WASHINGTON, DC | August 27, 2026— Three months after the DC Council provided funding to open the waitlist for the Childcare Subsidy Program, the Bowser Administration continues to deny enrollment to the majority of families who have been waiting in limbo since May. As a result, families who need affordable childcare will go without it, while childcare providers face vacant seats and mounting financial pressure. Many of those seats are opening today as older children transition to public Pre-K3 on the first day of pre-kindergarten for the 2026-2027 school year. The District’s Childcare Subsidy Program supports more than 8,000 families and 303 licensed childcare providers—two-thirds of the District’s providers—helping families afford care while keeping programs financially stable and able to provide young children with high quality early learning experiences; the waitlist is creating unnecessary strain keeping providers from meeting family needs.
A new report by DC Action, “Disrupting Care: The Impact of the District’s Childcare Waitlist,” details how the District’s childcare subsidy waitlist is disrupting care for families, providers and educators—and putting the District’s economy at risk. The waitlist means:
- Families will have less access to available, affordable childcare, making it harder to find and keep a job.
- Providers with vacant seats will face financial strain and may be forced to reduce hours, classrooms, or sites.
- Educators could lose income and employment as programs are forced to reduce staffing.
According to Travis Hardmon, President and CEO of GAP Community Child Development Center, “The waitlist is impacting the childcare infrastructure as children transition by stopping providers from filling vacancies, creating instability, and quite possibly causing some programs to close. At the end of October, when subsidy providers receive reimbursement for September, they will have less money to operate their programs in November and onward if the waitlist is not lifted. If you run a program that includes a significant number of subsidy families, and let’s say 30 to 40 percent of the children are transitioning to Pre-K programs, you will need to close classrooms, lay off educators, and potentially close if you are operating a smaller program. We will face another childcare cliff if the waitlist is not lifted.”
Audrey Kasselman, report co-author and Senior Policy Analyst for DC Action, added, “it is past time to reopen the childcare subsidy program to new families. Families need timely access to affordable care and early learning, and providers across the District have seats available to serve them – yet the waitlist is preventing families and programs from connecting. Providers are struggling and families are waiting. The dollars are there: as of June, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) had more than $40 million available to spend on the childcare subsidy program by the end of September. The District must use those dollars to open the waitlist and connect eligible families with the childcare they need now.”
The report stresses the need for OSSE to immediately improve communication and transparency and open the childcare subsidy waitlist to all priority categories to quickly fill classrooms this fall. This should happen as soon as possible, but must happen before the end of the current fiscal year — September 30, 2026 — to prevent further disruption to the District’s early childhood system.
The report also offers long-term recommendations to resolve the current situation. They include:
- Eliminate the childcare subsidy waitlist.
- Guarantee stable and predictable recurring funding for early childhood education.
- Reduce administrative barriers for families.
- Increase subsidy reimbursement rates to compensate providers for the true cost of providing high-quality early childhood education.
- Meaningfully engage childcare providers, educators, and families in policy decisions.