Inside the death of a rural day care

TIPTON ADAPTIVE DAYCARE IS STILL FILLED WITH COLORFUL plastic chairs, butterfly-adorned cubbies, and star mobiles dangling above cribs. But the classrooms were mostly empty in mid-August as the owner of the Tipton, Iowa, childcare center prepared to close her business permanently after more than seven years. “I gave up,” says Deborah VanderGaast, the director and founder.

At the heart of VanderGaast’s struggle is a problem of basic economics. Even before the pandemic, Tipton