Public Comments

For businesses like ours, access to reliable child care is not a side issue — it is a workforce issue. One of the biggest challenges we face in securing and retaining employees is the lack of available, affordable child care in our area. We have had potential workers turn down jobs or reduce their hours simply because they could not find dependable care for their children.

Agriculture and farm operations depend on a steady, reliable workforce. During planting, harvest, market season, and special events, we need employees who can consistently show up and work scheduled hours. When child care falls through, parents are forced to miss work, leave early, or decline employment altogether. That impacts productivity, revenue, and ultimately the sustainability of small family farms like ours.

HB 4517 is a practical solution. By expanding the employer child care tax credit to include employer-sponsored child care services — not just on-site facilities — this bill makes it possible for rural and small businesses to participate. Most small farms and businesses cannot build and operate their own child care center, but we could partner with or financially support existing licensed providers if the tax structure makes that investment feasible.

This bill recognizes that child care is essential infrastructure for our workforce. When businesses are empowered to support child care solutions in their communities, employees are more stable, businesses are stronger, and rural economies benefit.

For these reasons, I respectfully and strongly urge passage of HB 4517.

I am very much in favor of this bill.  Not hearing is a terrible sense to lose.  Hearing aids are very expensive., especially for children who are just learning.   These have to changed a lot also due to growth.  How are people going to exist in a quiet world.  Please pass this bill

As an early learning center director, I believe this bill is critical to sustaining high-quality child care. The heart of our center is the educators who show up every day to make a meaningful difference in children’s lives. When those same employees struggle to afford care for their own children, it directly impacts retention, morale, and the stability families depend on. Supporting them by helping cover the cost of their children’s care is an investment in the workforce that makes quality early education possible. I strongly urge passage of this bill.

In rural West Virginia, child care is not just a family issue — it is an economic survival issue. Agriculture, small businesses, tourism, and seasonal industries depend on a reliable workforce. When child care programs cannot retain staff, they reduce capacity or close classrooms. When that happens, parents cannot show up for work — and local businesses feel it immediately.

Many child care employees work 20 hours or more per week caring for other people’s children, yet struggle to afford care for their own. In small rural communities, wages are modest and options are limited. Without support, these employees often leave the field for other industries that offer better financial stability. Every time we lose a child care worker, we risk losing child care slots — and in rural areas, there are rarely backup options.

For agriculture and seasonal businesses especially, timing matters. Planting, harvest, farmers markets, festivals, tourism seasons, and local events require dependable labor. If parents cannot secure reliable child care, farms struggle to find workers, small businesses reduce hours, and community events suffer. The ripple effect is real and immediate.

HB 4067 is a workforce stabilization bill. Allowing child care employees to access a subsidy regardless of household income recognizes that child care is essential infrastructure that supports every other industry. Investing in the people who care for our children ensures that rural communities can keep their workforce engaged, their businesses operating, and their economies growing.

In rural West Virginia, we cannot afford to lose more child care providers. Supporting the child care workforce supports agriculture, small businesses, and the families who keep our communities strong.

For these reasons, I respectfully and strongly urge passage of HB 4067.

As a former child care provider, I strongly urge support of West Virginia House Bill 5345.

I made the difficult decision to stop providing child care because the pay was inconsistent and unpredictable. Under the current system, providers are only reimbursed based on daily attendance. If a child missed days due to illness, vacation, medical appointments, weather, or other unavoidable reasons, my pay was reduced. Yet my expenses — staffing, food, utilities, supplies, insurance, and maintaining a safe learning environment — did not decrease when a child was absent.

This system places the financial burden on providers for circumstances completely outside of our control. No worker should have to experience unpredictable income because someone else is sick or on vacation. That level of income instability is not sustainable and drives qualified, caring professionals out of the child care field.

HB 5345 would correct this by basing subsidy payments on monthly enrollment rather than daily attendance. This commonsense change would provide stability for providers, encourage more individuals to remain in or return to the profession, and strengthen West Virginia’s child care system for working families.

Reliable child care is essential for our workforce and our economy. If we want providers to stay in business and families to have dependable care options, we must create a payment structure that reflects how child care actually operates.

For these reasons, I respectfully and strongly urge the Legislature to pass HB 5345.

• Please vote yes on HB 5345

I am both a mother and an executive director with 14 employees. Without good childcare, my employees have difficulty working full time. I support any funding to help with childcare which I consider an important part of our infrastructure.

I support this bill!

This is so important for the children and families that I serve as a center director. We need this funding to keep our quality programs!

I am a 19 year old soon to be mother working in childcare. I make 12$ an hour and work 36-40 hour weeks I can barely make ends meet as is. This bill would benefit so many people in so many ways! Some childcare can be up to 300$ a week! That is my whole paycheck! This bill would be so beneficial to so many.

• WV has 231 fewer childcare programs today than in February 2024.
• Programs are closing even with enrollment-based payments because margins are already razor thin.
• Reverting to attendance-based payments would cause hundreds more closures.

• Parents lose childcare and leave the workforce.
• Businesses lose employees and productivity.
• Communities lose economic growth opportunities.

• Daily attendance records required
• Regular licensing inspections
• Random audits required twice a year (monthly since September) for centers and monthly for other providers
• Documentation verification requirements
• Payment recovery when records are inaccurate

• Keep classrooms open
• Maintain staff
• Serve working families

• Parents cannot work.
• Employers cannot grow.
• West Virginia cannot compete economically.

§18B-10-7b. Tuition waivers for high school graduates in foster care

Please support HB 4517 to strengthen West Virginia’s employer child care tax credit so more employers will actually use it to create real child care options for working families.

When my children were young, my household had two full-time working parents but almost no child care choices. In our county there was effectively one option, and the projected cost over the early childhood years was easily over tens of thousands of dollars. With no employer-supported options and no practical local care, we ended up moving an hour away from our jobs just so family could help watch the kids, which put enormous strain on our marriage and ultimately contributed to divorce and family separation.

HB 4517 would make it far more feasible for employers to provide or sponsor child care by increasing the tax credit for capital investments and operating costs and allowing unused credits to be carried forward for up to 20 years. It also makes clear that child care can be ‘employer-sponsored’ and located in places that are reasonably accessible to workers, not just on the employer’s physical premises. If more employers had practical, generous incentives like this in place years ago, families like mine might have had stable care closer to work and avoided the extreme choices we were forced to make.

Please pass HB 4517, along with HB 4067 and HB 5345, so that child care is treated as shared infrastructure between families, providers, and employers—and so other parents don’t lose their jobs, marriages, or relationships with their children because basic child care wasn’t available.

As a full-time working parent in a two-parent household where both adults worked full time, child care was a nightmare. In the county where we lived, there was only one real option, and the projected cost for both of our children, before they would have aged out, was well over tens of thousands of dollars. The lack of options and the financial pressure forced us to move an hour away from our jobs just so family could help watch the kids, which put enormous strain on our marriage and ultimately contributed to our divorce and family separation.

These bills address two sides of the same crisis. HB 4067 helps child care workers afford care for their own children based on their hours worked, which will help retain staff and keep centers open for families like mine. HB 5345 would require subsidy payments to be based on enrollment rather than daily attendance, giving providers predictable income instead of penalizing them when children are absent due to illness or family schedules. Without that stability, centers close or stop taking subsidized children, and families in rural counties can be left with no realistic options at all.

West Virginia already knows that enrollment-based payments and stronger child care support are key solutions to our workforce and family stability problems. Passing HB 4067 and HB 5345 would be a concrete step toward making sure other families do not have to make the kinds of impossible choices that mine did just to keep working and keep their children safe.”

I’m a working parent who has lived through how limited child care options and high costs can destabilize a family. In rural areas, availability can be so tight that parents are forced into impossible choices—long commutes, patchwork care, or leaving the workforce—because there simply aren’t enough slots.

When my family was raising two young children, we faced extremely limited local child care options and costs that would have added up to tens of thousands of dollars over the years. The constant strain of trying to keep jobs, keep children cared for safely, and keep a household functioning took a real toll on our family.

HB 4067 is a practical workforce-and-family policy: if child care workers can access a subsidy based on their work hours rather than household income, it helps retain qualified staff, reduces turnover, and strengthens the child care system for everyone.​

I urge you to pass HB 4067 to support the child care workforce and to make child care more stable and accessible for West Virginia families.