Day Care’s Closure Leaves Families with Few Options

When the North East Community Center (NECC) announced on Nov. 7 that it would suspend its Early Learning Program (ELP) in Millerton, families confronted a hard truth: in rural northeast Dutchess County, child care options are scarce.

“The ability to have just like reliable childcare where I knew that she was just taken care of… enabled me to keep having my business and supporting our family,” said Hannah Smith Schiller, a Pine Plains parent whose daughter attended the program for three years. “Knowing you have child care in the future allows you to make the decision to have another kid.”

“It feels like the rug is completely pulled out from underneath you,” said another parent, Gillian Arthur, also of Pine Plains.

The program — licensed for 29 children but serving about 18 in recent days, according to NECC — cost roughly $620,000 annually, nearly a quarter of the organization’s operating budget. Rising expenses, declining revenues across nearly every program line, and enrollment below capacity had made the program increasingly difficult to sustain.

“So child care is economically a difficult model,” said Irene Banning, chair of NECC’s board. “There has never been an expectation that it would be fully funded through grants or tuition reimbursements. But with cost rising and needs rising across the organization in all of our other program areas, the board could no longer justify supporting that program in that way at the expense of the other programs.”

NECC Executive Director Christine Sergent said she has “never seen” a convergence of falling funding and rising need quite like the one the organization faces now.

“It’s really breaking our hearts,” she said. “After three and a half years of trying to get it [ELP] going and making it sustainable, it’s still struggling to find its footing. And in this current climate, all of our expenses are going up and across all of our programs funding streams are being cut.”

Sergent said healthcare premiums were recently quoted to increase by as much as 11%.

Compounding the strain was Dutchess County’s September suspension of new child care subsidy enrollments — a move Sergent said cut off one of the only ways families could afford tuition and prevented NECC from filling empty slots.

“They had to suspend new enrollments… or they would have run out of funding to cover existing enrollments,” she said. “That meant any attempts to recruit new preschoolers or toddlers into our classrooms, beginning Sept. 1, could not be.”

Families say the closure confirms what they have warned for years: that working parents across the region have almost no alternatives.

“I love ELP. I love NECC,” said Kim Yarnell, a Millerton mother of two whose children attended the center from its earliest days. “My children have thrived under their care. I’m so grateful. Which I think makes this loss so painful.”

After learning of the closure, Arthur began calling centers across the region.

“I don’t think Millererton has any other day care centers,” she said. “I’m not aware of any in Pine Plains. Ancram, I’m not aware of any.” One center in Amenia had a couple of toddler openings, she said, “but that’s the toughest age group to find space for right now.”

For NECC’s child care workers, the shutdown means the loss of jobs, benefits, and, in several cases, care for their own children.

“It is very important, and it is very affordable,” said Moony Torres, a program assistant who also has children in the program. “The toddler room is $75 a day, and the preschool room is $70 a day, which you will not find anywhere else.”

Torres, a single mother, expects to lose both her position and her children’s care. She said five more staff members are expected to lose their jobs when the program closes on Dec. 19. Additionally,

“It hurts financially,” she said. “I’m a single mom myself. I don’t know how I’m going to do it. I have three kids. But I’m going to have to do it.”

She also relies on NECC’s food pantry and holiday assistance programs. “It does feel like, you know, I just had something ripped out from under me,” she said. “Especially the timing.”

NECC leaders say the crisis is rooted not only in local pressures but also in statewide funding patterns that make it difficult for rural centers to operate, even as demand for NECC’s other services — food access, case management, transportation — climbs.

The strain facing Dutchess County reflects a broader statewide crisis in child care, according to the New York Public Welfare Association, which represents all 58 social services districts. In a recent analysis, the organization warned that “2025 has proved to be the tipping point where participation has begun to exceed allocations to districts,” noting that at least 16 counties have already closed enrollment or begun turning eligible families away. New York’s expanded eligibility thresholds and lowered parent fees, the group said, have collided with flat funding.

“We need childcare that is not only accessible and affordable but that is also of high quality… The time to act is now,” said Dutchess County Department of Family Services Commissioner Sabrina Jaar Marzouka, whose comments were cited in the report.

On Wednesday, Marzouka told legislators that universal child care may be the most viable path forward.

“This is not about eviscerating or blaming NECC,” Yarnell said. “They do so many wonderful things… They shouldn’t have to do everything without any real support infrastructure.”

NECC says it hopes to expand after-school and summer offerings for younger children while exploring long-term possibilities to rebuild early childhood care.

“We are 100% committed to finding strategies down the road that we can find a sustainable way to make this work,” Sergent said.

Banning said NECC has weathered crises before.

“My experience is… the organization has a history of managing to meet the needs that they’re confronted with, whether that was COVID or in previous situations,” she said. “And we will prevail.”

For families, the urgency feels immediate.

“I am so hopeful that we’ll be able to resuscitate this in some form, because the need doesn’t go away,” Yarnell said.