Christine and Erik Wenzel recently moved to South Windsor with their two young children to shorten both of their work commutes. But their workdays, which end at 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., respectively, prevent them from being at home when their 5-year-old son, Elliot, arrives home on the bus at 3:30. The 4th “R” program would be a godsend: At roughly $300 a month, it costs half of what they currently pay for in-home day care.

But when Erik arrived at the Parks and Rec department office at 4:30 a.m. that Thursday, there were already 24 parents ahead of him in line, leaving him little chance of landing a spot. After their caregiver retired, the Wenzels spent much of the spring and summer searching for a private nanny, knowing they’d have to pay a competitive wage, given the unusual hours, inconsistent schedule, and number of parents in the town seeking a similar solution. They also paid a few thousand dollars to register Elliot for the 4th “R” morning session—a service they don’t need—to give him priority for the afternoon session the following year.

“For some people we know, their husband works a second shift, or they have family in the area, or a neighbor who’s a stay-at-home mom and sees the kid off the bus,” Christine Wenzel said. “Maybe if we’d lived in our house for a longer period of time we would know someone who could do that for us, but we don’t live near family and we don’t know anyone nearby who can fulfill that role.”

The drama of an overnight line like the one in South Windsor is rare nationwide, but in the past year, parents in Nashville and San Bruno, California, also faced after-school program shortages that resulted in parents camping out in a desperate attempt to find a solution. According to a 2014 report from the Afterschool Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group, the parents of 19.4 million children said their kids aren’t enrolled in an after-school program because open spots aren’t available, a 27 percent bump from 2004 that is perhaps attributable to the increased number of households with two working parents since the Great Recession.

The economic cost of this problem is tremendous. Private child care is expensive: A report from the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, found that out-of-pocket child care costs families an average of $6,600 a year. While an after-school program, according to Afterschool Alliance, is a little cheaper—costing families just more than $4,000 a year, on average—it can still be beyond reach for many families: 48 percent of parents in higher-income households reported cost as a factor in the decision to not enroll children in an after-school program. When parents can’t afford child care, many of them choose to scale back their work or leave the workforce entirely. And in some cases, without a better alternative, they leave their children unsupervised: 3 percent of elementary-school students and 19 percent of middle-school students look after themselves from 3 to 6 p.m. during the school week. On the whole, conflicting school and work schedules cost the U.S. economy $55 billion in lost productivity each year, in large part due to parents (mostly women) who scale back employment and the lost productivity when parents have to take off work during school closures.