Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Jessie Orth’s last name.

Despite years of problem-solving efforts, hundreds remain on child care waitlists across Summit County. While the rollout of universal preschool at the start of the 2023-24 school year helped some families with 3- and 4-year-olds find care, families with infants are struggling to find providers.

Since many of the centers that offer infant care are located in Breckenridge, the issue has become a consistent topic of discussion at public meetings.

At a Jan. 23 Breckenridge Town Council Meeting, councilman Jay Beckerman, who is also on the town’s Child Care Advisory Committee, raised the issue. He said many centers do not have the capacity or staff to meet the high demand for infant care, yet they have adequate — if not more than adequate — staff for the preschool-age students they serve.

Housing program manager Corrie Burr said while preschool waitlists are decreasing, ones for infant care aren’t.

“We know infant/toddler is the need because there are openings in preschool rooms in pretty much every center,” Burr said.

Providers with lengthy waitlists for infant care include Timberline Learning Center, which currently has 139 families on its waitlist, Lake Dillon Preschool, which currently has 96 infants on its waitlist, and Little Red Schoolhouse, which currently has 77 infants on its waitlist. 

Little Red Schoolhouse executive director Greta Shackelford said the county is experiencing an imbalance where “there are so many locations that offer care for 3- and 4-year-olds, and so few locations that offer care for infants.”

Parents vying for limited spots

Although families often join multiple waitlists in hopes of increasing their chances of securing a spot, child care officials said they’ve had some families waiting for so long that they missed the opportunity to get infant care entirely since their kid aged out of the program before they were accepted.

Child care directors say they receive frequent phone calls and emails from parents who are desperate for infant care and want a status update for their spot on the waitlist.

Lake Dillon Preschool executive director Katie Bunnelle is among those fielding phone calls. 

“It’s very hard to talk to those parents because I wish we had a crystal ball. … Instead I have to tell parents we have 96 babies on the list and they’re number 40,” Bunnelle said. 

One of these frequent callers was local healthcare worker Jessie Orth. Orth said she would call the centers every month to check in, noting she was on nearly “all the waitlists.”

Orth said she had heard about these lengthy waitlists long before becoming a parent. Looking to get ahead of the curve, she put herself on waitlists for infant care when she first got pregnant. She was never able to get her child in a care center as an infant. Orth’s child was not accepted for care until this August, when the child was 2.5-years-old and over the age limit for infant care.

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Providers and their capacity to serve infants

While providers said they wish they could take more infants off their waitlists, they simply don’t have the capacity to make it happen.

Since infants are less self-reliant than older age groups, they require a higher level of care, child care directors said. 

Little Red Schoolhouse executive director Greta Shackelford explained providers try to keep a ratio of one teacher for every seven to eight preschoolers in order to provide quality care. On the other hand, there generally needs to be one provider for every three infants to ensure quality care. 

Both Timberline Learning Center and Little Red Schoolhouse can only provide care for six infants at a time. 

Timberline Learning Center’s education director Maria Niedenfuer said hiring caregivers for preschool-age students is a challenge compared to hiring infant caregivers.

“It’s easier to hire in the older classrooms than it is for the babies because maybe people just have had more experience with the older students or sometimes babies make people nervous,” Niedenfuer said.

She said they can’t just hire anyone. They have to find someone who has experience working with infants — or someone who has a desire to learn about working with infants since they require specialized care.

Child care center directors also talked about how facility sizes limit their ability to meet the growing demand for infant care. Even if they had the staff, they don’t have the space, they said. 

With serving multiple different age groups, there are only so many classrooms that they can dedicate to just infants. 

Niedenfuer said infants require certain types of spaces, with adequate room to meet their developmental needs.

She said her nonprofit looks to have “a small-group setting where it’s only a few of the faces.” They prefer to keep infants in controlled environments where they can safely navigate things like climbing structures to help develop their sense of balance, so they can’t use the same rooms as toddlers and preschoolers. 

At the Jan. 23 meeting, Burr told council that town staff members are currently working on getting an exact number of families on these waitlists as a whole to get a better grasp on the issue at large. She said the housing department is keeping tabs on the growing need for child care as families move into new housing developments in Breckenridge. 

“We know we have places where we could put child care, given the need, but we don’t want to be in the situation of ‘we should have done it two years ago,'” Burr said.

Beckerman said he asked centers to figure out what funding would be needed and what changes would need to be made in order to mitigate the issue. 

Providers said one solution that could help solve the problem would be the addition of more centers that provide infant care. They said this helped fix waitlists for preschool-age children and believe it would work with infants as well.