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Texas educators, policy experts urge legislators to tackle child care crisis. Here’s how

Children play in a sandbox during the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Child Care Studio at Riverside on Nov. 12, 2024. The child care studio is next to the Trinity River and was designed to connect children with nature.
Camilo Diaz
/
Fort Worth Report
Children play in a sandbox during the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Child Care Studio at Riverside on Nov. 12, 2024. The child care studio is next to the Trinity River and was designed to connect children with nature.

As Tarrant County lawmakers prepare to kick off the Texas legislative session Jan. 14, Fort Worth Report journalists are exploring the policies set to be reshaped in Austin. Click here for more legislative coverage.

Across the state, 78,000 families currently sit on a waitlist to receive subsidized child care, according to nonprofit organization Texans Care for Children.

Nearly 22,000 of these families live in Tarrant County, said Kara Waddell, CEO of nonprofit Child Care Associates.

As the Texas Legislature gears up for its 2025 session, an often overlooked aspect of education and economic development will soon come into focus: early childhood education. The growing demands for child care and pre-K intersect with the state’s economic resilience and the well-being of its families, according to state and local experts.

In Tarrant County, the child care crisis is multifaceted, Waddell told the Report. As more than 20,000 families throughout the county wait to receive child care, the shortage undermines children’s early learning during developmental years, burdens working families with limited and costly care options, and strains the ability to maintain a reliable workforce across various sectors.

The crisis, she said, affects families, educational outcomes and the wider economy. State lawmakers must find ways to relieve the burden off of families and child care providers, she said.

“Even when they’re able to get a scholarship or subsidy or afford it on their own, then families need to find a good match.” Waddell said. “These are gaps that are critical here in Fort Worth, but certainly across Texas as well.”

One proposal to keep an eye on this session would be the introduction of child care innovation grants, Waddell said. The grants would aim to empower five to six local workforce development boards in high-need areas across the state to collaborate with employers, providing competitive base grants that encourage child care programs to expand capacity in line with regional workforce needs.

Through now-expired COVID-19 relief funds, Child Care Associates worked with Workforce Solutions of Tarrant County to expand child care in areas lacking those services. That could be emulated across the state with further funding, Waddell said.

“This is why we have regional workforce development boards,” Waddell said. “They know their regional workforce needs.”

David Feigen, director of early learning policy for Texans Care for Children, said that lawmakers could absolutely learn from Child Care Associates’ previous work.

“Tarrant County has a great resource in Child Care Associates, who’s providing some of that administrative backbone to help make these partnerships viable,” he said. “I think there’s a lot that folks can learn from them.”

Feigen and Texans Care for Children, which works to drive early childhood education policy change across the state, sent a letter to lawmakers in October recommending various steps to make child care affordable and accessible to Texas families.

More than 120 organizations across the state, including Child Care Associates, signed onto the letter urging lawmakers to draft policies supporting families and providers.

One such proposal is the establishment of regional early learning hubs, which streamline the integration of public schools with local child care providers.

Fort Worth ISD, for instance, partnered with Child Care Associates in October to open a new school, Neighborhood PreK, to serve as a coordinating hub for high-quality child care providers. The strategy aims to address the shortage of options for families needing nontraditional care hours, according to Child Care Associates and the district.

This, too, could be emulated across the state, Feigen said.

“We know that partnerships between providers and school districts can help parents get a full day of care until 5 p.m. as opposed to a public pre-K program that ends at 3 p.m.,” Feigen said. “We’re hoping that, by expanding these effective partnerships, families can get better choices that are close to where they live and align with the hours they work.”

Similar partnerships between districts and providers exist across the state, like Neighborhood PreK and Dallas ISD’s Pre-K Partnerships, that state lawmakers could look to incentivize and make more palatable, he said.

“I know there have been conversations in various hearings about potentially different strategies, but I haven’t seen anything filed yet,” Feigen said.

Ultimately, spots must be opened for families needing child care, Feigen and Waddell said. Texans Care for Children’s top priority is that lawmakers address the long waitlist by funding more scholarships for eligible families.

“We have families that are eligible and ready to go,” Feigen said. “We just don’t have the funds for scholarships.”

Those proposed funds will be wrapped into the Legislature’s budget bills, he said. The state already funds the Child Care Services program, which provides scholarships to families for child care. Feigen urged lawmakers to strengthen the program.

“We’re asking for lawmakers to provide 10,000 additional scholarships this session, and we’re hopeful they will,” Feigen said, estimating the cost would be about $180 million.

“Florida provided $100 million in 2023; states like Alabama, North Dakota have taken positive steps,” Feigen said. “So, there are Republican-led states and Democratic-led states doing more to support their child care services programs.”

Hopefully, he said, Texas is next in line.

The Fort Worth Report’s Texas Legislative coverage is supported by Kelly Hart. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.

Matthew Sgroi is an education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at matthew.sgroi@fortworthreport.org or @matthewsgroi1.

This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Copyright 2024 KERA

Matthew Sgroi | Fort Worth Report