A child care center in Bar Harbor will close two years after it opened with help from $250,000 in federal funding, as child care options across the state diminish and become increasingly unaffordable.
The Island of Imagination Early Learning Center at the Jackson Laboratory will close on Dec. 31, it informed families this week. The building is owned by the Jackson Laboratory and operated by Down East Family YMCA.
The child care center decided to close because it was losing more money than it could bring in, and it was “not sustainable for the organization,” said Matt Montgomery, CEO of Down East Family YMCA.
There has been a decade-long trend of closures of small, family-run daycares across the state but not as many closures of large child care centers like the one at the Jackson Laboratory, said Rita Furlow, a senior policy analyst with the Maine Children’s Alliance.
The number of licensed family-run child care facilities in Maine dropped to 637 last year, down from 1,029 in 2015, according to the Kids Count Data Center. Larger child care centers increased to 776, up from 738.
Furlow was surprised to hear about the Bar Harbor center closing after so much had been invested in the facility.
Across Maine, child care operators are struggling to find staff, Furlow said, because families can’t afford higher rates, which makes it difficult for operators to increase wages.
“The government has to figure out how to support this sector because it’s really just not working,” she said.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Maine Jobs and Recovery Plan distributed $15 million in federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act to support child care projects across the state. This funding was critical, Furlow said, and without it there would have been “mass closings.”
These funds helped the Island of Imagination Early Learning Center open in January 2024. It received $250,000 in ARPA funds for startup efforts related to outfitting the roughly $5 million facility and onboarding staff, Montgomery said.
There clearly was demand. Before breaking ground on the new facility in 2022, there were 143 people already on the waitlist, according to the Bangor Daily News.
After opening, however, the child care center faced unforeseen challenges related to staffing and the expansion of public pre-kindergarten options, Montgomery said. The center is licensed for 54 kids, but the most it had this year was 24.
That number dropped to 13 this fall after multiple preschool students switched to public pre-K options. Montgomery said they have found space for the remaining enrolled kids at other child care centers in Bar Harbor and Ellsworth.
Montgomery said the center also faced more staffing challenges than predicted. The center increased pay to a starting wage that ranged between $17 and $19 an hour, with additional travel stipends, but it still lost employees to jobs in the service industry, he said.
“Staffing in childcare, those challenges are not unique to Bar Harbor. They’re not unique to Hancock County or even Maine,” Montgomery said. “We’re part of the national YMCA, and it’s a major issue across the nation right now.”
Demand for support seems to be growing. Furlow said there is a waitlist for the first time in almost 10 years for the state’s Child Care Affordability Program, which helps income-eligible, working families afford child care.
There are currently families on a waitlist for the Bar Harbor center, but Montgomery said most of them are for infants or expectant mothers. Due to ratio requirements, he said the center loses money on infant care and would have to charge much higher rates to make them profitable.
“We might have been able to open two or three more infant rooms if we had the staff for it, [but] you’re not breaking even on those rooms, so it would have just been losing more money,” he said.
When asked if Jackson Laboratory could have bailed out the center, Montgomery said the lab has already been “generous” in efforts to build the center and recruit staff.
In a statement, Jackson Laboratory said the closure reflects broader challenges facing child care centers related to rising operational costs, staffing shortages and the expiration of federal and state relief funding.
“Despite efforts by [Down East Family YMCA] to address these challenges, including expanded recruitment and operational adjustments, continuing operations proved unsustainable,” a spokesperson said.
Jackson Laboratory added that it will start a process to find a new operator for the center.
Down East Family YMCA operates other child care centers across Hancock County, and Montgomery said they have no plans to close other locations.
“The closing of the Bar Harbor center is devastating to us. It’s not something that we wanted to do, but it’s not a sign of things to come for us,” he said. “Unfortunately, that center was pulling too many resources away from what we’re doing throughout the rest of Hancock County.”
Child care is at risk across the state, Montgomery said. He encouraged people to talk to their legislators about increasing support for early childhood education staff.
“There needs to be some rallying behind that,” he said.
