Aurora daycare center closing amid state funding lag

AURORA, Ill. (WLS) -- After 42 years, the Aurora Child Development Center is closing due to a lack of state funding.

The center has been the daytime home of 63 children ages 6 weeks to 5 years - the sons and daughters of low income parents.

The center is reliant on roughly $35,000 a month from the state's Child Care Assistance Program. Those payments are so far behind, January's subsidy won't be here until April. This center can wait no more.

"We're a not for profit and we've survived paycheck to paycheck for many years. Obviously now we can't. Just can't make it," said Laurie Sugg, Aurora Child Development Center director.

The closing means parents will have to find other child care options - most of which are more expensive.

"This is going to be happening on a massive scale around this state," said Maria Whelan, president of Illinois Action for Children.

Child care experts forewarn that the Aurora Center closing is just the beginning.

"We need a supplemental budget approved in the next three weeks or we will see the infrastructure of Illinois child care implode," Whelan said.

While legislators are aware, they haven't found a way to fund a child care shortfall of tens of millions of dollars, and the clock is ticking. But time has run out for Vicky Eledezma, who's been a part of the Aurora Center almost from its start.

"For 40 years I've been doing this. I just stop for vacations when I could afford it and now I don't know what I'll be doing," Eledezma said.

Fourteen staffers are losing their jobs, though their greater concern is for the kids they've come to love and their parents who now must pursue new child care at higher cost.

"I'm a single mom with three children myself, so I lose my job today too, and that's real," Sugg said.