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3 days ago
- Business
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Base Child Care Crunch Could Be Solved by Partnerships, Home-Run Day Cares, Pentagon Says
As the Pentagon continues to struggle with long wait times and limited availability at its child care facilities, officials say that they are exploring off-base partnerships and growing programs that enable spouses to set up child care centers in their homes. "The department is pursuing a number of child care solutions to meet service members and their families where they are," Tim Dill, a top official in the Pentagon's personnel and readiness office, told in an exclusive statement Tuesday. "In some cases, that is in DoD child development centers, but in others, it may be by helping to cover the cost of in-home child care providers," Dill added. Read Next: Trump Pardons Former Army Officer Convicted of Disobeying COVID-19 Safety Rules Earlier this month, dozens of families at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico were told their children would be disenrolled from the base day care. Similar cases have cropped up at other Army, Air Force and Space Force bases, with the Navy also acknowledging staffing challenges at its child development centers. The reduced capacity at base day cares has been partly driven by the Trump administration's push to cut civilian federal employees at the Defense Department as well as other federal agencies. In an exclusive interview with last week, a defense official at the personnel and readiness office said the Pentagon is now looking to create new positions at military child development centers -- a lead educator position in each classroom and then a special needs inclusion coordinator for each center -- to offer upward mobility for employees and "push toward the retention effort." However, the effort overall seems to be shifting from staffing or building new centers on base to programs that aim to have others shoulder some of the burden as well. One potential solution under consideration is to partner with outside groups like the Armed Forces YMCA to operate child care centers off base. The official, who spoke to on the condition their name not be used, said that earlier in May the Pentagon opened one such center in Norfolk, Virginia, which has a large Navy population. "It's a 200-child-space center that is exclusively for DoD families, and we anticipate opening another one this December here in the National Capital Region -- in the Arlington area -- and then another one down in Virginia Beach next spring," the official said. The three centers would provide roughly 600 spaces for children in areas that have some of the longest wait times for military families, the official explained. The official also said that they are pushing forward with a program that buys out space in existing civilian child care centers to boost capacity for military families, with the goal to lease locations in San Diego as well as in the Newport News-Hampton, Virginia, area. "We'll be looking in the next month or so to expand that also to the National Capital Region," the official added. The struggle to build and staff child care centers was already a problem before President Donald Trump's effort to downsize the government. It's an issue that the military has struggled with for years -- and one that has also become a nationwide problem, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Officials within the services have noted that the effort of staffing a child care center is not only challenging, but the pay is not enough. Last fall, a pair of senators even pushed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's predecessor, Lloyd Austin, to increase military child care workers' pay as quickly as possible. "Congress and military families are counting on DoD to update its compensation model for direct care staff expeditiously so DoD can hire and retain more caregivers, and more military families can find the care they need," the senators wrote in a letter to Austin. In March, reported that, because enough day care employees either voluntarily took a deferred resignation offer from the administration or fell within a probationary employment period targeted for firings by the White House's Office of Personnel Management, Hill Air Force Base in Utah was getting ready to scale back its child care center, potentially leaving Gold Star spouses and other defense employees in the lurch. Several weeks later, the base closed one of its two child care centers. Navy officials also told that "administrative delays" had temporarily halted their ability to extend job offers and bring on new child care staffers. "While the Navy is in the process of filling vacant positions due to turnover or need for seasonal staff, military families may experience child care disruptions such as reduced capacity for summer camps, reduced operating hours for certain programs, canceled activities, disenrollment of lower prioritized families, suspension of before-school care, or a pause on new enrollments," the service warned in early May. The Pentagon's considered fixes so far are focused on major metropolitan areas, but service members in more remote areas have said such efforts may offer little help to them due to limited surrounding communities for the military to tap into. When asked about those concerns, the official said the Pentagon hopes to also grow a program that enables spouses to set up small child care centers in their own homes. However, that program is also not without issues. One spouse at Holloman Air Force Base, located in a rural area of New Mexico, told earlier this month that those programs take months to get going because of the vetting and certification processes. Given that families typically live in one place for only a few years, those delays mean that any one house would act as a child care center for only a year or two, assuming an application was filed immediately upon arrival. The official noted that the department has also been working with some states "for the last couple of years to recognize the DoD certification in place of requiring a state license or issuing a state license on the basis that they are a DoD-certified home" in order to enable the program to run more smoothly. Ultimately, the official said that, while the Pentagon is "all-in, committed to quality life for our families ... there's just different nuances in every service on how they execute hiring." As a result, the official said, any issues with breaks in service rest with each individual branch and not the personnel and readiness office. Related: Parents Still Struggle to Get Details on Abuse at Military Day Care Centers Despite Watchdog Probe
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3 days ago
- Business
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Space Command Headquarters in Colorado 'Not Sustainable' Without New Construction, GAO Finds
A new congressional watchdog report looking into whether U.S. Space Command's headquarters would be best served by remaining in Colorado found that new construction would be needed to fix significant problems, a major revelation as the Trump administration weighs moving the command to Alabama. The Government Accountability Office, Congress' watchdog agency, published a report Thursday examining how former President Joe Biden's administration chose Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado, as Space Command's headquarters location despite the Air Force identifying Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, as its preferred location, selected in the waning days of President Donald Trump's first term in 2021. "The command is fully operational, but U.S. Space Command officials told GAO that they faced ongoing personnel, facilities and communications challenges," the report detailed. "As a result of identified challenges, officials stated the command's posture is not sustainable long term and new military construction would be needed to support the headquarters' operations in Colorado Springs, Colorado." Read Next: Trump Pardons Former Army Officer Convicted of Disobeying COVID-19 Safety Rules The political fight over Space Command's future in either Alabama or Colorado has been a partisan tug-of-war for more than four years between the Trump and Biden's administrations, as well as the two states' delegations in Washington. Ultimately, with Trump back in office, many Republican lawmakers have been teasing for months that the president or his recently confirmed secretary of the Air Force would reverse Biden's decision. Thursday's GAO report is just the latest round in the battle over the command's location. Colorado's delegation, as well as other lawmakers, requested a GAO and Department of Defense inspector general's report following Trump's 2021 announcement, and Alabama lawmakers requested two similar probes into Biden's move to reverse that choice in 2023. Defense budgeting experts such as Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said the revelation that new construction would be required for Space Command to stay in Colorado is a blow to that state's lawmakers. "The main argument for keeping it in Colorado was always that new construction would not be needed right away," Harrison told "But if that situation has changed, it certainly makes Alabama more favorable." The uncertainty in the final basing location has led to personnel issues, the GAO report said, revealing that Space Command was not fully staffed as of fall 2024 -- filling only 1,024 of 1,379 authorized positions, including 576 of 809 government civilian positions. Space Command officials interviewed by the GAO said this was "due to uncertainty regarding the command's final location and the complexities of hiring government civilians over the more straightforward process of assigning military personnel." In addition to the staffing woes, Space Command officials said existing facilities had shortcomings, noting they required "military construction of a permanent, purpose-built facility that is better suited to meet its unique power, information technology, square footage and security needs." The officials also told the GAO that "without new construction, command, control, and mission operations will continue to operate inefficiently with greater vulnerabilities to mission, facilities, and personnel." While being in Colorado and near other bases and commands -- U.S. Northern Command is nearby, for example -- offers benefits such as enhanced communication networks, there are also issues with sharing information technology networks with Peterson Space Force Base, the officials added. Alissa Czyz, director of the GAO's Defense Capabilities and Management team, told that the new report probed how Biden's decision was made, as well as what issues currently face Space Command. "There was some rigorous analysis performed, kind of in response to some shortcomings identified both by GAO and IG [the DoD inspector general] in our original reports, citing the need for additional analyses and also incorporating military leaders' views of the risks with whatever location," Czyz said. The GAO probe was one of two investigations into the Biden administration's decision requested by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., alongside a Pentagon inspector general investigation that was released last month. Rogers used his power over the Armed Services Committee to insert language into the annual defense policy bill in 2023 that temporarily halted funding for any Space Command headquarters construction pending the results of the investigations. Thursday's GAO report noted that, in July 2023, Space Command "proposed a construction project for a new multistory, permanent headquarters facility to replace its current temporary and leased facilities," which would start in 2029 and be complete by 2034 for a price tag of $1.5 billion. But Rogers' halt on construction funding froze those developments. "According to U.S. Space Command officials, this project was put on hold and no further planning for the construction of a headquarters facility in Colorado Springs had been initiated as of March 2025," the GAO report noted. Rogers released a statement on the new GAO report Thursday saying the findings provide further reason for the command to move to his state. "The GAO report yet again affirms that Huntsville is the best option for Space Command s headquarters," Roger said in the release. "When making his decision to locate the combatant command headquarters in Huntsville, President Trump prioritized transparency, national security, and a commitment to saving taxpayer dollars." Notably, neither former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall nor former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Pentagon investigators, citing privileged conversations with former President Biden. The DoD IG report, released in April, showed key details were still missing as to how Kendall identified Redstone Arsenal in Alabama as the preferred location, but Biden made the ultimate announcement and call. Czyz told that the GAO spoke with Kendall; according to her, he told investigators that "he was informed of the decision shortly before it happened." They also spoke with other senior defense and Air Force officials, but were not able to get information from the Biden White House, she added. The multiple investigations since 2021 have done little to sway opinion on Capitol Hill, where the Alabama and Colorado delegations have dug in and claimed vindication after each successive report. Colorado lawmakers appeared unready to give up Thursday, despite the GAO findings. "The release of today's GAO report is clear: Colorado Springs is the best home for U.S. Space Command's headquarters. Continued efforts to move the headquarters only hurts [sic] our national security," Rep. Jeff Crank, R-Colo., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, posted on social media. "Space Command is fully operational, and the Department of Defense needs to move quickly to construct a permanent HQ at Peterson Space Force Base to put the issue to bed, once and for all." Related: Key Details Still Missing on Why Biden Made Final Call on Space Command's HQ, New Report Details
