Finding day care for young children in Kitsap County is challenging; providing that day care is even more so. Starting this year, getting a program off the ground will get a little easier.
At the end of December, Kitsap leaders took a concrete step toward resolving a crisis of space and affordability for child care facilities in the rural parts of the county by changing the laws surrounding their zoning, with the approval of the “Year of the Rural” updates to the county Comprehensive Plan.
Both dedicated childcare centers and family home-style daycare programs will face fewer hurdles to operation on county land going forward. Without requirements like parking, minimum site areas and fencing, opportunities for childcare providers to add much-needed spaces for infant and preschool care may begin to open up, said Kitsap County Commissioner Katie Walters.
“At its core, affordable childcare is about supporting families and strengthening our community. Right now, the biggest barriers in Kitsap County are cost and availability. Childcare is simply too expensive for many parents, and there are too few options to meet demand. That’s why it’s so important that we support childcare providers, encourage responsible expansion, and help create more spaces for safe, reliable childcare across the county,” said Walters.
But that’s just one aspect of what makes the business challenging, advocates said.
“In child care, there’s a concept of an ‘Iron Triangle’: the three parts of the triangle are cost, quality and access,” said Gary Burris, executive director of the statewide early learning advocacy group Child Care Action Council. “If you increase or decrease one part of the triangle, it impacts the other two.”
Walters explained that one of the biggest changes to child care zoning is that the facilities are now a “permitted use” of a building in the county’s rural areas, rather than a “conditional use,” which is a key distinction in zoning code. It means child care is now a valid use of property in unincorporated Kitsap, as long as the land meets the county code, rather than a use that is only allowed as an exception to zoning laws.
For childcare providers, it means they will no longer have to apply for a conditional use permit, a process required any time a building has a “change in use” (i.e., a new business aims to open in the space) or a business plans an expansion, which can take about four months on average and incur permit fees between $5,500 to $8,000, per Erina Kong, Kitsap County public information officer.
In specific language, the county removed requirements mandating that childcare centers be “located and designed to serve adjacent areas,” have a minimum of 10,000 square feet on site, maintain an outdoor play area, and provide “adequate” off-street parking. Instead, childcare centers in unincorporated areas will just have to provide campus drop-off and loading spaces with a code-compliant driveway, and limit outdoor noise between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 p.m.
Additionally, family day care providers may now cap their enrollment at 12 children, and may be established in all zones where the use is allowed, provided the location complies with safety code standards.
However, rent and permits are just one part of the cost of providing child care, said Burris. Overhead, insurance, salaries for staff, supplies, funding licensing and fire marshal requirements, and general facility maintenance all add to expenses, Burris explained.
Staffing child care programs, in addition, is another point of difficulty.
“Child care is a labor-intensive career that requires staffing ratios that meet state licensing requirements for the safety of the children in their care. The younger the child is, the smaller the group size, which also requires more teachers. This is the reason the infant and toddler care is so hard to find,” Burris said.
The CCAC director explained that because infant rooms are required to have small classroom sizes with fewer students per caregiver, they are not profitable by design. Classrooms with higher student-to-caregiver ratios, usually for preschool-aged students, often subsidize the infant and toddler care rooms. When caregivers must step out for lunch, use the restroom, or call out sick, supervision of the children often falls on program directors or administrative staff.
“I don’t think that people really understand the intensity of the work these teachers and family child care providers undertake each day,” said Burris. “Because of all these challenges, most early childhood teachers make barely above minimum wage, with no benefits, while programs are seeing very little profit margin. It is challenging to keep quality staff when they can make more money almost anywhere else. This leads to programs having to close rooms or limit the children they enroll due to inability to staff them.”
Funding assistance for both programs and families falls short, which strains the whole system, Burris went on. Child care programs are not funded by the state or federal government, and state subsidies for lower-income families do not cover the total cost of care — including food, tuition, staff pay and education — so many programs face a tight budget and must take measures to maintain their bottom line.
“Many programs have a cap of the number of families they will accept using subsidies, which can be very limiting. Even if they qualify, many times families have trouble finding providers who have openings, especially for infants and toddlers,” said Burris. “Other families fall through the cracks as they make too much to qualify for this subsidy but cannot afford care out of pocket. Much of the burden of high costs rests on them as they see prices rise each year.”
The cost of childcare is prohibitive to working families in most parts of the nation, per data from the Economic Policy Institute. The federal Department of Health and Human Services places a benchmark for affordable childcare at about 7% of a family’s annual income, but there are no places in the country where that benchmark is met. Even in Mississippi, which has the cheapest cost of childcare in the nation, infant care alone is about 10% of median family income, and is doubled if a family has an infant and a four-year-old, exceeding the cost of in-state college tuition.
In places with a higher cost of living, like Washington and other coastal states, the crisis is even more stark.
The average cost of infant care in Washington is about $21,000 per year, or just under 20% of the median family income. On average, families with a baby and a preschooler can pay up to $35,000 per year, or about 1/3 of the family’s total income annually. The average Kitsap family pays about $19,300 for infant care annually, with an additional $16,200 for a child attending preschool, per data from Child Care Aware WA.
Even if a family can afford childcare, parents often struggle to enroll their student. Many daycare and childcare programs have waitlists months long. In a county with 136 childcare providers with space for 5,316 students, there were only 28 vacant spaces in Kitsap child care programs as of December 2025, per data from Child Care Aware WA.
Many areas of the county are considered “childcare deserts” by several metrics, though some areas are under greater stress than others.
The greatest squeeze is apparent in areas just outside of the county’s incorporated cities, but two zip codes stand out as “extreme childcare deserts” — meaning there are not enough child care options within the zip code, nor in adjacent zip codes. 98311, just north of Bremerton, and 98366 in Port Orchard are each in dire straits, per data from the state Department of Youth and Families.
Walters acknowledged that addressing the child care crisis in Kitsap will require a multi-pronged approach.
“Child care is essential to a strong local economy. While zoning changes help remove one barrier, expanding childcare capacity will require continued collaboration and support,” she said.
Changes to zoning, such as Kitsap’s “Year of the Rural” rollbacks, may allow some entrepreneurs to start up a child care business if they were having difficulty finding a location to build or a building to lease, Burris agreed, but he added that local leaders could lay the groundwork for new funding avenues for child care providers from the private sector.
“Some of our largest employers could afford to provide their own subsidies, which could lower costs for their employees, leading to more consistent and quality work. They could even provide childcare on site for their own workers, which would make more room in existing programs,” said Burris. “Leaders in our county could work to create relationships with these employers and have conversations about how the lack of childcare directly affects their bottom line. They likely already know but are not connected to people who do the work or know how to help.”
