In the News

The 18th annual Early Childhood Legislative Symposium welcomed professionals from across Colorado and the nation on Thursday when they gathered at the Steeple Event Center in Canon City.

Dorothy Day, director of the local ECHO & Family Center Early Childhood Council, welcomed the numerous attendees with a friendly reminder that they were all there for a single purpose: making the world better for young children and families.

She detailed that ECHO supports comprehensive screening for young children, facilitates quality learning environments, provides parenting classes, and much more. However, with the organization’s fast-approaching 50th anniversary, Day noted that statewide budget cuts threaten many of the services it currently provides.

One of the biggest impacts has been on the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program, which helps lower-income families afford child care. Funding shortages have led some counties to freeze new enrollment, leaving thousands of children on waiting lists.

Colorado’s Universal Preschool Program has been largely protected from cuts, allowing the state to continue offering free preschool to 4-year-olds. However, providers continue to face rising costs for wages, food, insurance and other expenses. Overall, preschool access remains relatively stable, while child care providers and families receiving financial assistance face greater challenges.

Keynote speaker Maegan Lokteff, executive director of the Early Childhood Council Leadership Alliance, mirrored Day’s concerns, noting that the world of early education vastly changed post-COVID.

“Something happened during COVID; all childcare programs shut down because we were told we had to,” she said. “We saw this thing happen in the U.S. where everyone said, ‘Wait a minute, early childhood is important, childcare is important, we have to figure this out.'”

“Families have changed,” she continued. “Even in places where we have families to help, sometimes, they can’t so we need to figure out what that means for our country.”

She noted that several things have happened at the state level, all meant to support families with young children. The Colorado Care Worker Tax Credit, signed into law for the 2025 tax year, provides eligible caregivers with a refundable state tax credit, helping boost take-home income and support Colorado’s strained caregiving workforce. Additionally, Colorado’s Universal Preschool Program, which became accessible during the 2023/24 school year, provides eligible 4-year-olds with up to 15 hours of free preschool weekly, helping families reduce costs and expand access statewide.

Despite these advancements, Lokteff acknowledged the continued struggle for early childhood education, particularly in rural Colorado.

According to the 2024 Echo & Family Center Early Childhood Council’s Fremont County Early Child Care Assessment, Fremont County faces a severe child care shortage driven by too few available spaces, staffing challenges and affordability concerns. Two local child care centers closed in 2024, further reducing options for families. A county assessment found 70% of early childhood directors struggled to find qualified employees, making it difficult for providers to expand or even maintain capacity. Rural families may also face long drives to reach available care. Meanwhile, providers must charge enough to cover rising operating costs and wages, while many families struggle to afford tuition. Together, these challenges have left parts of Fremont County considered child care deserts.

Additionally, a 2025 Employer-Based Childcare Support Assessment by the South Central Early Childhood Sector Partnership and Two Rivers Consulting found that a variety of supports could be implemented for local families, including employer-supported childcare, workforce pipelines for providers, universal waiting lists, childcare tuition assistance, and a personalized navigation portal. Though some of those are feasible on a local level, it’s still yet to be seen how government can support childcare.

“We really have to think through the options, the opportunities, that we have as a community, to address our local needs and how do we then tie that into what happens at the state level?” Lokteff asked. “We have to have options…we have to adopt a variety of solutions.”

The symposium welcomed a handful of candidates for the 2026 election, both local and statewide, to further discuss childcare policy and procedure. Candidates included Kathryn Green (D), candidate for Colorado House District 60; Matt Alexander (R), candidate for Colorado House District 60; Kevin Grantham (R), candidate for Colorado State Treasurer; Justin Kurth (D), candidate for Colorado State Senate District 4; and Max Hanson, representative for Brittany Pettersen (D), candidate for U.S. House to represent Colorado’s 7th Congressional District.

Director of Early Childhood Education for the Florence/Penrose School District, Misty Hinkle served as the moderator throughout the evening and provided the candidates with a variety of questions, ranging from funding solutions for childcare assistance programs to finding ways to make Universal Preschool sustainable and affordable.

“Some of the things we have to work on, ultimately, are recruitment for some of our [early childhood] providers…and we have to look at the barriers of entry for new providers,” said Grantham when asked about long-term funding solutions for care assistance programs. “We have to look at the overall scope — how are we going to fill all the needs across the county and across the state?”

“On the local level, we’re actually looking at different ways that we can help with costs,” he continued. “We have to look at bigger ways that we can help…new startups and existing businesses to stay in business.”

Alexander, addressing the same topic, shared that when he moved back to Canon City 20 years ago, childcare looked vastly different than it does today, and he has found education has become a personal passion.

“We’re 48th in the United States in affordability in the state of Colorado,” he stated. “The problem is we’re already overtaxed, we’re overspending, we have so many taxes and fees. We don’t have an income revenue problem; we have a spending problem, we have a priority problem.”

“The solution is not spending more,” he went on. “If we can expand business opportunities, we create infrastructure growth, we bring in kids, we bring families in, and we provide opportunities for those families to go to work.”

Universal Preschool was also a topic of discussion and candidates were asked to share what changes they would strive to make in order to make the program more sustainable and affordable.

“We can’t just say, ‘We can add more property tax,'” Green said. “Because none of those will be sustainable for the long term. We can’t just force people to pay higher property taxes for early childhood care unless we have people who want to support the programs.”

She went on to note that talking to locals dealing with the current childcare shortage is one of the best ways to understand what people need and want for their children.

Kurth noted that Universal Preschool has many layers and that it’s vital to see a return on investment in childcare.

“We see economic growth when people get to work; people get to work when their kids have a place to go during the daytime,” he said.

He went on to cite concern over the federal government’s desire to hold funding at current levels which, due to inflation, he posited is more like a cut than holding steady for childcare facilities.

While candidates differed on what those solutions should look like, the discussion repeatedly returned to the same reality: affordable, accessible child care has become increasingly difficult to provide, particularly in rural communities like Fremont County.

For local early childhood advocates, Thursday’s symposium offered an opportunity to put those challenges directly in front of the people seeking to represent them and to keep young children, families and providers at the center of the conversation as Colorado looks toward 2026 and beyond.