BLOOMINGTON -- Liliana Garcia Aguirre is an inquisitive, active 3-year-old, who spends her time in the playground of Kid's Club East searching for cicada shells, serving pretend food from the playhouse and encouraging those around her to "come on" and join her.
Her mother, April Gyorkos, said Liliana's time at Kid's Club East, 2708 E. Lincoln St., Bloomington, has helped her grow socially as she learns her colors, numbers and alphabet.
Gyorkos, who works in the finance department at State Farm Insurance Cos., is a single mom and among many parents who would have seen their day care subsidies eliminated if the state budget cuts announced earlier this summer had come to pass. She and other working parents were informed by their children's day care centers recently that state funding had been restored to last year's levels.
"It would have been devastating to our whole community," said June Davis, executive director of Kid's Club East and Bloomington Day Care Center, referring to the 50-to-80 percent cuts.
"Hundreds of families in McLean County no longer have to worry about what will happen to their children," said Lisa Pieper, regional vice president of Children's Home + Aid Children's Foundation, which runs the Scott Early Learning Center in Bloomington. "We averted a lot of potential problems when the funding was restored."
State subsidies help to pay for day care costs for qualifying, low-income parents to provide quality child care for their children so the parents can continue working. Parents pay a portion of day care costs based on their income; Gyorkos pays $49 a week.
Children's Foundation responded to the earlier state announcement on July 17 by closing four of the 14 classrooms at Scott Early Learning Center, laying off six staff members and reducing its number of families served from 75 to 55.
The reinstatement of funding by the state is "a huge relief," Pieper said. "We got word out to the families that their day care is no longer in jeopardy" and the vacant staff positions are being refilled, she said.
Davis estimated that half - or about 50 - of the families at Bloomington Day Care and Kid's Club East would have lost their child care subsidies, meaning many of them would have had to place their children in substandard child care or would have had to stay home with their children, meaning the parent would have quit work.
Davis figured she would have to lay off 20 of her 50 employees and close one of the two day care centers but opted to not take action until a final funding decision was made by the state.
Also holding off was Dana David, executive director of Milestones Early Learning Center and Preschool, Bloomington. Fifty-five of Milestones' 76 children are on a day-care subsidy.
"We decided that without state dollars, we could stay open for 60 days by operating on our reserves, so we decided to wait (on cuts) while we came up with an alternative plan for our families," David said. "Thankfully, we didn't need to come up with an alternative."
Among people on edge during the summer was Gyorkos, who said she needs subsidized day care so she can continue to work. If the subsidy had been cut, Gyorkos said she could not have afforded in-home day care, which is twice the cost of what she is paying at Kid's Club. She might have returned to Peoria where Liliana could be closer to her father and his parents.