19 INVESTIGATES: Daycare centers can receive money from an Ohio grant program, but we've uncovered huge funding discrepancies. Now some parents are asking: Is this fair to the kids?
But—19 Investigates discovered there’s a huge difference in the amount of money certain centers can get.When their daughter’s daycare suddenly shut down last fall, Keegan and Amanda Radeff needed to find somewhere else for their daughter Delilah to go.Nannies can cost more than double daycare rates and the Radeffs found that a lot of daycares have long waitlists.“We went from paying $208 a week to $275,” Keegan said.
Thursday night, we explained his concern that huge daycare centers are able to get way more money than smaller ones. A medium sized day care with capacity for up to 99 kids gets about $2,000 more than a small center and a large day care gets about $5,000 more at the next step up. In an email, a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services said, “We added the additional categories based on the feedback we received from providers in the first round pertaining to the costs associated with running larger programs. I’d also emphasize that this is an iterative process and we will continue to make changes as we learn more.”
That means a large center like his could have the same number of children enrolled right now as an extra large center, yet because the extra-large center’s licensed for more kids, it can apply for nearly times the amount of money from the state.