Did Texas quietly help its child care crisis?

You know, one of the first things you are told is a soon to be parent, is you better get on a childcare wait list as soon as possible. Many of the places in Dallas at the time the wait list was more than nine months, So you actually needed to get onto the wait list when you were thinking about having a kid, not even when you found out you were going to have a kid. The problem even

worse in rural areas or for low income Texans. I am going to cite a stat that is from David that says that eighty eight percent of working families with low incomes live in childcare deserts, where demand is three times greater than the availability of high quality childcare seats.

Two notable things happened this legislative session in this regard, the first one being the legislature approved one hundred million dollars toward childcare scholarships in an effort to shrink the nearly ninety five thousand member waiting list for those scholarships. The money was spent, the waiting list did not shrink, thanks in large part to increased childcare costs. We'll get

into that here in a little bit. Second, the state voted a little bit more not under the radar politically, but under the radar toward this issue to approve a one billion dollar school voucher program. It was designed and touted as a way to use state dollars to help kids pay for their private school tuition. But what was not discussed as much was that the vouchers can also be used for private pre k something that the comptroller confirmed last week, so that could be a major change.

But I want to start first with you, David, on this scholarship issue. Lay out for me, first of all, just what this program was and how it works. Just you know how it has worked over the years.

It gives them financial assistance so that they can go to work and their children can thrive in really high quality childcare programs. There's about thirty thousand Texas employers right now who have somebody working there who's there because they have access to one of these scholarships. So we know this is a really important program for the Texas economy

and for Texas families. The funding has primarily come from the federal government the Childcare and Development Block Grant the Congress provides, but states around the country have infused additional dollars to serve more families. Prior to last session, Texas was not one of those states. Texas took the federal money, spent it, but did not add in any state dollars

to serve more parents. We were excited that last session that changed, and as you said, one hundred million new dollars got invested into this program to serve more families, and we're excited that win happened, that it was bipartisan, But as we'll talk about, there's a lot more work to do to actually serve more families and bring down the very long wait list for that program, which sits at around one hundred thousand kids.

were met by childcare programs. It was you guys might recall a big expose that was done by the Austin American statesmen around you know, children who had died in childcare programs, and that led to a series of reforms

to try to crack down on unlicensed care. You know, there was some efforts to improve the nutrition standards in childcare but over the last few years there's really been a shift where lawmakers have understood, you know, we have a role too and actually ensuring families can afford high quality childcare, that the childcare that they can afford is not just safe, but supporting children's school readiness. And so going into session for really the first time, it was

very clear that childcare was on the agenda. Both the House and Senate held interim hearings trying to tackle ways in which we can address this during the session. In my time, the Senate had never had a hearing on this topic during the interim, and so we knew that

it was going to be a big priority. We didn't know how that would manifest, and you know, we worked with partners to really bring up this issue of the wait list, that there's children who are eligible for this program but are waiting for six months to two years because they're the lack of funds. This is not a program where every child who's eligible gets served. There's a certain number of scholarships we fund, and after that you have to wait for somebody to come off the program.

And so there are families waiting because we don't have enough funds. You know, we told the stories not just of families who were struggling, but the families who actually benefited from this program. You know, we talked to a mom who was literally homeless before she got access to one of these scholarships. She was able to work a couple hours a week cleaning houses with her baby strapped to her because she had no childcare. She eventually got

a scholarship. Now she's working full time, she's housed, and her child is in a really high quality program here in Austin. And we were able to tell stories like that and say, look at all of this program is achieving. Don't we want to see more Texas families benefit in the ways that these parents have. And so, you know, we also told the stories of frankly, lots of Republican led states around the country who to Texas and was

really investing. And so between that, I think we were able to make a winning case that investing in this program is research based, it's popular, it's it's something we can do very simply in serving more parents. And so we were able to get that win. And I will say that the leadership of Representative Armando Wally was really key, as well as the speaker of the House and you know, the Appropriations Center finance chair chair women, chairwoman, and chairman.

So it was a big bipartisan win for sure.

childcare into the more like mainstream political conversation here. Yeah, one being you know, the thing I covered for a long time, which was the you know, ban on abortion and sort of this attention that Republican lawmakers sort of felt called to address, you know, women's health issues, supporting families, sort of making good on some of these promises that they brought to bear, which sort of I've searched seen

that play out of the last couple of years. The other one being, though that I'm not as clear on, is like the COVID pandemic and the way that that sort of felt like suddenly we were all talking about childcare in a way we hadn't been before.

few reasons. One is the need for childcare became quite clear to people, many of whom were home with their kids all day. If their childcare program had to close, or you know, they had to take time off work to be with their kids at home, I think the need for childcare became very visible. The other thing that I think was really important was the federal government, under both the Trump administration and the Biden administrations, invested significant

federal dollars into states to stabilize childcare. And what we found was that worked. It turned out that spending a lot of money to ensure that programs can retain staff, that they can receive funding so they don't have to rt increase costs on parents, that that's a very popular and effective way to help families go to work. So a lot of states saw once those federal dollars ran out,

said what can we do to fill the gaps? And I think that it essentially served as an unintentional pilot program where states got to see, hey, if we invest money into these programs, we can get really good returns. And I think that's essentially opened the valve of investments that we're now seeing across the country.

about the priorities there. But it's also worth pointing out that as your report on this, David noted that this money was you know, not actually state money that was being added to this. It was unspent federal dollars from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. That basically there was this pot of money that Texas had that had sort of decided not to spend, not to find a use for, and then they kind of decided, oh, maybe we should use it to boost this scholarship program.

general revenue pot. I think that the point is lawmakers found a way to make this investment, and we know that, you know, states across the country are using TANAF dollars for this purpose, so it's not a stretch to say that this is a really valid use of those dollars when we have them. I think that moving forward, we should look at that uninspent tant IF pot as a way to fund this program, but also state general revenue and continue to explore other revenue streams because this problem

is significant. This is not something that is a one session fix or a even one funding stream strategy. We have to figure out how to make investments at the state level, the local level. Philanthropy is going to continue to play a role. It's going to take a lot of resources to really get this problem addressed.

That was their estimates during the legislative session. However, after the legislative session, the Workforce Commission partners with the University of Texas, who conducts a survey to essentially figure out how much each of these scholarships costs, and that's based on the market rate of childcare. And what they unfortunately found was childcare costs are continuing to skyrocket and what

that means is that the cost of scholarships skyrockets. And it's a simple math equation if each scholarship costs more, you can you know, you can't provide as many without increasing the amount of funds. So this hundred million dollars was just as essential as we thought it would be. Unfortunately, though, it was to prevent a reduction of the number of

scholarships rather than to serve more families. So in fact, the urgency was actually even greater than maybe we presented during the legislative session, that we were actually at risk of having to serve fewer children in this program. Fortunately lawmakers came together to make this investment, but it's a reminder that we have so much more work to do to actually serve more parents in the program.

I think that's really the goal. So for us, I think we need to take this, you know, one step at a time and understand that it's going to take a number of years, a number of it's gonna take the state level, the federal level, the local level to really address this problem. In earnest, it's going to take us providing more funding for scholarships, but also doing more to bring down the cost of childcare so that this

cost for scholarships doesn't continue to rise. You know, childcare programs are facing increased costs across the board, and parents are bearing the brunt of that right now. So we need to be able to tackle this one step at a time. I think we made good progress this legislative session, but lawmakers, I hope we're getting used to talking about this issue because it's not a one session conversation. Unfortunately, there's a lot more work to do.

work requirements in their income requirements. We also prioritize scholarships based on a number of factors, including if you have a child with a disability, or The legislature also passed to build a session that actually, if you're a child of a childcare educator, that you're part of this priority list. So we have priorities among those eligible children. But eighty five percent of state median income is what that main

eligibility is. So a lot of families are eligible, but unfortunately the number of scholarships does not meet the demand.

help to go to private schools. Less discussed was the issue that has now come up since the state Controller has been in charge of setting the rules for how this money will be dispersed, and that is money that goes to three and four year rolds to go to PreK programs, particularly private PreK programs that you know are run you know, all all across the state. Tell us a little bit about that discussion and where the state landed on the issue.

Design kind of a set of basically rules that will allow you know, parents to be able to understand, for example, what kind of documentation you need to submit, how certain processes will work, things that it kind of gets into the details in the way that the law doesn't, right. And so what we've seen since the passage of the law was very much that process.

about two hundreds. So and what we kept seeing was the overwhelming majority of those comments seemed to be from private pre K providers who were saying, hey, comtroller, you seem to have made a mistake, right, And what we're seeing in the rules that you proposed, was that private pre K you know families or you know pre K families in general, you kind of allocated and put them in the bucket of two thousand dollars per student, which

under the law is actually designated for homeschool students. And what the argument was is that, hey, the law is pretty clear, you know, pre K students are eligible for the full roughly ten thousand dollars amounts that you set

aside for everybody else outside of homeschool. And so basically it went through that process and we arrived at you know where we did and the most in last week basically, which was the comtroller, you know, after going through the process, you know, going through the law and honestly hearing from the bill authors as well, basically setting in stone that hey,

you guys are right. It is the full ten thousand dollars amount and as long as students kind of meet what are currently the free public pre K requirements, they are they're eligible for the full ten thousand dollars amount now. And just for clarification, for free public pre K, it's more of kind of a you know, for students for example, who are on free and reduced lunch students who you know are not fluent in English per se. If you're a child of a public school teacher or you know

someone in the military, right, you be eligible. So there is a more kind of type framework around that. But basically that's kind of how we landed at where we are now.

is a massive cost. And I think this idea, I can certainly see why a lot of daycares, a lot of people would be saying, like, if you can make this ten thousand dollars available to us imediately, you know, pre K is a only a couple of years in that pre to five year you know, kindergarten time, that's that's a major benefit opportunity for families, you know, upper middle class families at but especially lower income families and things like that.

And really, when you go back and look the law, like, if you're looking for it, it is clear to say, right pre k ten k. But if you were, you know, to the average person just kind of glancing through, unless you were specifically looking for that, it maybe wouldn't be something that's the most apparent. And so in the controller has been very clear Acting Controller Kelly Hancock, you know, he said publicly right like, we're going to follow the

intent of the law. And so it wasn't necessarily surprising to me that they changed it to the full ten thousand.

I always expect that that would be the case, and I just think that this was just a situation where you go through the rule making process and you know, you had Representative Brad Buckley and then former Senator Creighton's now Texas Tech chancellor who submitted written as someone to said, hey, here's kind of just to clear up many confusion, here's what we were intending with this and then throughout the process,

you know, they made the adjustment. And so again I don't think it was anything that was like intentionally we wanted to be this. It just seemed to be more again from my perspective that there are so many aspects of the law, and so the rule making process allowed them to kind of get it right as intended.

decline or accept this suggestion, and again it it. You know, I think it was pretty clear they you know, they made it clear that hey, here's you know what, here's what the law says. Is what the bill author says, so you know we'll follow that.

and we would have been thrilled to join that. I would imagine that there's a lot of parents in that position now who maybe have no plans on sending their kids to private school, but are going to send their kids to the church down the street, or you know, some other kind of private you know, not associated with the school's system for pre K, who now might get significant help from this. So a just a little bit of confusion. Coalition, Yeah, why didn't you get those people

on your side when you're advocating for this bill? But then also does this not create any concerns for the people who were advocating for this of we just dramatically increased the number of people who are going to want to have access to this program in a way that it's going to be a lot more competitive. And that one billion dollars we already knew was going to disappear pretty quickly, now maybe it will disappear.

you know, what are called education service providers. So in this case, whoever the pre K provider is right, does kind of follow the existing requirements for private PreK providers, which could be for example, I think think it's accreditation with the state that or had wrote a couple down as well, it's like good standing with the Department of Family and Protective Services, you know, different partnerships with you know a lot of them have existing partnerships with districts

and things of that nature. So the framework that already exists for private PreK providers is also the framework that you know, those who you know want to you know, take part in this program are also going to have to follow. But it's also to your point, it is interesting. I don't have the magic answer as to as to

why they didn't talk about it as much. I mean, there were so many different aspects, and you would think too, it would have been a talking point given like a lot of the talk about public school pre K funding, right, which is a whole that's a whole other conversation, you know that we could have, you know, you could have

a whole hour long discussion you know about that. But yeah, it was interesting, and again it was one of those things that unless you were specifically looking forward in the law, it wouldn't have been apparent to you because I think a lot of the focus from lawmakers was on homeschool students.

homeschool students. And so it wasn't kind of apparent again until you know, you go through two hundred and three hundred comments and literally clearly the private pre cab bodies knew about this because and they all copied and pasted the same messaging across the board. So clearly it was a very coordinated effort, and everybody kind of was in the know one kind of what was happening.

K program. If you're a parent of a child of a four year old, your access points to education are very different than when you're a parent of a five year old. When you're a parent of a five year old, you have access to a universal kindergarten program that is available in every corner of the state for free. If you have a four year old. There are some families eligible for free pre K, but many families are on their own and they are looking at private options because

there's not a public option available to them. I think it's really worth re emphasizing what Jayden said, which is the ESA program is universal, but for pre K it's not. It's still only those families who are eligible for public pre K, those who are on free and reduced lunch

or meet one of the other eligibility criteria. So there's going to be a lot of parents who are parents of four year old who think great, I have access to financial aid for pre K, which these families really need because they don't necessarily have a public school option right now, but they're not going to be eligible for this. It's just those who are part of existing pre K eligibility. So I think we really need to watch and see

how many families actually are able to navigate that. Because these other grades don't have the as restrictive of eligibility criteria, there's going to be a lot of implementation questions here. You know, one of the ways that you can be eligible for free pre K is to be a child who's homelandanguage is not English. That's done through a home language survey by the school district. How's that going to be done with an essay? We don't know yet. We

haven't seen guidance on that yet. So I think that there's a lot of questions about how many children actually will ultimately end up being served that are for year olds and three year olds. I think that the demand is certainly significant, as we've seen from the Childcare Services Program, a lot of parents want access to financial aid for

early childhood education. I think we don't know how many of them are going to end up with the essays, but I would remind folks that the Childcare Services Program is a financial aid program for parents to access childcare as well, and it has a much more generous eligibility than the essays do. So we're gonna have to see how all these puzzle pieces fit together, but we're curious to see how many families benefit.

that specifically target you know, low income families. One of the big hurdles, as was acknowledged here is the awareness component, and it'll be interesting to see it if that changes at all here, right. I think one of the things that voucher advocates had talked about, you know, one of the benefits they saw in this program was that hey, we actually have a whole year to get the word out about all the different benefits of it in ways that a state like Tennessee, for example, they passed their

law and they were ready to roll you know soon after. Again, I don't know how much it's going to change. I think ultimately what you'll see is what we see, you know, with these huge universal programs, is that especially in these early years, you're going to see those like for example, look at for example, you had all these private pre K providers who had who had testified and said hey, this isn't right. Those are probably going to be the providers who go to families who will qualify and say hey,

if you don't know about this. Hey, this is a benefit you can have, right, so initially you probably see you know, the students who ultimately benefit from it will be those who already in some way are connected to people who are kind of in the know, and it'll be a challenge for the state over time with the entire program, with the awareness component, like we see with all these other programs as well.

puts them at considerable risk of closure. That is, even though childcare educators are paid on average around twelve dollars per hour with little to know benefits. The challenge here, one of the issues that I have heard about as I have been an interested person in this subject, is the idea of the battle for three and four year olds.

You need more adults per child in that area. There has been a push, a very well intentioned push to get more three and four year olds into public pre k. But what that does is it takes away the sort of profit generators for the daycare operators and leaves them having to care for, you know, or care for a higher percentage of infants compared to three or four year olds, which either forces them to lose revenue, go out of business, or increase their prices for the infants and everything like that.

Does this create a situation where maybe you can pull some of those three and four year olds back into these private daycare providers, which can make them more financially sustainable or allow them to make infant care more affordable for you know, the general population. What do you think about that possibility.

means parents pay more. They're rising food costs if childcare program provides food. We all can look at our grocery bill and see that that's going to affect childcare providers.

Insurance is crushing right now, so childcare programs are facing rising insurance costs, rent property taxes they face that as well, and parents are bearing the brunt of all of those increases, right And so, just like we would never rely on tolls to pay for our entire highway system, relying on just parents to pay for the full brunt of early care and education leads to these really unfortunate outcomes that

we see. And so I understand deeply the pain that childcare providers are feeling and the hope that these these opportunities give. I would say about just you know, the idea that we need to consider pulling you know, folks from these public settings and ensure that they return to private settings. First of all, I think it's important to remind us why they choose these public settings, which is

that they can afford them. And I think we want to make sure that families can afford high quality options in a variety of settings, whether that be a head start program, a childcare program, a for profit nonprofit. We also want to make sure parents, if they want to keep their kid at home, have the resources to do that, and the public schools in many cases a good option

for them. I also think it's important to remember that only about half of four year olds in our state are enrolled in public pre K, so there are plenty of four year olds to go around, and I think we should make sure that they can afford and access these high quality programs, and many of them will choose private options if they have the ability to. And for three year olds, I will say it's even less. It's only around eleven percent of three year olds are enrolled

in public schools, so there's plenty of children. I don't think it has to be a competition between these settings. I think we can do more to make childcare and preschool more affordable, more high quality across settings, and I think the legislator took some promising steps, but yeah, we have a lot more work to do.

advocates and whatnot. And so you're going to have some who come out and say, well, clearly, if the will is there, you can get it done because you've set aside money now for private PreK providers you know, to be able to benefit from this. How do you look at that kind of argument and that kind of debate that folks will have Avialy.

because the costs for care are so expensive. But then the moment your child turns five, it's like, Okay, great, now I have a universal program that I can enroll in. I think that a parent of a four year old and a parent of a five year old feel like their needs are similar, but the way the state responds is quite different, whether they be in public schools or not.

So I think whether you're a superintendent or a childcare program director, you have a lot to say that, hey, the state needs to do way more than we're doing, and we are ready to play a role in helping provide those high quality options for families because I just I really just don't think that. I think the competition that gets presented between these sites is really missing the mark.

Like I think everybody struggling to meet the needs of these families because we're not investing enough in famili's ability to access these programs. So our perspective at Texans Care for Children it is that we want families to be able to afford an access private settings, public settings, and we want them to have the resources to figure out what best meets their families' needs.