If you followed Shared Services over the years, you heard one word constantly: comprehensive. I am not disputing the word. I am taking it seriously. Comprehensive means complete, but comprehensive support should never replace the owner’s business judgment. Business support should build an owner’s ability to make decisions, not relieve them of making decisions altogether.

This is not a villain or pointing the finger story. Business owners make rational decisions based on the resources available to them, and when a service is offered, using it is a reasonable choice. The issue was never the people. The issue is what the support was designed to produce. Did it leave behind owners who can confidently evaluate expenses, understand their numbers, make financial decisions, and adjust when circumstances change? Or did it leave behind owners who became accustomed to someone else making those decisions? Those are two very different outcomes.

What ends on September 30 is not simply a list of services. It is the moment every business owner in the program must decide what belongs in their own operating budget. Some of the services they provided suddenly become business expenses. They always were. What changes is that the responsibility for those decisions now belongs entirely to the business owner. That is business ownership. For years, I have encouraged business owners to know their numbers, not because spreadsheets are exciting, but because business judgment depends on them. You cannot make sound business decisions about a business you do not understand.

This is not just a DC story. Every business owner should ask the same questions. What decisions in my business are truly mine? Which decisions have I outsourced? Which decisions have I never learned to make because someone else has always made them for me?

Every grant ends. Every pilot concludes. Every support program changes. What remains is the owner’s business judgment.

That is why I believe one principle matters above all the others. Business judgment cannot be outsourced. Support can inform it. Coaching can strengthen it. Training can sharpen it. Eventually, however, the business owner has to make the decision and own the outcome. That is the difference between receiving business support and developing business judgment.

So when someone offers comprehensive support, do not only ask what it will do for your business. Ask what it will require you to keep doing yourself. Support that builds capacity strengthens business judgment. Support that replaces business judgment delays it. Both approaches can feel successful while the support exists. Only one prepares the owner for the day it ends.

One last thing, in the interest of full transparency. I never used Shared Services. From the beginning, I chose my own vendors, priced my own expenses, and carried every one of those decisions in my own budget. I have been making those decisions since 2013. That is why I know every decision this article asks business owners to take back is a decision they are capable of making.

Business judgment is not something you either have or do not have. It is something you build, one decision at a time.

Here is the part worth sitting with. The state's new paid family leave law, which started paying benefits this January, is now the top reason businesses say they cannot hire or keep staff. Your educator takes the leave the state promised her. Good for her. You still need a body in that classroom tomorrow morning, because the ratio does not care who is out. You cover it with a sub, with overtime, or with yourself, and none of those options show up as a line item anyone reimburses.

Now look at the other side of the building. The same law lets new parents stay home up to 20 weeks. Infants are enrolling later, and some families are pulling older siblings to stretch the budget while one parent is on leave. Your empty seat does not get a leave of absence from rent.

Fourteen states now run some version of paid family leave, with more on the way. Wherever it lands next, the mechanics repeat. The benefit attaches to the person. The cost attaches to the business standing in between.

Nobody wrote this policy to hurt you. Nobody wrote it to help you either.

Where does the next gap show up in your business first, the staffing side or the enrollment side, and which one are you actually prepared for?

You own a business. Now go own your business.

Here is what happened next.

More than half reported that families left after the increase. Sixty-one percent said their businesses are now underenrolled because so few families can afford the new rate. So the business raised its price to survive, and in doing so, lost the enrollment it needed to survive. That is a trap, not a solution.

Now think about what that actually means. You did everything right from a cost management standpoint. Your expenses went up, so you adjusted your rate. That is basic business. But if your only lever is tuition and your only customers are families paying out of pocket, you have a single-point-of-failure revenue model. Pull that one lever too hard and the whole thing comes loose.

This is not an argument against raising your rates. Your rates should reflect what it costs to operate your business plus a margin that makes the business worth running. That is not negotiable.

This is an argument for building a business that does not depend entirely on one price point holding steady in a market where family budgets are under pressure. If your costs go up every year, and they will, your business model needs more room than a tuition increase can create.

What does your business look like if enrollment drops by two families next month?

And my first thought was: why did that require its own program?

Not why did Michigan do it. That part is great. The question is why business coaching, pricing support, and licensing navigation for a small business owner required a separate initiative, a separate partnership with a small business association, and a special federal grant to make it happen. Most small business owners in other industries can walk into a Small Business Development Center, talk to a SCORE mentor, or access a chamber of commerce without anyone having to create a new program to get them there.

Early childhood education business owners have been doing this without that infrastructure for decades. Not because the need was not there. Because the sector was never designed with the business owner in mind. It was designed around families, around licensing standards, around subsidy systems. The person running the business was an afterthought in the policy architecture, which meant they were an afterthought in the support architecture too.

Michigan is correcting something. That is worth recognizing. But it is also worth naming what they are correcting: a sector-wide gap in basic business support that should have existed all along.

You should not need a special program to access the things every other small business owner takes for granted. And the fact that one is being built right now tells you something important about how long this sector has been operating without them.

What business support do you currently have access to? And what have you been figuring out alone that you should not have had to?

You own a business. Now go own your business.

On June 3, 2026, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published a rule requiring 41 states to implement Medicaid work requirements by January 1, 2027. Non-exempt enrollees must document 80 hours per month of work, training, schooling, or community service to keep their coverage. CMS's own projection is that 2.3 million people lose coverage in year one.

Now, none of those 2.3 million people are your clients directly. So it is easy to read that number and think: not my problem.

But think about this for a second. Medicaid is not just a health card. It is part of a household budget. When a family loses it, they do not absorb that loss into nothing. They absorb it into everything else they are paying for, including you.

You know what's funny? The policy is framed entirely around employment. Work more, keep your coverage. But Georgia, which has been running a similar program since 2023, showed that most people who lost coverage were already working. They just could not navigate the paperwork to prove it. That is not a workforce problem. That is an administrative burden problem. And those families will be sitting in your lobby in January 2027 trying to figure out how to make the numbers work.

The policy does not name your business. It never does. But follow the cost. A family loses Medicaid. Their out-of-pocket health expenses go up. Their household margin shrinks. The things they are paying for that feel discretionary start getting evaluated. And in a household that is already stretched, your monthly tuition gets looked at.

The question is not whether Medicaid work requirements will affect your enrollment. The question is when you will start to see it.

You own a business. Now go own your business.

The sector counts meetings. It counts coaching hours, cohort participants, touchpoints, sessions delivered, and families served. Those numbers end up in reports, grant renewals, and budget justifications. What does not get counted is this: what can this business owner do today that she could not do before?

That is a different question. And most of the time, nobody is asking it. When the measure of success is activity rather than capacity, you can run a support program for years and never know whether it built anything. You know how many educators showed up. You do not know whether those businesses can operate without you. That gap matters right now more than it ever has.

The House FY2027 budget proposal includes the elimination of PDG B-5, the Preschool Development Grants Birth through Five program. It is the only dedicated federal funding for the coaching, technical assistance, and quality infrastructure that a significant number of support organizations in this sector run on. Not a cut. Elimination. If that funding disappears, the organizations built on it go with it. And when they go, what is left inside the businesses they served?

That is the real question. Not whether the program was valuable. Not whether the funding should have been protected. But whether the years of support produced business owners who can function without it, or business owners who have learned how to participate in support systems. Those are not the same thing.

An educator who has been coached through every compliance renewal, guided through every policy change, and accompanied through every operational decision has not necessarily built the internal infrastructure to do those things on her own. She has been supported. That is not the same as being equipped.

The core message is simple. If the support disappears tomorrow, does the business still function? If the answer is no, that is the conversation this sector needs to be having. Not about how to replace the funding. But about what the funding was supposed to build in the first place.

But here is what did change.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4, 2025, cut nearly $187 billion from SNAP, the federal nutrition assistance program. And because your CACFP reimbursement tier is partly calculated based on how many children in your area qualify for free and reduced-price school meals, and that calculation is tied directly to SNAP enrollment, fewer families in SNAP means your zip code may no longer generate the numbers needed to keep you in Tier 1.

Tier 1 pays more. Significantly more. A Tier 1 home-based business can receive $1.70 for breakfast, $3.22 for lunch, and $0.96 per snack. Tier 2 drops to $0.61 for breakfast, $1.94 for lunch, and $0.26 per snack. If you serve seven children two meals and a snack every day, that difference adds up fast.

Now here is the part nobody is talking about.

When your tier designation shifts, nothing dramatic happens. No government letter arrives. No official notification that your reimbursement rate just quietly went down. You find out at renewal, or you do not find out at all until you run the numbers and realize your food program is paying you less than it used to.

Meanwhile, the House FY2027 appropriations proposal released on June 4 included a $10 million increase for CCDBG. That sounds like good news. And in some ways it is. But a $10 million national increase spread across the country does not replace the reimbursement difference you absorb every time you serve a plate of food in a zip code that just slipped from Tier 1 to Tier 2.

They did not name your program. They did not send a notice. They just changed the upstream conditions that determine what you get paid.

That is how policy reaches your kitchen table without ever knocking on your front door.

So here is the question worth sitting with: Do you know your current CACFP tier, when it is reviewed, and what the dollar difference is per meal if it changes? Because your bills are not waiting for you to find out.

Fifty-nine days. To plan. With children already enrolled, families who might need those subsidy slots come fall, and a mortgage and utilities that do not pause for policy announcements.

I did not wait to see how it played out. My business does not run on what if, just in case, or maybe. It runs on dollars and cents. So I started issuing notices in March and April, filled my spaces, and I am going into FY27 with seventy-seven percent guaranteed enrollments. Two spots left to fill and a plan already in motion.

Now the city has announced that not only is the waitlist being restored for FY27, but spaces may actually be added. And I am genuinely glad to hear it.

But here is my question for every early childhood business owner reading this: what would you have done if the funding was not restored?

A lot of people in this field have been conditioned to think about the impact on families, on children, on the sector before they ever stop to ask what this means for their own business and family. And that conditioning is exactly how you end up caught off guard by a 59-day notice.

Restoration is not a business strategy. Your business policies has to be built to move before the announcement, not after the outcome.

I had already moved. Because I didn’t know if restoration would come, but my business couldn’t afford to wait and see if it would.

I made a business decision with the facts I had, and I made it before I knew how the story would end. That is what responsible business ownership looks like.

And DC is not the only place this has happened. Many states have experienced or are experiencing the same thing. Waitlists frozen. Funding reduced. Notices that give you weeks to plan for years of uncertainty.

So the question is not really about any location. It is about your business, wherever you are.

When the announcement came, or when it comes, did you have a plan? Were you already moving? Or were you waiting to see how the story would end before you decided what to do?

These are the events we work through within The Business Owners Community.

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After attending a recent conference, I realized there is still a gap between what is often shared in the field and what federal policy actually states. As someone who trains in this area, I take accuracy seriously.

Here is what matters.

Day care homes are not held to the same financial structure as centers.

USDA guidance, including FNS Instruction 796-2, makes it clear that home-based programs are exempt from maintaining a nonprofit food service. That structure applies to centers and sponsoring organizations. Not homes.

FNS Instruction 796-5 further clarifies that CACFP reimbursements received by home-based educators are treated as taxable business income. Additional USDA guidance reinforces that homes are not required to obtain tax-exempt status or maintain the same level of cost documentation as centers.

In practical terms, CACFP reimbursements for home-based educators are treated as business income for tax purposes.

There is no federal requirement in 7 CFR Part 226 that dictates how CACFP reimbursements must be spent once received by the day care home.

Where confusion arises is when institutional rules are applied to home-based settings. The intent may be compliance, but the impact is hesitation, uncertainty, and in many cases, educators choosing not to participate in CACFP at all.

That matters.

Because when educators opt out, it is not just lost income. It is reduced participation in a program designed to support the children they serve every day.

And this is only part of the conversation.

Reimbursement rates for home-based educators are still tied to the Food At Home index, which reflects household grocery spending. That does not fully account for the realities of operating a business that provides meals daily.

That gap deserves attention.

Accurate information supports better decisions. And better decisions strengthen both businesses and the systems that serve children.

The question is not whether CACFP is worth it. The question is whether you have been given the full picture.

—

Sources: FNS Instruction 796-2, Rev. 4, Section VI | FNS Instruction 796-5 | USDA FNS Group and Family Day Care Homes Guidance | 7 CFR Part 226 | USDA Federal Register CACFP Rate Notices

That’s the statement. While I wouldn’t have chosen those words, I’m not offended by them. I understand what’s being said, and I understand why others are reacting to it.

I’ve never seen myself as a teacher first. I’ve always seen myself as a business owner. That doesn’t diminish the work. It defines how the work is sustained. This field doesn’t collapse because people don’t care. It collapses when the business doesn’t work. That’s the part too many avoid.

I’ve had the argument before. Everywhere you go, you’re teaching something, so that makes you a teacher. Fine. But the title doesn’t pay staff, cover overhead, or build something that holds under pressure. The business does. And when you understand that, you move differently.

I accepted subsidy and participated in Early Head Start, but I didn’t build my program around limitations. I built it around access. I invested in transportation so the children in my program could experience more than just the classroom. We went to the library every week, tennis, recreation centers, museums, and splash pads. Not occasionally—consistently. Most of these resources didn’t cost anything. They were already there. I just chose to use them.

That’s the difference. While others focused on what they wouldn’t do, I focused on what was possible. And I documented it. That matters. When you can prove the level of service you provide, you’re not asking to be paid—you’re making the case to be compensated properly. That’s a business position, not a charity mindset.

So when I hear statements about quality not existing in this system, I don’t take it personally, because I know what I’ve built. I know there are others who have built the same. But I also know that if you don’t position yourself as a business, you will always be at the mercy of decisions like the one made today.

Cuts don’t hit a system. They hit those doing the work every day. Moving children into schools doesn’t solve that, because the schools aren’t built to hold them either.

This isn’t a win for parents, children, or those doing the work. It’s a shift. And like every shift in this field, those who understand the business will adjust.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Policy makers focus on standards, compliance, and intended outcomes. The role is to define what the end should look like and hold that line.

Business owners operate within those standards, but their decisions are shaped by execution, capacity, and financial reality. The role is to determine what it takes to actually get there.

Same goal. Different responsibilities.

Policy defines the outcome.

Business determines the path.

The difference isn’t about right or wrong. It’s about perspective and proximity to the work.

Both are necessary.

They are not the same.

The effectiveness of leadership in this space often depends on how well these perspectives are understood, regardless of how well they are aligned in the process.

What keeps getting missed is that this was never designed to work smoothly. School schedules were not built around modern work demands, and early childhood businesses were not created to absorb every closure, holiday, or half day. But somewhere along the way, that’s exactly what started happening.

So now the pressure just moves around. Parents feel it when they’re trying to cover gaps. Educators feel it when expectations keep expanding. Businesses feel it when they’re expected to hold everything together without the structure to support it. We’re not solving the problem. We’re shifting it.

When my children were young, what worked wasn’t one solution. It was layers. Family, friends, community, adjustments, trade-offs. Not because that was ideal, but because that’s what reality required at the time. And that’s still the reality for a lot of people now.

The system absolutely needs to evolve, but we also have to be honest about what each part of it is actually responsible for. When that isn’t clear, expectations get placed in the wrong places and people end up carrying weight they were never meant to carry.

So the real question isn’t whether we’re building something that supports how families operate. It’s whether we’re building something that supports how businesses are expected to sustain it. Because right now, that stretch is happening inside businesses every day, and that’s where the system either holds or breaks.

That’s not theoretical. That’s a shift in responsibility.

Around the same time, I received an email from my granddaughter’s school about summer camp. Full day. Two meals included. Extended services available for an additional fee.

When I did the monthly math for base services, it was more than my mortgage.

And I understood exactly what parents are saying when they look at child care on paper.

On paper, it looks like too much.

But if you don’t pay for child care, you can’t work.

So it’s not optional.

It’s a requirement.

We just don’t treat it like one.

People carry a car note and insurance every month without question because they understand it’s necessary to get to work.

But when it comes to child care, the expectation shifts.

The cost is questioned.

Even though without it, nothing else works.

And that gap lands on the business.

It shows up in staffing.

It shows up in pricing.

It shows up in how long you can operate before something breaks.

With no additional federal expansion, that pressure isn’t going anywhere.

It’s moving.

Down to the state.

Down to the business.

So the question isn’t whether child care is expensive.

The question is why something required for the workforce to function is still being treated like a flexible expense.

Because when it is, the difference doesn’t disappear.

It gets absorbed.

Usually by the business.

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Because if you look beyond the moment, the pattern is not new. Pre-pandemic, state priorities were clear. Subsidy systems consistently prioritized families experiencing homelessness, individuals with disabilities, and those in recovery. That is not speculation. That is how eligibility frameworks have been structured for years. Working families have never been the primary priority.

That truth is uncomfortable, but ignoring it is exactly why this moment feels like a shock. What happened during the pandemic created something different. For a brief period, childcare was centered, funded, and publicly validated in a way this sector had never experienced. It felt stabilizing. It felt like recognition. For many, it felt permanent.

It was not.

What we are seeing now is not a sudden collapse. It is a reversion. The system is returning to what it has always been designed to do. And when you layer in current political narratives around work, family structure, and responsibility, the alignment becomes even clearer. There is a growing emphasis on household-level infrastructure rather than system-level expansion. That is not separate from policy. It reinforces it.

So the real question is not whether childcare matters. We already know it does. The question is what happens to an entire sector when its survival depends on temporary funding cycles instead of permanent infrastructure?

Because if the system resets every time funding shifts, even in the push for universal childcare, then the issue is not just access or affordability. It is structure. And structure determines who survives when the noise dies down.

I’ve only seen them struggle because communication was assumed, not structured.

Most leaders think communication is happening because they are talking.

But communication is not talking. It is clarity. It is alignment. It is shared understanding.

And when that’s missing, the cost is bigger than inconvenience.

It shows up in real financial loss.

Here are the communication gaps that quietly drain ECE businesses:

Missed or unclear expectations

When staff members don’t know exactly what’s expected, the quality of the work becomes inconsistent. Families notice inconsistency long before leaders do, and it impacts enrollment, retention, and referrals.

Delayed follow-through

Every time a message is postponed, forgotten, or half-answered, something falls through the cracks. In this field, cracks turn into complaints, and complaints turn into lost trust.

Assumptions instead of systems

Leaders often assume people should “just know” what professionalism looks like. But professionalism is a skill set. Without clear systems—scripts, templates, processes—everyone fills in the blanks differently.

Too many communication channels

Some businesses communicate through texts, emails, group chats, notes, inbox messages, and hallway conversations. The more channels you introduce, the more confusion you create.

Communication without documentation

If something matters, it must be documented. If it is not documented, it is not real. This is where noncompliance, misalignment, and disputes begin.

When communication improves, everything improves.

Behavior. Quality. Retention. Morale. Revenue. Stability.

ECE businesses don’t fall apart because of big problems.

They fall apart because small messages weren’t communicated, clarified, or confirmed.

Where does communication break down in your business?

Home-based educators are the original early learning system. Before the creation of large centers or formal institutions, children learned in homes and community spaces. Home programs are not a side model; they are the foundation that early childhood education was built on. They are not “alternative.” They are the origin.

Home-based programs serve the majority of our youngest learners. Infants and toddlers spend the most time in home-based settings. That means leadership, policy, and funding conversations should begin with home programs. The system should start where children already are.

Home-based educators are deeply connected to families and communities. They understand what families actually need because they are part of the communities they serve. They hold cultural knowledge, language access, neighborhood awareness, and relational trust. That is leadership at the community level, practiced every day.

Home-based educators are running full-scale organizations. A home-based program owner is simultaneously the teacher, director, administrator, compliance officer, billing department, operations manager, curriculum designer, and family liaison. That is not childcare. That is executive-level management and entrepreneurship operating daily.

Home programs are built for innovation. Without layers of approval or bureaucracy, home educators can respond quickly, adapt practices, and implement changes that directly support children and families. They are learning laboratories that move faster than traditional systems.

Home-based educators kept early childhood functioning during crisis. When institutions shut down during the pandemic, home programs remained open. They provided continuity for children and stability for the national workforce. That is not support work; that is leadership in action.

High-quality learning does not require a commercial building. Accreditation, professional development, intentional curriculum, and high-quality outcomes exist in home environments every day. Excellence is created through relationships, pedagogy, and intentionality. Home-based educators prove that quality is a practice, not a location.

Here’s the truth:

Home-based educators are not the margins of early childhood education. They are the foundation. They have always been the core of care, learning, and family support. The field is only now catching up to what home programs have demonstrated for decades.

Home-based educators aren’t waiting to lead the field. They already do.

The real transformation happening today is simply recognition of a leadership reality that has existed all along.

What’s stopping you from walking in your authority and leading like the executive you already are?

This comment mattered to me because it came from an executive outside my field who applies my business guidance. That matters because it reinforces a core truth. Sound business principles are relevant in any field.

My background has always been business. When I entered early childhood education, I did not change how I thought or how I led. I applied the same discipline, structure, and decision making I brought from corporate America because the responsibility was the same. Organizations had to function. Sustainable systems had to be in place for business to endure.

Early on, that approach was not widely embraced. Many professional spaces framed owners as extensions of the service rather than executives accountable for building sustainable enterprises. I never agreed with that distinction. Experts, executives, leaders do not lose credibility because their work serves children. They carry greater responsibility to execute well.

Over time, I’ve noticed the field is evolving. Business education is now emphasized. Leadership development is expected. Sustainability is now part of the standard conversation. What was once questioned is now required.

This is why the comment resonated. When business guidance works beyond its original context, it confirms that it is rooted in fundamentals, not trends. The value is not in the field. It is in the principles.

That is the difference between offering industry specific insight and building leadership that holds under pressure, scrutiny, and scale.

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If the market changed tomorrow, would your leadership model still function?

But once I made this goal a real priority, each step moved faster than I expected. Instead of reaching my overall goal at the end of December, I reached it today. Just ten days later.

Not because it was easy.

Not because everything was perfect.

But because I decided to treat it like something that mattered every single day.

This experience reminded me that progress doesn’t always need more time, sometimes it just needs more focus.

I thought this would take a month.

It happened in ten days.

What changed wasn’t the goal it was my commitment to it.

And I’m grateful for what these ten days taught me: when you give intentional, consistent energy to something, momentum builds faster than you imagined.

What’s one goal you could transform if you treated it like a priority instead of an idea?

~ Alethea

~ Alethea