Then, opportunity knocked.
Recruited by Julie Warner, an early childhood consultant for the city who had once been a family childcare provider herself, Gehlen-Wampler opened her Shining Stars family childcare home in Medicine Lodge Daycare, a model that could reshape childcare in rural communities.
The Medicine Lodge Daycare flex-plex is a cluster of small, fully equipped childcare businesses in a mainstreet building. Crucially, although Medicine Lodge Daycare occupies a commercial space in the heart of downtown, the building was renovated into five separate rooms with separate entrances and outside playgrounds ideal for five independent family childcare providers, each caring for a small group of mixed-age infants and toddlers.
“That’s where the innovation is,” said City Administrator Brian Withrow. The space, owned by a non-profit, complies with state regulations for childcare centers, but is occupied by licensed family childcare providers who don’t need to meet the more rigorous standards for childcare center administrators.
Through a mix of local, state, and federal grants, the town also paid for furniture, curriculum materials, licensing support, and even the first year of liability insurance. “It’s the only way I could have opened,” Gehlen-Wampler said. “Here I also have a supportive community of other providers to turn to. This opportunity has truly been life-changing for my family.”
It’s also been life-changing for the town’s businesses and families, said city councilman Matt Forsyth. “What it means for downtown is huge. It keeps Main Street alive in a small town where most main streets are dying. I’m a business owner myself. I’ve had trouble finding spots for my own kids, and this is going to allow everybody to have a spot for their children and know that they’re well taken care of in this great facility.”
A Housing Model That Works for Child Care—and for Rural Economies
The “plex” concept seems simple: Build or convert small homes—typically one- or two-bedroom units—and lease them at below-market rates to licensed family childcare providers. In reality, implementing the concept is more complicated. States have different regulations for and even definitions of family childcare; many explicitly or implicitly require that family childcare providers live in the residence where they care for children.
Kansas is one of just seven states (the others are Alaska, Missouri, Idaho, Mississippi, Nevada, and Wisconsin) that allow family childcare providers to operate in non-residential settings such as schools, businesses, or hospitals, according to Opportunities Exchange, a non-profit working to transform early education programs so that they can be sustainable and also high quality. This allowance paved the way for the state to allow the Medicine Lodge businesses to operate under family childcare licenses with fewer restrictions than those regulating larger childcare centers.
A center has to have a director who doesn’t care for kids, multiple teachers, commercial insurance, and expensive building upgrades like sprinkler systems, according to Julie Lyon, a consultant who helped shepherd the development of a childcare triplex in nearby Greensburg, Kansas. “It’s cost-prohibitive for a small town,” Lyon said.
By contrast, Greensburg’s three single-family units cost $417,028 in total to build. The city of Greensburg and its partners used American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars, grants from regional foundations and the childcare coalition, and local development funds to cover construction, sidewalks, playgrounds, furnishings, and materials.
An added bonus: If the community someday needs more housing instead of childcare, each unit could be converted to a rental home, increasing the town’s affordable housing stock.
A New Business with Work-Life Balance
For Kasha Unruh, a mother of three and longtime caregiver, the flex plex model was the only viable path to opening a licensed family childcare home.
Her mortgage agreement prevents running a business in her own home. But in October 2025, with support from Lyon and the city, she opened her family childcare program in the Greensburg triplex. She now cares for seven children—including two of her own—and because the program isn’t in her actual home, enjoys a work-life balance that is rare for home-based childcare providers.
After a city rent subsidy, Unruh pays just $300 a month for the space. She covers her own insurance, utilities, and licensing fees, while the nonprofit owner handles building maintenance and ensures the facility meets licensing requirements. The lower overhead lets her keep childcare affordable: less than $150 per week per child—far below the U.S. average.
Shared Community, Shared Costs, Shared Solutions
One of the biggest advantages of placing multiple providers together is the built-in community.
In both Medicine Lodge and Greensburg, providers can collaborate on vacation schedules, hire a shared substitute teacher for the day, and use the same research-based multi-age curriculum designed by a retired local educator.
The towns also offer backend administrative support—something typically available only in larger commercial centers. Consultants help providers write business plans, file taxes, and develop sustainable operating strategies.
Lyon manages a provider substitute pool that serves the whole county and has become a recruitment tool to bolster the childcare supply. Two of the three substitutes she hired later opened their own home-based childcare businesses.
To encourage long-term stability, the local economic development commission also created a $5,000 retention bonus for providers who keep their businesses open beyond the first year. Ninety percent of recipients spent the money on critical business needs like insurance, transportation, and building repairs, according to Lyon.
Micro-Centers are the “Right Size” for Many Communities
While the flex plex model is working well in Kansas, another small-scale childcare model allows greater flexibility and possibility, said Louise Stoney, the co-founder of Opportunities Exchange. “If you want childcare supply in rural areas, we have to think differently, and we have to think small, and we have to make small possible,” she said.
Micro-centers, like flex plexes, are operated by family childcare providers caring for small groups of up to 30 children in mixed-age classrooms. But, they operate in commercial spaces, often spaces that are provided free-of-charge by an employer, city, or housing development. The model is based on Chambliss Center for Children in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which operates 24-hour care serving infants through 12-year olds in microcenters located in local schools.
“The most essential thing for sustainability for a childcare program is full enrollment every day, every seat,” according to Stoney. To achieve that in small towns, it needs to be regulated the way family childcare programs are – allowing for mixed ages of children and not requiring a supervising teacher with an advanced degree. Stoney has worked with policy makers in places like North Dakota and Indiana to “rightsize” their licensing, zoning regulations, even building and fire codes to allow family childcare providers to expand into microcenters that operate outside their own homes and closer to where people work.
In Indiana, the Office of Early Childhood and Out-of-School Learning (OECOSL), streamlined its licensing categories to support a Micro-Facility Pilot program that launched in early 2025. Six existing childcare centers applied to open smaller satellites in rural or small town libraries, schools, and shopping centers. The new regulations are tailored to smaller settings; they allow children to bring their own lunches and snacks, support mixed-age groups, and draw on the resources of the larger micro-facility hub for staffing and administrative support.
Child Care That Fits Families, Providers, and Employers
Several small towns in rural Minnesota, which allows family childcare providers to operate a business outside of their own homes (though not in commercial spaces), are building flex plexes, or “childcare pods” as they call them.
One consulting firm, The Business of Childcare, even offers communities a pre-fabricated childcare home designed specifically for family providers. For about $288,000, said President Jeff Andrews, towns get a home built to licensing standards and a turnkey support package: project management, operator recruitment, communications, and onboarding until the provider is fully licensed.
Andrews’ vision aligns closely with Stoney’s micro-center model. Whether a community needs a single childcare house or a micro-center serving 30 kids with three or four staff depends on the scale of childcare needs and accommodation outside of the provider’s own residence, but both can provide mixed-age, family-like settings.
Furthermore, Andrews pointed out, a manufacturing site that operates two or three shifts would really benefit from a nearby childcare facility that is open 24-7. Three family childcare providers could all operate out of the same childcare house, serving parents who work non-traditional hours as well as the 9-to-5ers. That could help alleviate the chronic shortage of workers that manufacturing plants in rural areas often face.
The smaller mixed-age setting of family childcare is also preferred by many families, especially those with infants or multiple children in daycare. It is often “the most familiar, flexible, convenient, personal, and affordable option for families,” according to Home Grown, a funding collaborative that advocates for home-based care.
It’s also an option that works for aspiring childcare providers like Brooke Garvey, in Mapleton, Minnesota. The support she received from The Business of Childcare and the town finally made her long-held goal attainable, she said. Her business, Tiny Roots Childcare, located right on Main Street, will serve up to ten children, including her infant and toddler.
“Quality childcare should feel like a second home,” Garvey said. “I want parents to feel their kids are safe, growing, and connected to the community. I want to be part of the parades, the town days, everything.”
For her—and for employers and families in Mapleton—that’s a dream come true.
This story first appeared in The Daily Yonder. Read the original here.
