Enrollment at Good Shepherd Christian Academy, a child care center in Fort Worth, Texas, plummeted almost as soon as the pandemic hit, from 84 kids to just 10.

It’s been one thing after another since, said Ontara Nickerson, the center’s director. The paltry number of children meant shortened workdays: Many of the center’s hourly workers couldn’t make do with reduced pay and quit in search of better wages.  

Yet Nickerson and her team have managed to stick it out, largely thanks to federal relief dollars that started flowing into child care centers last year. Good Shepherd Christian Academy was one of more than 200,000 providers nationwide that received aid through the American Rescue Plan, according to data shared exclusively with USA TODAY by the White House, money that helped the vast majority of recipients avoid closures despite unrelenting economic and public health pressures. 

“The stabilization grants came right at the moment when our program was unsure of how much longer we’d be able to keep our doors open,” Nickerson said. It “allowed us to withstand the worst of the pandemic.”

The ARP, signed into law last March by President Joe Biden, included $24 billion for a Child Care Stabilization Program. It provided emergency relief, distributed by states, to child care providers that could then be used for basic costs to keep centers running, like wages, rent and materials. Never before had a federal economic rescue package made child care reform – seen as key to getting parents back to work – a central tenet of its recovery plan. 

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The money ultimately reached as many as 9.5 million children and 1 million child care workers. Close to half of the providers who received assistance are owned and run by people of color, the data show, and more than half are located in the country’s most racially diverse communities. 

But that cash was a temporary fix. Efforts by the Biden administration to continue such support failed, and expanded child tax credits – which provided monthly payments that one in four families used for care – expired. The federal child care grant program in place since before the pandemic covers only one in seven eligible children. 

“As I look toward the horizon, I am concerned and worried that once these funds diminish, how am I going to retain the financial stability?” Nickerson said. The cost of basic goods continues to spiral, making it even more difficult to retain and recruit qualified staff even though enrollment is back to 65 students and the infant class has a waiting list.