Child care workers could soon find it easier to get support for their own children under a bill that’s headed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk after gaining approval by the Texas Legislature.
The bill would give children of day care workers priority for child care. Another bill would create a website that lets employers help find care for their workers.
Lawmakers this session proposed several bills aimed at improving child care access and quality for more than half a million Texas children lacking those resources. Advocates and child care providers have pushed the matter as a workforce issue given the number of working families who need child care.
The House passed a bill Thursday that would require any waiting list for child care services to give priority to children of child care workers who are eligible.
The House also passed a bill Thursday to require the Texas Workforce Commission to create a website containing details on child care assistance, state and federal tax credits, dependent care savings accounts, free tools, and policies and benefits employers can adopt to help employees who are seeking child care.
Both bills have passed the Senate and House and are awaiting the governor’s signature.
“If you are a working parent, you likely need access to some type of high-quality child care, and affordable,” said Phedra Redifer, executive director of Workforce Solutions for North Central Texas.
“But if you don’t have access to that, you are likely going to make a decision to leave the workforce or not enter the workforce at all.”
Time is running out for legislators to pass bills ahead of the session’s last day on June 2. Budget negotiations, including a $100 million proposal from the House to expand child care scholarships, are expected to conclude at the end of the month.
Over 90,000 families are currently on the waitlist for child care scholarships provided by the Texas Workforce Commission. That includes over 33,000 children in North Texas, according to the Texas Association for the Education of Young Children.
Advocates say many of the families seeking child care scholarships are low income, homeless or have children with disabilities.
“So many families are stuck on the waiting list for months or even years,” said David Feigen, director of early learning policy at Texans Care for Children, in a statement urging lawmakers to pass the scholarship funding proposal.
Texas also lost nearly 75,000 child care seats last year, according to the advocacy nonprofit Children at Risk. This contributed to a 15% increase in child care deserts—areas defined by ZIP codes with at least 30 children under age 6 where the demand for child care among working parents is at least three times greater than the licensed child care capacity.
Failure to provide adequate child care for working families costs Texas $11.4 billion annually from productivity and revenue losses for parents, businesses and taxpayers, according to the University of Texas at Austin.
“It’s not just about serving a few children, while that’s critical,” said Melissa Jozwiak, an early childhood professor at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. “It is enabling their parents to work. It is enabling those parents’ employers to thrive.”
Many Texas child care professionals struggle to get affordable care for their own children, according to an analysis of Senate Bill 462, introduced by Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham. That burden contributes to high turnover rates that exacerbate the state’s child care crisis, according to the analysis.
Approximately 43% of the early education workforce in Texas relies on SNAP and other subsidies because their median wage is $11.67 an hour, according to the University of California at Berkeley.
“SB 462 strengthens our overall workforce by giving child care workers priority on waitlists to receive child care for their own children,” said bill sponsor Rep. Caroline Harris Davila, R-Round Rock.
Child care resources webpage for Texas employers
Another effort aims to help Texas parents and companies through a separate child care resources website.
Employers across Texas are struggling to retain workers due to lack of child care, but are unsure what they can do or what resources are available to them, according to an analysis of Senate Bill 1265, introduced by Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston. The workforce commission’s website lacks a centralized location of resources to support employers.
The nonprofit organization Texas Policy Research adopted a neutral stance on the bill in a statement. It said the bill is pro-business and optional, but expressed caution that it might encourage greater use of social programs and require a “long-term role of government in workforce-family policy.”
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.