When nearly 75 business executives, non-profit leaders, and elected officials packed into the Fort William Henry Hotel’s Carriage House on Oct. 29, the discussion steered well clear of conventional regional recruitment pitches. There were no blueprints for mega-warehouses, server farms or distribution hubs.
Instead, the room took on an urgent economic challenge: child care and the survival of the towns within the “Blue Line” — the boundary defining the Adirondack Park.
Child care is no longer a private family hurdle; it is foundational economic infrastructure across the Adirondack Park. Across 6 million acres of public and private land shaped by long commutes between hamlets and strict constitutional protections, the shortage of care operates as a massive drag on our regional economy. When working families cannot secure dependable, affordable slots for their kids, they face a stark choice: pack up and leave, or never move here in the first place.
The convening, “Child Care Is Everyone’s Business: Building a Stronger Adirondack Region,” marked the public launch of an employer-backed coalition spanning Warren, Washington, Clinton, Essex and Hamilton counties. Spearheaded by the Economic Development Corporation of Warren County, and the Adirondack Community Foundation, with backing from the Rockefeller Family Fund, the initiative brings regional business owners directly to the table alongside veteran childcare providers.
The baseline reality is straightforward: Conventional market models and state allocation formulas engineered for dense suburban corridors simply do not work at an Adirondack scale.
A Broken Business Model
Kate Ryan, director of the Adirondack Birth to Three Alliance at the Adirondack Community Foundation, detailed the structural choke points during her presentation.
Unlike other businesses, child care providers can’t use standard tactics like reducing staff, increasing sales volume, downsizing space, or cutting hours,” Ryan told the room. “State licensing mandates, strict staff-to-child ratios, square footage requirements, and maximum child capacity limits make it nearly impossible for our childcare community to make these sorts of decisions.”
Across the North Country, 86% of census tracts qualify as child care deserts, where more than three children compete for every licensed opening. Compounding the squeeze, regional median household incomes sit 32% below the state average, leaving parents spending between 14.7% and 21.8% of their income on care—far outpacing the federal 7% affordability benchmark.
Meanwhile, public funding formulas penalize rural zip codes. Under New York’s Child Care Assistance Program, the average allocation across the Adirondacks sits at $591 per eligible child, compared to $1,179 statewide. In Essex County, that figure drops to $513; in Warren County, it bottoms out at just $396.
The backbone of the industry are the providers,” Ryan said. “These amazing people across the region, on average, are making just over $14 per hour, often with little benefits.”
Testing Rural Solutions on a National Stage
Lisa Guide, associate director of the Rockefeller Family Fund and a northern Warren County resident, framed the initiative not as local charity, but as a test case for rural communities across the United States.
Between 2019 and 2022, the number of regulated child care facilities here in Warren County fell 40%,” Guide said, noting the total plunged from 50 to 30. “That is about 20 places where a parent could drop off a child and go to work gone in three years. The domino effect of this is, as you all know, enormous.”
Guide compared a working household’s schedule to “a game of Jenga,” where a single hitch — a sick kid or an unavailable relative — topples the entire stack.
Previewing data from an upcoming survey of 65 North Country employers conducted by Cornell University, Guide noted that companies from hospitals and hotels to ski resorts and paper mills report substantial hits to productivity and recruitment because workers cannot find care. To back the regional effort, the Rockefeller Family Fund committed more than $500,000 across 2026 and 2027 to build out the business coalition.
Advocates and providers have sounded the alarm for years,” Guide said. “What changed is that the Adirondack Community Foundation and the regional EDCs decided to bring business leadership directly to the table and treat this as the economic imperative it is. Policymakers take notice when employers, chambers, and EDCs stand up together. And rural business voices are rare in this conversation. And that is exactly why you matter.”
If we build a business-backed child care ecosystem that works here,” she added, “it becomes a blueprint, not just for rural New York, but for rural communities across the country.”
Groundwork and Community Anchors
Jen Russell, vice president of grants and programs at the Adirondack Community Foundation, and Mary Feldman, transformational change and rural child care lead, detailed the operational legwork already underway. Over the past six months, regional organizers hosted listening sessions, brought national policy leaders including Julie Kashen and labor economist Heather Boushey into the park, and began drafting an Adirondack Child Care Toolkit with operational templates for hamlets.
Feldman pointed to community-driven initiatives already stepping into the gap, including the grass-roots child care committee in Johnsburg and Small Tales Alternative Daycare in Warrensburg, which recently expanded services into Chestertown.
Up here, your employees, your customers, and your neighbors are the same people,” Feldman said. “The parent who can’t find care somewhere is someone’s employee and someone’s customer. Our towns are built around a few anchors in this area: the bank, the health center, the gas station, the school. And when a young family can’t find care, a parent stops working or the family moves away. And every one of these anchors feels that hit.”
The Reality on the Ground
Melanie Fronhofer Weber, chair of the Warren County EDC Board of Directors, cut straight to the day-to-day tension facing working parents. Weber is the business and human resources manager at Common Roots Brewing Co. in South Glens Falls, co-owner of (g)row, a children’s boutique in Glens Falls, and the mother of three boys under 5.
Common Roots and (g)row served as the coalition’s first charter signers.
What does child care mean to your business?” Weber asked the crowd. “I truly believe that affordable, accessible child care isn’t just a family issue, that it’s an economic issue, a workforce issue, and a community issue.”
Weber shared that she nearly missed the morning’s start after her 3-year-old’s preschool teacher went into labor overnight, forcing her husband to cover morning shifts at their boutique so she could speak.
Even with all of that support, it’s not easy,” Weber said. “If navigating work and family life can be difficult when you have as much support as I do, what does it look like for the families that don’t have grandparents nearby? What if you’re a parent who can’t find an open child care spot? What if you’re the employee whose child care costs eat up so much of your paycheck that it doesn’t feel worth it to work or stay in the workforce?”
With regional hospitality, retail and tourism operating on irregular schedules, standard 9-to-5 programs fall short. Weber also addressed the disproportionate strain on female labor force participation.
When child care is unavailable or unaffordable, someone in the family has to make a decision about what comes next,” Weber said. “Unfortunately, too often that decision disproportionately falls on women. Women reduce their hours, pass up promotions, turn down opportunities, or leave the workforce altogether. … It also means our businesses are losing talented people who could be contributing to their teams and helping them grow.”
I’m not saying or suggesting that businesses are responsible for solving this entire issue,” she added. “No business, organization, or government can do it on their own. But what I’m saying is that the business community has a responsibility to be a part of the conversation and a part of the solution.”
Demanding a Structural Fix
Jim Siplon, president and CEO of Warren County EDC, took the lectern to challenge business leaders directly.
Until I stood up on this podium, it was all women talking to women,” Siplon said. “If we’re going to solve this problem, that coalition has got to grow. We have to be a part of driving our business, our knowledge, our network into this conversation, not waiting for women to solve this problem, which is all of ours.”
Siplon pointed out that while the Adirondack Park has excelled over the past 50 years at land conservation, hamlet populations and commercial cores have steadily hollowed out.
The resource allocation model for the park doesn’t work,” Siplon said. “It doesn’t work because it’s based on population density, and we made the place so it can’t have population density. … We cannot decide that a sewer system is going to be constructed on the same parameters as it is in Long Island, and the child care center has to have the same number of students that one in Buffalo does in order for it to be sustainable.”
With Albany investing historic funding into early childhood programming, Siplon emphasized that Adirondack employers must organize to ensure rural formulas reflect reality.
Child care is not its own thing; it’s the first part of our education system,” Siplon said. “Nobody questions whether or not we should invest money and put in the subsidy to make sure we have an equitable education for every student in New York. But somehow, when they’re under 5, we wonder whether or not some of them deserve it and some of them don’t. … We should lead by saying no, when that kid was born, they have the same right to success as anyone else.”
Addressing the executives in attendance, Siplon clarified the coalition’s immediate goal.
You don’t have to give any money; you don’t have to write a check,” Siplon said. “You just have to be present when we’re trying to have the conversation about how do we make this work. … When the state decides they’re going to roll out billions of dollars on something, we should be standing at the front of the line and say, ‘This is what it’s going to take to make it work in the Adirondack Park.’”
Cross-Sector Momentum
The gathering drew strong bipartisan representation, including state Sen. Dan Stec, Assemblyman Matt Simpson, Warren County Supervisors Mike Wild, Nancy Turner and Haley Gilligan, and Lake Placid Village Trustee Katie Brennan.
As coalition pledge cards were completed across the room, the consensus was clear: North Country employers cannot treat child care as an auxiliary social service while struggling with structural labor shortages. If the communities within the Adirondack Park are to thrive as year-round economies rather than hollow out, child care must be funded, scaled and defended as essential economic infrastructure.
More Information:
- For more information on the five-county initiative and regional toolkit, contact Mary Feldman, Rural Child Care Consultant, (802) 712-4374, childcare@edcwc.org
- EDC Warren County
- Adirondack Community Foundation
- Adirondack Birth to Three Alliance
