ROCK SPRINGS—College took a back seat when Melody Nathan’s son was born.  She had already earned her associate’s degree, but without family help nearby, she stopped attending school to care for her newborn while her husband worked. A daughter followed, and pretty soon Nathan had been home raising her babies for five years.  When her son started kindergarten, she began considering reentering the workforce. The thought of earning a bachelor’s degree was appealing. But it felt complicated, she said. The idea of handing off her toddler daughter to strangers at a childcare facility was daunting. There was also the cost of higher education, which would be compounded by the expense of childcare at a time when she wouldn’t be earning an income. Then she found the Western Wyoming Community College Children’s Center.  “Having this place was the push I needed to feel comfortable going back to school to get my bachelor’s degree,” Nathan said.  The center has been providing subsidized on-campus preschool to the children of college students since 1975. The idea is that affordable, convenient childcare could help remove one higher-learning hurdle for student-parents in southwest Wyoming.  For people like Nathan, it did just that. Once she saw the quality care her daughter received and the center’s proximity to her classes, Nathan said, she felt confident committing.  Mother and daughter both recently graduated. Nathan with her bachelor’s degree in business organizational management, and her daughter, Maren, as a kindergarten-ready preschool alum.  While the college-run preschool has long kept prices rock-bottom for students, it’s had to increase fees over the last year as statewide property tax reductions have left it with a smaller budget. The center used to charge student-parents just $23 per credit, which totalled around $275 per semester for a full-time college student. Now, it charges student-parents $200 per month, or about $800 a semester. (Faculty and members of the public pay more). That is still a bargain compared to market rates, said Center Director Susie Young, but she worries it’s another chink in the robust student support services that have enticed many students to Western.  “These students don’t have jobs; they are trying to get an education,” she said. A cost increase of even a couple hundred dollars could be enough to make college untenable, she worries. Children’s Center Director Susie Young in a classroom at the center, which is located on the campus of Western Wyoming Community College. (Katie Klingsporn/WyoFile) “It’s just getting harder and harder to support the students,” Young said.  Around Wyoming, subsidized childcare is feeling the pinch of declining tax revenues. It’s among the downstream victims of recent state laws that reduced residential property taxes. Reductions have diminished the revenue pools that fund municipalities and special districts.  Impacts have touched everything from library budgets to park maintenance and hospitals around the state. They are also affecting subsidized childcare meant to soften the blow for parents already struggling with high costs of living or, in the case of Western, hoping to gain an education that can ensure better long-term job prospects.  These tax revenues could take a further slashing. A citizen-initiated ballot measure will ask voters this fall to create a new 50% homeowner’s tax exemption. If it passes, revenues that fund fire departments, community colleges and county municipalities will dwindle further.   “If the tax cut passes, our revenue will go down. That’s just an absolute,” said Mark Rembacz, Western Wyoming Community College interim vice president of student services. “We’ll have to make a decision as an institution where that reduction falls, whether it be the children’s center or the swimming pool or our athletic programs.” Not just daycare Hot days occasionally force the center to hold summer recess indoors, but a cloudy sky kept temperatures down on a Wednesday afternoon in July. A group of preschoolers bounded around the playground equipment, shrieking and taking laps on the slide.  The center accepts children ages 2-5, and had about 65 enrolled during the spring semester. They are divided into classrooms based on age: “bunnies,” “bears” and “turtles.” Young, the center’s sole full-time staffer, employs lead teachers for each classroom along with several aides.  The center aims to create kindergarten-ready students. The young pupils learn the basics of phonics and numbers; they practice motor skills and work on independence and sharing; and they learn colors and shapes. Miniature tables, bright rugs, bookshelves and alphabet charts occupy its rooms. Students store their belongings in cubbies at Western Wyoming Community College Children’s Center in Rock Springs in July 2026. (Katie Klingsporn/WyoFile) For most of its history, the center only served college students and faculty. It opened spots to the public last year as part of its effort to raise extra revenue. The public rate is $800 per month.  Karen Dickson, who the students call “Miss Karen,” first encountered the center decades ago as a parent. She had moved to Rock Springs, where her husband’s employer allowed him to earn his associate’s degree at Western. After hearing about the childcare benefit, she enrolled her kids and was impressed. Dickson took an aide position in 1989, worked for 35 years as a bunnies teacher and now fills in.    When her she came aboard, the center was free for college students. “So many moms got to go to college, and we got so many nurses through our nursing school, because we took their kids,” Dickson said. “This is a really special place.” Rembacz and Young agreed that the center makes programs like nursing — which is very time intensive — possible for many student-parents.   “If this service was not here,” he said, “we would have people who would not be able to attend school.”  Revenue sources Western Wyoming gets funding from three buckets, Rembacz explained. The first is student tuition, which the school strives to keep as low as possible. The second is Legislature-appropriated state revenue, and the third is local tax funded by the mill levy.  “The mill levy for us is the largest portion of our funding,” he said.  Western administrators realized funding declines would follow a 2025 tax exemption law, and made some “really hard financial decisions,” Rembacz said. That included a reduction in force and an assessment of ancillary programs. Administrators eliminated the volleyball program and reworked the children’s center, raising student fees and opening to the public.   To alleviate the burden, Young obtained grant funding to help students with tuition costs for their kids. The added support was fantastic, she said, but grants aren’t a guaranteed permanent solution.  Currently, Rembacz said, the college is working to understand how the ballot initiative could further impact the bottom line: “How much revenue do we stand to lose, and what are the things that we’re going to have to eliminate in order to make up that shortfall?” It’s a tricky balance, he said. Administrators want to make the community college as affordable as possible. Higher enrollment means a more educated population and creates a highly coveted workforce of nurses and industrial manufacturers, he said. But when tax revenues ebb, something has to give.  “And so we want to be mindful of every dollar that we ask for from students,” he said.  Filling a desperate need Part of the grant funding Young secured came from the Wyoming Women’s Foundation, which works to expand opportunities for women and girls. The organization is keeping close tabs on the way tax policy is impacting services like subsidized childcare, said Associate Director of Policy Micah Richardson.  “I don’t know if everyone’s understanding the ripple effects to businesses and families,” she said. If future tax-reduction measures pass, she added, services like subsidized childcare are likely to be among “one of the first things on the chopping block.” The Children’s Center isn’t the only place feeling the squeeze.  Sublette BOCES Early Education Program, commonly known as BEEP, is an early education and childcare center in Pinedale. The program started years ago as part of a program to train educators, Executive Director Robin Schamber said, but “it was also filling a desperate [childcare] need in our community,” particularly for infants.   It’s a race down the slide at Western Wyoming Community College Children’s Center in Rock Springs in July 2026. (Katie Klingsporn/WyoFile) Today, BEEP cares for infants through preschool-aged children, with a capacity of about 50. It’s popular, but in recent years a double whammy of plunging oil-and-gas mineral revenues and decreasing property tax collections has shrunk its budget.  “It has been a drastic impact for us, and we’re rethinking the way we’re doing things now,” Schamber told WyoFile in June. “We’ve raised prices on parents, which was not popular at all.”  The situation is a double-edged sword, she said. High property taxes also strain residents’ budgets and contribute to the region’s high cost of living, so she understands the intent behind lowering them. She also understands that in tough times, tough decisions have to be made.  Back at Western Wyoming, nursing school student and mother of three Madisen Danzl reflected on the value of the Children’s Center. She enrolled her youngest in the preschool after the death of her own mother, who had long helped care for her grandchildren. That freed her up to focus on classes without the burden of market-rate childcare. “I don’t think I could be able to go to school, honestly, without it,” Danzl said. The post Wyoming property tax cuts ripple down to childcare appeared first on WyoFile . ...read more read less