By Annie O’Neill EDITORIAL INTERN
A new market analysis, presented at a recent Big Sky Resort Area District resort tax board meeting, confirms what many parents in town already suspected: childcare in Big Sky costs far more than families can comfortably afford, and the providers trying to close that gap are stretched about as thin as they can go.
The Big Sky Child Care Market Analysis: Costs, Capacity, and Workforce Impacts, prepared by the Northern Rocky Mountain Economic Development District and released in June 2026, updates a 2023 study with new survey data, provider information and cost modeling. It draws on 426 household responses to a 2026 regional survey, along with Census Bureau data, state licensing records and local provider operations.
To understand what that means on the ground, Explore Big Sky spoke with Mariel Butan, the executive director at Morningstar Learning Center, one of the community’s longest-running child care providers.
Fewer residents, more jobs
Since the 2023 report, Big Sky’s resident population has declined and gotten older, even as the number of jobs in town has grown by 88%. Nearly 23% of people employed in Big Sky actually live here, and the report says childcare demand can no longer be treated as just a local problem: providers are serving a workforce commuting in from Bozeman, the Gallatin Canyon and beyond.
Morningstar was built around an assumption of a growing local population. “That was the idea,” Butan said. “And then our population kind of stopped growing and started shrinking in the last couple of years.”
What care actually costs
The regional median out-of-pocket cost for childcare is $1,350 a month, nearly double the monthly benchmark of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services considers affordable. The strain shows up in the workforce data: 35% of households with children say care issues have directly affected someone’s ability to work, 22% report a parent temporarily leaving a job over care gaps and 63% of non-working caregivers say they’d return to work immediately if care were available. On average, an affected household loses about $7,500 a year in labor value.
Morningstar’s own numbers tell a more hopeful, albeit more complicated version of that story. Its need-based tuition assistance program, TAP, has run for five years, capping what families pay at 7% to 10% of gross household income. Last academic year, families paid an average of just $863 a month, well under the regional median.
That balance shifted last year when Gallatin River Child Care opened, backed by a subsidy from Lone Mountain Land Company that caps tuition at or under $1,350 a month for every family, regardless of income. For higher earners, that flat rate often beats Morningstar’s sliding scale.
“That theory of families who can pay more paying more has kind of backfired,” Butan said, “because they don’t enroll at Morningstar anymore.”
The share of Morningstar families qualifying for assistance jumped to 85%, and the center lowered its own tuition to stay realistic for the community.
Capacity isn’t the constraint, sustainability is
Licensed childcare capacity has actually expanded in Big Sky since 2023, and more providers have entered the market. The report argues the real constraint is provider sustainability: staffing shortages, operational hurdles like housing and regulation and waitlists that persist even when licensed slots sit empty.
Morningstar hasn’t had a waitlist in over a year and now has more capacity than demand. What’s harder to solve are structural issues like sick-child policies and non-traditional hours that simply aren’t financially viable in a town this small.
“It’s like we just can’t afford to provide services if we don’t have a critical mass of people enrolled in them,” Butan said. “That’s a huge money loser in a system that’s already notorious for being a money loser.”
The true cost of running a licensed program, personnel, facilities, administration, materials, reserves, routinely outpaces what tuition, subsidies, and grants can cover. Many Morningstar teachers still work second jobs to close that gap.
“For every person who says teachers are heroes, there’s someone else who asks why our costs are so high, and frequently it’s the same person saying both,” Butan said. “Families can’t afford to pay more. Teachers can’t afford to get paid less. So that gap has to get filled somehow.”
Where the report goes from here
Butan has testified in Helena during past legislative sessions in support of bills aimed at strengthening childcare funding across Montana, not just in Big Sky. She also helped convene a local group of educators and providers who meet regularly to coordinate on gaps in the system. Morningstar collects testimonials from families each year as part of its tuition assistance applications, which the center also uses in grant reporting.
“We simply couldn’t afford to live and work here if one of us had to stop working to cover childcare,” one family wrote. Another said tuition assistance had been “essential for our family, allowing us to live and work in Big Sky,” and that without it, they would have faced decisions that could have limited the care and opportunities available to their kids.
“There are a lot of people who tell us straight up that without Morningstar, without tuition assistance, they would have to leave their job, which is synonymous with having to leave Big Sky,” Butan said.
Butan described childcare funding as a cycle that can move in either direction depending on investment. “It’s a broken financial model,” she said. “But if you just invest in it, you can turn this vicious cycle into a virtuous one.”
