18-03-2025
Texas lawmakers consider child care bills that could impact 95K children, 850 communities
Texas lawmakers are considering two child care bills that would prioritize child care workers' access to child care themselves and could mitigate child care deserts seen in low-income communities.
The bills were discussed on Monday, March 17, by the Senate Committee on Economic Development with testimony from advocates and child care providers urging lawmakers to push the bills forward. They said the passage of the bills would address two critical gaps exacerbated by the state's lengthy waiting list and child care funding disparities. Now, it's up to the discretion of Committee Chair Phil King, a Republican from Weatherford, on what happens next. It remains to be seen when or if these bills would move forward in the legislative process.
Senate Bill 462, sponsored by Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, would put qualifying child care workers' children among those at the top of the state's list of 95,000 children awaiting tuition subsidies and other services. These staffers must work at least 25 hours a week and must stay in their roles for at least a year from the time their child receives priority on the list. If the parent leaves the child care workforce before the one-year anniversary, their priority status would be removed.
'How do you go to work if you don't have child care? That's a question for all of Texans. But then to say that I want to go to work in the child care industry, but I have no place to put my child — (It's) just a little bit of common sense tweak here that would allow us to potentially get more workers, and qualified workers,' said Kolkhorst, a Republican from Brenham. 'It's a tweak, but not an overhaul.'
Latoya Mayberry, owner and operator of Toya's Precious Jewels Academy in Midland, testified the bill would ensure hardworking parents could receive needed financial assistance without 'unnecessary delays.' She noted how one of her employees will soon return to work from maternity leave, as long as her child care scholarship is in place when she comes back. If not, this could impact staffing ratios at Mayberry's center, causing her to close a classroom. She also shared an example of a different employee who was unable to secure financial assistance for child care before returning to work.
'I made the decision to provide care for her baby at no cost. I did this not because it was a sound business decision at all, but because I know the value of every employee who works for me. If we do not support our child care workers and our workforce, we risk losing the very people who make quality early education possible,' Mayberry said. 'This isn't an isolated issue.'
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Committee members also heard from other advocates who spoke in favor of Senate Bill 972, which would give local workforce development boards the flexibility to provide the maximum amount of reimbursement funding for providers who accept child care tuition subsidies. The boards, which operate under the Texas Workforce Commission, distribute these funds at the local level to centers part of the state's quality improvement program — Texas Rising Star. The centers with higher ratings receive more funding, but the dollar amounts are limited by an area's market rate. This means low-income communities receive less dollars.
The bill — sponsored by Sen. Judith Zaffirini, a Democrat from Laredo — would not decrease the average number of children served daily through subsidized care. Kim Kofron, senior director of education at Children at Risk, told the Star-Telegram that communities with philanthropic funding could fill in the gaps of providing higher reimbursement rates in the case that no additional state funding is provided. Currently, local workforce boards are unable to even accept private funding, so the bill would address that obstacle.
'It's a simple but critical change that supports child care providers, stabilizes our workforce and ensures all families, regardless of their ZIP codes, to have access to high quality education,' Kofron told the committee.
There are 850 child care deserts statewide for low-income working families, meaning there are 850 ZIP codes where the demand for child care is three times higher than the number of available child care seats, she said.
Sen. Charles Schwertner, a Republican from Georgetown, asked if the bill would drive up prices for providers in the same region or if providers would want to enroll only children who receive state subsidies. Reagan Miller, a director of the child care and early learning division at the Texas Workforce Commission, said the funding change would only affect the children receiving subsidies and underscored how there's a limited amount of state funding for those subsidies.
'If I have a program that serves 100 kids, and I have five that receive a scholarship through the Child Care Services program, only those five children would receive a higher reimbursement rate above that provider's published rate. The other 95 children that are paid for by the family, the cost of their care would not increase so it's limited to the subset of children that are enrolled in our program,' Miller said.
