As the 2025 government shutdown enters its second week, some early childhood education providers are bracing for a situation similar to the pandemic , when they saw quarantined and newly unemployed parents pull their children out of day care.

While Kiara Fernandez said that has yet to be the case at Blandi’s Child Learning Center on Kennedy Street in Northwest, she told The Informer that she and her colleagues foresee a future where they may have to cut employees’ hours and jeopardize the quality of their services.

“If you send people home early, the children are not going home early,” Fernandez told The Informer. “They’re still here for the whole day, so it affects the day-to-day operation in terms of staff-to-child ratio, and then also it affects the staff finances. The goal is to

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