Child care providers in San Antonio have been through a turbulent past few years, and more changes are on the horizon.
The clock this month began ticking on a two-year deadline for child care centers to become compliant with state quality guidelines, or else lose access to subsidies that allow working parents to send their children to daycare at no cost.
Right now Texas allows that subsidy money to go to any child care center a parent chooses. But because of a 2021 law, beginning September 2024, all centers that receive state subsidies must get enrolled in Texas Rising Star, which means they meet a higher quality standard than centers not in the program.
The money flows from the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) down to local workforce commissions. In San Antonio, that’s Workforce Solutions Alamo, which provides child care subsidies to roughly 12,000 children in its 13-county region. The subsidy is the largest expense in the commission’s budget.
The TWC in October approved more than $627 million in one-time funding to go toward child care from the billions of federal dollars it received from COVID-related legislation like the American Rescue Plan.
The bulk of that funding, $500 million, will go toward financial support for subsidized child care centers for them to attain Texas Rising Star certification. The rest of the money will go toward boosting subsidies, creating initiatives to open new child care centers and expand existing ones.
Workforce Solutions Alamo said it will likely not see any additional funding until October 2023, but is already working to help local centers get certified.
Right now, less than a quarter of child care centers in the region are Texas Rising Star-certified according to the agency. The reasons range from a lack of money, staff turnover and a desire to avoid some of the costs that come with qualifying for the program.
Texas Rising Star grades child care centers on a one-to-four star scale by metrics like building standards and whether staffers interact with students in line with the state’s recognized best practices. Observers tally these indicators on a regular basis to grade the centers.
As part of its mandate that all centers eligible for subsidies get certified, the state has introduced new carrots and sticks, including a new entry level designation in the program.
Workforce Solutions Alamo has hired two business advisors to help local child care facilities get certified, similar to an initiative launched by the United Way of San Antonio two years ago, which sends experienced coaches from partner organizations to help smaller centers do the work necessary to earn Rising Star certifications.
The local agency is also launching a series of town halls throughout its region to better understand what child care businesses need to get certified, or boost their ratings within the program.
If a child care facility has not been certified by the Texas Rising Star program by September 2024, it will lose access to the state-provided parent subsidies.
The need is great. Bexar County has lost a fifth of its child care centers since the pandemic began, displacing thousands of children, according to Children at Risk, a Texas nonprofit that works to alleviate child poverty and inequality in the state.
But the perceived costs and restrictions of getting certified have kept many centers from attempting the process in the past, several child care provided said.
“People didn’t want to go through with it. They figured there were enough surprise visits (from different agencies), they didn’t want another one,” said Stephanie Gray, owner of Books & Bibs Child Care and Learning Academy on the city’s East Side.
She said the program’s strict building requirements were a hurdle for owners who rented space for their facilities, since they would have to depend on the landlord to do the repair or pay for it themselves.
But reforms to the program last year made clear the building only had to be in good repair. Gray said other requirements, such as how teachers interact with children, now play a more central role in the Texas Rising Star grading system.
Gray said she supports efforts the state has made to boost the quality of child care centers: “We want quality care for our kids.”
She said some day care centers are in a “panic because they think it has to be right away,” but she said the two-year timeline, plus the help offered by the state, should make the process easier.
Terry Puente, owner of five daycare centers in San Antonio, said she supports the new standards as good for the region’s children. But the stiff labor market has made compliance difficult. “We’ll get all the staff trained, then they quit, and we have someone new,” she said. “That’s something you’re constantly battling.”
She also said subsidies provided by the state last year and this year allowed her to hire staffers at higher wages, but those subsidies will soon run out. “How will I continue to hire people at higher wages?” she said.
Adrian Lopez, CEO of Workforce Solutions Alamo, said he wished political and business leaders would see investing in child care as a workforce and economic strategy on par with the kind of incentive deals that are regularly offered to large companies.
“When you’re at such low unemployment, who’s not working?” he asked. “Folks who don’t have the skills for new jobs, and folks who have major barriers to employment, like childcare.”
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