SEWARD, Alaska — It was 2018 when Casie Warner first realized there was a major problem in this popular cruise port, nestled on an inlet about a two-hour drive south of Anchorage. At the time, Warner worked as a home visitor, providing advice, support and resources to low-income parents with young children.
Time and time again, Warner would hear the same story from parents: “‘I wasn’t able to make my medical appointments. I didn’t have child care,’” said Warner. “‘I couldn’t pick up an extra shift at work because of child care.’”
Warner set out to find a solution. But Seward, like many rural communities across the country, is considered a child care desert, where options are scarce and there are no quick fixes.
Then, some unexpected help arrived. In 2021, Norwegian Cruise Lines donated $1 million to Seward to help with post-pandemic economic recovery. The city council voted to spend the money on the two issues deemed to be the most relevant for residents of the town of 2,800: housing and child care.
Five years later, licensed child care slots are up by 150 percent.
In rural communities, the availability of affordable child care is a key component of economic success. At a time when child care shortages are pronounced, especially in rural areas, Seward’s approach of prioritizing child care and investing in new programs and providers offers a potential road map for other communities looking to strengthen their child care industry, support the local economy and eventually retain or attract new residents.
“The hope is that if we can address child care, that perhaps it will have a bigger ripple effect,” said Courtney Bringhurst, a Seward city planner. “We’re hoping that it will help more families be willing to relocate to Seward and stay,” she added. “If we can get more families to stay, that will help strengthen our schools, which will give more opportunities and interest for other businesses to come to Seward.”
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Although Seward’s success so far in expanding child care slots shows what’s possible with more money, experts caution that in most places, public dollars, not private donations alone, will need to fill the gap.
“It’s impossible math otherwise for these programs to continue operating, particularly in rural communities,” said Hailey Gibbs, associate director of early childhood policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.
About 1 in 7 people in the U.S. live in a rural community, and though they need and use child care as much as their urban counterparts, they face many more problems getting it. In sparsely populated areas, families are likely to live far from the few providers that exist. The most used child care option for rural families is a provider that operates from their home, but those small businesses are squeezed by low profit margins and high costs.
According to the Center for American Progress, almost all — 96 percent — of Alaska’s children live in a child care desert, defined by the think tank as an area where there are three or more children for every licensed child care slot. The problem is even more acute in rural areas that are also low income: In those parts of the country, there are nine babies for every one licensed child care slot, CAP says.
Alaska’s economy pays a penalty for the lack of child care — according to a 2023 report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, the state lost $165 million because parents couldn’t access child care to go to work or school.
But the economic effects are only part of the story. Rural families are more likely to experience food insecurity and to be on public assistance, and rural children under 5 have one of the nation’s highest poverty rates. Poverty and food insecurity are linked to poor school performance, which high quality child care could alleviate — but that care is not an option for many.
“We know that fewer than half of children from low-income families are ready for school at age 5, and the gaps are just so much larger in rural communities,” said Karen Harrison, lead adviser for workforce development at the global nonprofit Save the Children, which runs several rural child care initiatives in the United States. “Many families in rural communities are left without options.”
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In Seward, Ella Wright said she and her husband spent the first five years of their daughter’s life working part time in nursing and mental health jobs respectively, due to the lack of child care. Until her daughter got a spot at a part-time preschool at age 3, “we had no breaks,” Wright said.
In 2023, about half of Alaskan parents who were surveyed said that, like Wright, they could not fully participate in the labor force because of child care access and affordability.
The picturesque town of Seward, framed by snow-capped peaks on the Kenai Peninsula, cannot afford to lose workers due to a lack of child care. Summers in Seward are lively. On days when cruise ships are in port, tourists meander up and down the main street, stocking up on souvenirs and taking pictures in front of Resurrection Bay’s ice-blue water. During these months, seasonal workers flood the town to work at restaurants and shops.
But the town’s year-round employers, including a state maximum-security prison and a medical facility, face ongoing worker shortages. The shortages have been so pronounced that in 2023 the town had to temporarily close its small local jail, diverting people in custody to state-run facilities, until it could hire more employees.
“It’s very difficult to maintain a strong, year-round economy, because we can’t maintain families year-round in Seward,” said Bringhurst, the city planner. “People just can’t maintain a job if they don’t have reliable child care.”
The donation from Norwegian couldn’t have come at a better time for the town. In 2019, a child care program closed unexpectedly just three years after it opened, eliminating 20 child care spots from the community. (Qutekcak Native Tribe, a Seward-based social services agency that ran the program, did not respond to a request for comment.)
Then in 2021, a preschool program funded by federal Title I money closed after the local elementary school no longer enrolled enough children from low-income families to qualify for the funding. That left two licensed programs and 20 slots for more than 80 children who needed care.
Norwegian’s donation was part of $10 million in support to Alaska port communities that were affected by Covid-related tourism drops. Warner had transitioned from her role as a home visitor to running a child-focused nonprofit, Happy Youth Programs and Educational Resources, or HYPER, which was chosen to lead the town’s new child care strategy.
Using half of the $1 million donation, HYPER trained providers so they could meet requirements for state licensing and offered start-up funds to help cover the high costs associated with launching or expanding home-based child care businesses. The organization also developed a retention bonus program to boost salaries for providers, paid for early educators to attend trainings and established a year-long subsidy program to help families pay for child care.
Seven miles north of downtown Seward, off the only road into town, Josie McClain’s home-based child care program is tucked away in a clearing down a long gravel driveway. The town’s investment has made an immense difference for McClain, who has a degree in elementary education and launched her program in late 2019 after years of running the local teen and youth center for the city.
On a recent morning, a dozen children roamed around a playground fenced off in front of McClain’s house. McClain and her assistant watched, sometimes stepping in to comfort crying toddlers, fix broken sandals and navigate arguments over the swings.
A little girl shuffled over to McClain, her rainbow-colored sandals on the wrong feet, and pointed through the playground fence, across the yard, to a sea of yellow dandelions.
“I see a lot of flowers!” exclaimed the little girl.
“Should we make dandelion jelly this week?” McClain asked. The little girl nodded eagerly.
“I’ll look up a recipe,” McClain promised. She kissed the girl on her head and sent her off to play.
The weight of her role in the community isn’t lost on McClain. The children in McClain’s care have a deep attachment to her. Several call her “grandma” and, during the day, wander over to cuddle on her lap or give her a hug.
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Many of the parents McClain serves wouldn’t be able to work if it weren’t for her. Several work in critical industries, like the local bank, the school system and the hospital. As McClain looked around the playground, she pointed out children whose parents would have left Seward if she hadn’t had room for them. Hers is one of two 24-hour programs in Seward, offering reliable care for parents who work nights, as well as backup and emergency care when parents have unforeseen needs.
“There isn’t any place for them to go,” McClain said. “There isn’t an alternative.”
Running her program has involved sacrifice. On weeks when she can’t make the more than two-hour drive to Anchorage to load up on more affordable food and supplies, she must pay more at the stores in Seward. Recently, a federal food program for child care lowered their reimbursement rates, meaning she gets less money for the healthy food she serves children five times a day. To save money, she’s teaching herself how to can food for the winter. She hasn’t taken a vacation in years.
HYPER’s support and recent efforts from the state have helped ease the load a bit. In 2023, McClain was able to expand her child care program thanks to money from the organization. She used $10,000 from the nonprofit to help pay for a new screened-in porch to give children more room to play, including outside in cold and rainy weather.
“It made my small house one thousand times better,” McClain said. She also got licensed as a group child care program, allowing her to take in four more children for a total of 12.
For the first time in years, McClain has been able to stop living paycheck to paycheck and save money. She receives an annual bonus of several thousand dollars from HYPER each year. For the year that HYPER subsidized parent tuition, McClain could count on a reliable payment each month instead of having to “hunt down money” from families.
Recently, Alaska invested more in child care, from which McClain has also benefited. In 2025, the state allocated about $6 million more to expand eligibility for child care assistance, and this year, added close to another $6 million for annual grants to help child care programs operate. More is needed though, experts say. Earlier this year, lawmakers approved $6.4 million to help retain early educators, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy later vetoed those funds, along with $3.7 million that would have gone to Head Start, the federal and state-funded preschool program for low-income children.
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While the cruise company’s donation funding boosted child care in Seward, and state initiatives have provided additional support, the town’s child care crisis is far from solved. Early childhood jobs, with their low pay and lack of benefits, are hard to fill, Warner said. McClain fears she will have to drop four children from her program if she can’t find someone to replace her assistant, who is leaving soon.
And although two new providers have opened with HYPER’s support in the last year, there is still a shortage of infant and toddler spots.
“I don’t think that the people who want more child care know how many hoops there are to jump through,” said Katie Shepard, who co-runs the newest program in town, Timberline Learning Center. “Anybody else who is not just dying to work with the kids is not going to go through all that.”
When Shepard wanted to open a part-time preschool program, the cost seemed insurmountable. HYPER provided a $30,000 grant to cover start-up costs, program supplies and business licenses. “Unless we had that kind of money to put into something like this, I don’t think it would have been possible,” Shepard said.
On one summer morning, 10 children scampered around the community room of a Methodist church downtown.
“Who wants to play the bug game?” asked one boy, who was sitting in the middle of the room with bug-themed bingo boards. Several children crowded around him.
At the back of the room, Shepard sat by a large poster where students could write their names and stick them by a picture of their favorite bug.
“I LOVE butterflies!” exclaimed a little girl as she ran up to Shepard. With her teacher’s encouragement, she carefully glued her name on the paper. “Glue is so sticky,” she said.
Nearby, Wright’s daughter sat at a table carefully placing pictures of bugs onto a clear piece of sticky paper. Wright has seen how her daughter, now 4, has thrived at preschool.
“Language-wise she’s grown, she’s task-oriented. She’s an only child, so that socialization is key for her,” Wright said. Last year, the family received a subsidy from HYPER to help pay tuition. “That was huge,” she said, adding that the family was able to save more money. She will be able to take on more hours at work once her daughter enters kindergarten full time in the fall.
Looking forward, Warner is trying to find a permanent source of funding for child care to help more families. Ideally, she says, that funding will come from a tourism tax. Recently, a new cruise ship dock opened, which will allow larger ships — and more people — to dock in Seward. If key infrastructure needs like child care aren’t addressed, Warner fears people won’t be able to live there.
“We have to support our year-round economy,” because, unlike the tourists, “We also love to live here when it’s quiet and cold.”
This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.
Contact staff writer Jackie Mader at 212-678-3562 or mader@hechingerreport.org.
This story about child care solutions was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
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