

 

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Capitol News Illinois. A portion of the reporting in Alexander County is supported by funding from the Pulitzer Center. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.