As the child care industry faces an ongoing affordability issue alongside an onrush of policy change and uncertainty under the Trump administration, this broader challenge is likely to put further strain on the teacher workforce, said one child care expert.
Among educators who chose to stop teaching in the 2021-22 school year, 15% of those former teachers said they left for personal reasons including pregnancy and child care, according to a report by the National Center for Education Statistics. Teacher turnover can have both financial and academic consequences for districts. For instance, it costs $25,000 for large districts to replace just one teacher, according to a January report released by the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Child care costs have skyrocketed over the years — even outpacing the increase of overall inflation between 2020 and 2024, according to Child Care Aware of America. In that period, child care prices went up by 29%, compared to overall prices that rose by 22%, said the nonprofit affordable child care advocacy organization. Additionally, the nonprofit found that the national average price of child care in 2024 was $13,128.
Teacher salaries, however, are lagging behind inflation. A 2025 report by the National Education Association found that teachers are making 5% less on average than they did 10 years prior when adjusted for inflation. That’s despite the estimated average teaching salary growing by 26.9% between 2015 and 2025.
The average public school teacher salary was $72,030 in the 2023-24 school year while the average starting salary for the teaching profession was $46,526, according to NEA.
Child care is “wildly expensive” for most people, said Casey Peeks, senior director for early childhood policy at the Center for American Progress, a policy institute. But teachers' challenges are exacerbated as their salaries can't keep up with inflation even as child care costs continue to rise, she said. “So it’s getting harder and harder for K-12 teachers to afford the cost of childcare,” Peeks said.
Difficulties with federal resources
As soon as the second Trump administration took office a year ago, Peeks said that the child care sector has faced a “lot of unnecessary chaos,” between court battles over federal funding freezes, limitations on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at the early childhood education Head Start program, and layoffs in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That includes reduction-in-force notices at HHS' Administration for Children and Families and the Office of Head Start, which has made it more difficult for states and Head Start grantees to receive federal technical assistance, Peeks said.
In early January, HHS announced that it froze billions of dollars in federal child care and family assistance funds for California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York because the agency said there were concerns about “widespread fraud” in those states.
The frozen funds are operated under the Administration for Children and Families and used by states to support families with child care costs. ACF had identified concerns that these benefits for American citizens “may have been improperly provided to individuals who are not eligible under federal law,” HHS said in its announcement.
HHS’ move to freeze over $10 billion in federal funding for childcare and family assistance programs has since been challenged in federal court by the five affected Democratic-leaning states. A federal judge in the U.S. District Court Southern District of New York on Jan. 23 extended a temporary restraining order restricting HHS from implementing the ACF funding freeze. The order is in effect until Feb. 6 while the federal court considers issuing a preliminary injunction.
Though it’s unclear how many school staff rely on federal child care subsidies, even families who don’t receive these subsidies and pay for their own child care might unknowingly depend on their state’s child care fee assistance program, Peeks said. That’s because many child care providers serve both families who privately pay and those who need the subsidies, she said. When those federal subsidies are frozen or delayed, Peeks added that a child care provider may have to close because they rely, at least partially, on the federal assistance to operate.
Because the teaching workforce predominantly consists of women, Peeks said that these huge disruptions to the child care sector will ultimately impact the many women who are mothers of young children and work in K-12 schools.
District and state solutions?
Some school districts are taking it on themselves to provide child care for teachers as a retention strategy, Peeks said. While that can be helpful for the district and its staff, the initiative doesn’t address the “root issues of the child care crisis,” she said. School districts also shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of those costs when they build those programs out, Peeks said.
Overall, she said, the child care industry needs “robust, stable funding from the federal government, so that we can both build up supply, increase the child care workforce wages, and then also bring down the cost.”
Another possible solution to keep young parents teaching in schools is for districts to offer sufficient paid parental leave, according to an NCTQ report released in January. Just 1 in 3 teachers have access to paid parental leave, and less than half of teachers that have the benefit consider it adequate.
One key policy solution NCTQ suggests is that states require districts to offer at least 12 weeks of paid parental leave for teachers, beyond their sick days. Just two states — Delaware and Arkansas — provide full pay for 12 weeks while teachers are on parental leave, NCTQ found.
“When teachers have to hoard sick days or try to time their pregnancy over summer break, we are asking them to choose between their jobs and their families, and it increases the likelihood that they leave the teaching profession altogether,” said NCTQ President Heather Peske in a Jan. 11 statement. “State legislators and policymakers are well positioned to deliver strong paid parental leave options to teachers in a fiscally responsible way — it’s a question of priority.”
