Nine months after state officials froze enrollment for the Child Care Scholarship program in hopes of reining in rapidly rising enrollment, the situation is little changed and the outlook is not much better, lawmakers were told Wednesday.
For some families, meanwhile, the situation is beginning to feel hopeless.
“Parents are choosing between medical appointments, prescriptions, paying utilities, buying food and child care,” said Laura Weeldreyer, executive director of the nonprofit Maryland Family Network. “And what I heard all over the state, from all corners, was desperation and hopelessness.”
Her comments came during a nearly two-hour briefing for the House Ways and Means Committee on the program, which has been turning away most new applicants since last May.
That’s when the state froze surging enrollment in the program that helps with costs for pre-K education and early child care, as a significant increase in applicants threatened to bust its budget. The idea was to start admitting children when enrollment dropped below 40,000, a number state officials thought they could reach by August.
But by year’s end, more than 41,000 children in 27,000 families were receiving child care scholarships, double the enrollment of 2022.
Weeldreyer shared stories of clients who struggled to find adequate child care, including a mother who turned to unregulated, unlicensed care after being unable to find a provider. She later had to pull her daughter out of that care after her daughter, who has cerebral palsy, faced abuse.
Weeldreyer’s proposed solution? “Open up the waitlist” and make significant investments in the program to accommodate the influx of new children.
That was echoed by state officials who said they could accommodate as many as 50,000 children with sufficient funding.
“We know that the national landscape is uncertain and many states are struggling, but here in Maryland, we are continuing to build momentum, and we are doing it through our strong partnerships with state leaders and our early childhood community throughout the state,” State Superintendent Carey Wright told the committee.
That expansion would come at a steep cost, however, particularly at a time when lawmakers are facing an extimated $1.5 billion shortfall in the fiscal 2027 budget. The scholarship program, which received a record $488 million in 2025, would need an additional $166.5 million to serve the roughly 50,000 children who are eligible annually, along with another $68 million to compensate the children currently on the waitlist.
Advocates say the additional funding should go to more than scholarships.Christina Peusch, Cristy Morell and Joanne Hurt of the Maryland State Child Care Association said they hoped extra funding could also go toward compensating teachers and to investments in social-emotional programs like art therapy.
“The need for child care scholarships is evident in every ZIP code across the state,” Hurt said.
Even at record levels, the Child Care Scholarship Program serves only about 15% of eligible families in the state, as pre-K enrollment continues to grow. Del. Eric Ebersole (D-Baltimore County) expressed confusion about a lack of pre-K enrollment and continued issues with eligibility, especially given 2025 legislation to ease restrictions on some applications.
Assistant State Superintendent Sarah Neville-Morgan said one issue is the state’s “fast-track” application process, which provides temporary assistance to families in need of immediate help for 60 days. Of the 50,000 fast-track applicants since 2023, she said, only 22% went on to receive a full two-year scholarship.
“That’s surprising information,” Ebersole said. “We were so optimistic.”
When asked how the Department of Education might expand the program if it got additional funding, Neville-Morgan said the department would “reconsider” how eligibility works under fast-track applications. She also asked for have more flexibility over the budget to prevent another freeze.
Del. Joe Vogel (D-Montgomery) worried that even with a budget increase, his constituents may continue to struggle. He said the state should consider universal child care to make care free for all Maryland residents — even if the estimated $2.6 billion cost is a “significant jump.”
Experts warned that there is limited time to act.
Peusch, executive director of the Maryland State Childcare Association, said that if the freeze is not lifted within the next 12 months, as many as 43% of the approximately 3,500 providers face closure.
There is also the threat of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services budget cuts under the Trump administration, which last month rescinded a 2024 policy that let states pay providers based on a child’s enrollment rather than attendance. It said that move was an attempt to crack down on “waste, fraud and abuse” in child care systems.
HHS will make a final ruling by the end of the week, and state officials adjust any further changes accordingly, though Neville-Morgan noted “uncertainty” in how the Trump Administration will shape its guidelines.
“This whole country is in a moment of reckoning where we’re realizing how few social systems of social support we have for families and kids,” Weeldreyer said. “We have to really think differently about how we’re doing this.”
