DCY Records Request · 2020–2026

Six Years of Ohio Childcare, Program by Program*

In response to a public records request, the Ohio Department of Children and Youth released licensing records for every childcare program that operated at least one day between January 1, 2020 and March 1, 2026 — 13,832 programs with license and closure dates. This page reconstructs what happened, extended to June 2026 with registry snapshots. Day camps and out-of-state registrations are excluded throughout.

← Closure Tracker What the Numbers Tell Us Interactive Map
* This analysis is preliminary. The records were received in mid-2026 and are still being analyzed; figures and interpretations on this page may be revised as the review continues.
Download the records. The spreadsheet released by DCY (public records request 0050384): program numbers, names, counties, types, statuses, license and closure dates for all 13,832 programs. Street addresses of home-based providers (Type A/B homes and in-home aides) are redacted in this copy because they are private residences; city, ZIP, and county are retained.
⬇ Download the data request (.xlsx)
−748
Facilities, Jan 2020 → Jun 12, 2026 (−8.7%): 8,585 → 7,837
−152
Mar 10 → Jun 12, 2026 alone — the steepest sustained slide outside spring 2020
−31%
Type B family homes since Jan 2020 (2,301 → 1,579)
4,216
Centers on Jun 12 — down 83 from the Nov 2025 peak after five years of growth

Open facilities — monthly, extended to June 12, 2026

Line: reconstructed from the records request’s license and closure dates. Dots: live registry snapshot counts (Mar–Jun 2026). The two sources agree within 0.5% where they overlap.

Change by facility type (indexed, Jan 2020 = 100)

The six-year decline is home-based and school-age care; centers grew until late 2025. Program-type renames across eras are normalized. Dots extend each line with registry snapshots through Jun 12.

Openings vs closings by quarter, statewide

Openings are seasonal (Q3 peaks with the school year). Outside the 2020 pandemic shock (Q3 2020, net −123), the two worst quarters on record are 2025 Q4 (−80) and 2025 Q2 (−78) — and 2026 Q1 was already −57 with only January and February counted.

Centers deep dive

Licensed child care centers were the system’s growth engine — adding capacity while family homes disappeared. That engine stalled in late 2025.
+68
Best center quarter on record: 2025 Q3 (164 opened) — immediately before the reversal
−36
Net centers 2025 Q4 + 2026 Q1 (Jan–Feb) — the worst two consecutive quarters since 2020
5.2 yrs
Median age of centers closing in 2026, down from 8.9 yrs in 2020 — failures are getting younger
~1 in 5
Centers opened 2020–2023 that closed within 24 months

Open centers, monthly — extended to June 12, 2026

Centers climbed from 4,116 (Jan 2020) to a peak of , then turned down. Registry dots show the slide continuing through spring 2026: 4,255 (Mar 10) → 4,216 (Jun 12).

Center openings vs closings by quarter

Center openings surged 2022–2025 (2025 Q3: 164 opened, the most in the data). Then openings collapsed — 61 in 2025 Q4 and just 34 in Jan–Feb 2026 — while closings stayed elevated. The reversal is an openings problem as much as a closings problem.

Age of closing centers

Median age at closure, by closure year. 2020 skewed old (established programs lost to the pandemic); the recent wave skews young.

Two-year survival by opening cohort

Share of newly opened centers that closed within 24 months. 2024 cohort is partial (only Jan–Feb 2024 openers have had a full 24 months).

Where centers grew and shrank (net open centers, Jan 2020 → Mar 2026)

Growth is concentrated in the large metros; losses are spread across mid-size and Appalachian counties. Butler County is the notable metro-adjacent loser.

The 2024 grant cohort

A large 2024 state grant program, funded with COVID relief dollars, subsidized new center openings. The centers it brought in are failing at roughly twice the normal rate.
761
Centers opened Jan 2024 – Feb 2026, the fastest entry pace in the data (342 in 2024, 385 in 2025)
138
Already gone by Jun 12, 2026 (18%) — a floor, since DCY takes ~13 months to formalize abandoned licenses
2×
12-month failure rate of 2024–25 openers vs the 2022–23 baseline (15–20% vs 5–11%)
328
Of the 623 survivors, more than half are still on provisional licenses

Share of new centers closing within 12 months, by opening quarter

Each bar is a cohort of newly licensed centers, followed for exactly 12 months (only fully observed cohorts shown, through 2025 Q1). The failure rate breaks upward at exactly 2024 Q1 and stays elevated for every grant-era quarter.

The November 2025 payment change

A change to full-time/part-time reimbursement in Publicly Funded Child Care (PFCC) took effect in November 2025. The records don’t include full/part-time status directly, so the test below compares programs with and without a PFCC agreement (flag as of a Mar 26, 2025 registry snapshot) — the non-PFCC group doubles as a seasonal control.

Monthly closure rate: PFCC vs non-PFCC centers

Through October the two groups closed at nearly identical rates (Apr–Oct average: 6.7 vs 6.3 per 1,000/month). From November on they split in every month: non-PFCC centers eased into a winter lull (4.4) while PFCC centers rose to 7.5 — about 70% higher, 68 closures where the non-PFCC trend predicts ~40. Type A homes show the same post-November break (small sample); Type B homes were already in crisis all year, so no break is visible for them.

Method notes. A program’s operating span runs from its earliest license date to its operational end date — the earlier of its temporary-closure and formal closure dates, since DCY system-closes a license ~13 months after a temporary closure while the program has already left the registry. Reconstructed counts were validated against four registry snapshots (within 0.5%). Spring-2020 pandemic temporary closures that later reopened are invisible here, so the 2020 dip is understated. 2026 extension points come from registry snapshots (Mar 10–Jun 12, 2026). Age-at-closure and cohort figures use the records request only (through Mar 1, 2026); 22 of 12,633 records lacked usable dates and were dropped. Grant-cohort “gone by Jun 12” counts also treat disappearance from the Jun 12 registry as closure. The PFCC comparison joins a Mar 26, 2025 snapshot’s PFCC flag to the records’ closure dates; programs may have joined or left PFCC after that snapshot, and the flag measures PFCC participation, not full/part-time enrollment mix. These are observational comparisons, not proof of cause.

Source: Ohio Department of Children and Youth, public records request 0050384 (received 2026) • Download the data request (.xlsx) • Ohio Childcare Closure Tracker