She Couldn’t Afford to Keep Her Teachers. She Also Couldn’t Afford to Lose Them.

How a state Work Share program let her cut payroll costs without losing a single staff member.

The Short Version:

Teachers Retained — Zero Laid Off

20%

Hours Reduced Per Teacher

$5,500/mo

Monthly Payroll Relief While Center Recovered

Meet the Client

A licensed child care center owner built her program over several years — carefully hiring and developing a team of eight teachers she trusted and her families loved. Then enrollment dropped. A new center opened nearby, a few families relocated, and within two months her classrooms went from full to noticeably empty. Revenue fell. Payroll didn’t.

She came to Honest Buck with a problem she had been losing sleep over: she couldn’t sustain her current payroll at reduced enrollment, but laying off teachers felt like dismantling everything she had built. She had seen what happened to centers that cut staff during slow periods — when enrollment bounced back, they couldn’t find qualified teachers, classrooms sat empty longer than necessary, and the quality families noticed. She needed a third option.

The Real Cost of Losing Teachers You Trust

The child care industry faces one of the most persistent workforce challenges in any service sector. Qualified, licensed teachers with experience — particularly lead teachers with strong family relationships — are genuinely difficult to replace. When centers lay off teachers during slow periods, those teachers do not wait. They find other positions, leave the field, or start families of their own. When enrollment recovers, the center faces a hiring process that can take months, generates thousands of dollars in recruitment, onboarding, and training costs per hire, and often ends with less experienced staff than what was lost.

This owner understood that intuitively. What she didn’t know was that the state offered a program specifically designed for this exact situation — one that would let her temporarily reduce teacher hours, lower her payroll costs, and have the state pay her teachers partial unemployment benefits for the hours they weren’t working.

“I was trying to figure out which teachers to let go. That felt awful. When Honest Buck told me there was a way to keep all of them and still cut my payroll costs, I didn’t believe it at first.”

Our Approach: The State Work Share Program

Honest Buck identified that the center qualified for the state’s Work Share program — also known as Short-Time Compensation (STC) — a federally authorized unemployment benefit alternative that allows employers to temporarily reduce employee hours instead of conducting layoffs. Under the program, employees whose hours are reduced receive partial unemployment benefits from the state to offset their lost wages. The employer pays less in payroll; the employees stay whole (or close to it); and no one loses their job.

Step 1 — Assess Eligibility and Design the Plan

Honest Buck reviewed the center’s payroll, current hours, and enrollment situation to confirm she qualified and to help determine the right hours reduction. Federal law requires reductions between 10% and 60% of normal weekly hours. Together, we landed on a 20% reduction — enough to meaningfully lower payroll costs while keeping teachers close to full-time hours and keeping the center staffed for the enrollment that remained.

Step 2 — Prepare the Work Share Application

Honest Buck helped the owner prepare the Work Share plan application for submission to the state unemployment agency — walking her through the required documentation: the affected employee group, the proposed hours reduction, and the employer certification that health insurance and retirement benefits would be maintained throughout the plan period. The owner submitted the application directly to the state, which approved the plan within approximately three weeks.

Step 3 — Communicate the Program to Teachers

Once the plan was approved, the owner communicated the program directly to her teachers. Honest Buck provided a plain-language explanation she could share with her team: they would work 20% fewer hours, receive 80% of their normal wages from the employer, and receive 20% of their regular unemployment benefit amount from the state — partially offsetting the reduction in their take-home pay. Each teacher applied for unemployment benefits and filed their own weekly certifications with the state as required.

Step 4 — Manage Payroll and Exit the Program

The owner managed the day-to-day operations of the reduced schedule and handled the ongoing employer certifications with the state directly. Honest Buck continued to manage payroll to ensure hours and wages were reported accurately throughout the plan period. When enrollment recovered four months later, the owner worked with the state to restore teachers to full hours and close out the plan — with the entire team intact and ready to go.

How the Numbers Worked

Here is how the Work Share program affected a representative teacher on the center’s staff — a lead teacher earning $20/hour, working 40 hours per week:

	Without Work Share (Layoff)	With Work Share (20% Reduction)
Hours Worked Per Week	0 (laid off)	32
Wages Paid by Employer	$0	$640/week
State Unemployment Benefits	Full weekly benefit	20% of weekly benefit amount
Teacher Still Employed?	No	Yes ✓
Benefits Maintained?	Typically lost	Yes — required by program ✓
Weekly Employer Payroll Cost	$0 (but teacher is gone)	$640 (down from $800)

Across all 8 teachers: The 20% hour reduction saved the center approximately $1,280/week — or $5,500/month — in payroll costs during the four-month enrollment recovery period. Total payroll relief over the life of the plan: ~$22,000. Total teachers lost: zero.

The Results

The center sustained its full teaching staff through the enrollment dip and exited the Work Share program four months later with all eight teachers still in place. When enrollment recovered — and it did — she had a fully staffed, experienced team ready on day one. There was no scramble to rehire, no gap in classroom coverage, and no families lost because of staffing shortages during the transition back to full capacity.

Her teachers appreciated the transparency. Rather than worrying about layoffs, they received a clear explanation of what the program was, how their pay would work, and what the plan was going forward. Several later told her it was one of the reasons they stayed in early childhood education rather than leaving the field.

“When enrollment came back, I had my whole team. No one left. No one had to be replaced. That was worth everything. I didn’t lose a single person I had spent years building a relationship with.”

What Most Center Owners Don’t Know

Work Share programs are federally authorized and available in most states, but most small business owners — and many accountants — have never heard of them. They are administered through state unemployment agencies and are specifically designed to prevent layoffs, not reward them. The program costs the employer nothing in additional taxes beyond normal unemployment insurance contributions, and it requires no attorney, no lengthy application process, and no ongoing cost beyond the compliance filings.

For a child care center owner facing a temporary enrollment dip, it is one of the most powerful and least-used tools available. You do not have to choose between your budget and your team.

Is Your Center Going Through an Enrollment Dip Right Now?

If you are cutting hours, considering layoffs, or trying to figure out how to make payroll through a slow season, there may be a state program that can help you bridge the gap — without losing the team you worked so hard to build. Honest Buck can review your situation and tell you whether a Work Share plan is right for your center.

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