Good Samaritan Community Services, which provides low-cost child care through an early Head Start program, has flourished in recent years.
Students in the classroom can be found with new technology, guided by teachers donning new uniforms, all thanks to a massive investment by the federal government as part of a COVID relief package. Parents have also enjoyed discounted tuition.
The upgrades and investments in training for teachers have earned the center at 1600 Saltillo St. on the West Side a top rating from the state quality rating and improvement system, known as Texas Rising Star (TRS).
But the discounted tuition could be going away, and bonuses that helped bolster the staff at the center also will have to stop as the federal funding runs out at the end of the year, according to Simon Salas, the chief executive officer of Good Samaritan. Advocates worry that other centers might even have to close after the essential funds run out, posing a dire situation for parents in the area.
At Good Samaritan, the tuition was already heavily discounted to help parents in need, and Salas said the goal is to not raise it.
Much of the funding was spent on long-term investments, like training staff, Salas said, and helping them obtain a Childcare Development Associate (CDAs), a professional certification, in order to better educate students, and paying for them to attend conferences.
“That level of training is going to be difficult” moving forward, he said.
Salas doesn’t expect to cut salaries, and families that rely on the center will continue to receive services.
Survey forecasts difficulties
As the deadline to spend the funds hits in November, other centers are facing more serious consequences.
In February, 47% of 200 Bexar County child-care providers surveyed said they would have had to close if not for the federal relief, as lockdowns kept parents at home with their children, according to data shared by the Texas Association for the Education of Young Children. There are 788 providers overall in Bexar County.
With the funding ending, and final checks already going out for many of the providers in the first half of the year, 36% say they could close their doors in the coming months.
The potential closures come after a wave of providers closed over the course of the pandemic, wiping out around 20% of child care in the county, according to data from the advocacy organization Children At Risk.
“That’s going to be a huge fallout,” said Sarah Baray, the CEO of Pre-K 4 SA, the city-funded early childhood education program. “But I think, more commonly, what’s going to happen is providers may not close altogether, but they’re going to have to abandon some of the quality measures that they may put in place that cost a little bit more money.”
One costly quality control measure is low student-to-teacher ratios, which allow centers to provide individualized support and education to children. But with less funding, centers could save money by putting more students in the classroom with one teacher, diluting the ability of an educator to pay attention to each child and increasing safety risks, Baray said.
Under state law, one teacher or caregiver can care for up to four children under a year old, and five children up to 17 months old. But one teacher can be responsible for up to 15 3-year-olds and 18 4-year-olds, a ratio advocates have been trying to change for years citing the loss of quality and safety at those levels.
The National Association for the Education of Young Children has standards of one teacher to six students from ages 1 to 3 and 10 students for 4- and 5-year-olds.
School impact
The possibility of closures in a region that already has a shortage of high-quality child care could impact the academic careers of students, according to Mark Larson, the executive director of Early Matters San Antonio.
“All of these, I think, are going to have a material impact on child readiness. Whether it’s going to be more challenges and turnover happening in child-care centers or a family who was able to bring in two incomes that now they can only bring in one, and what that child has in terms of their access to resources changes significantly at that point,” he said. “I think it’s going to show up in quite a few ways, all of which will be rolling into our elementary schools in the next two or three or four years.”
Presentations at various school board meetings have tied the attendance of students at a qualified pre-K program to higher Kindergarten Readiness scores — a key indicator of later academic success.
Closures could also impact parents who would have to pause continuing education in order to stay at home and care for their children, according to Adrian Lopez, the CEO of Workforce Solutions Alamo.
“If we lose child-care centers, we are going to potentially lose folks that are either going to school, getting trained or actually working,” he said.
The workforce board, which supports child care through child-care subsidies and workforce training, helped distribute millions in additional aid to support bonuses for staff in child-care centers, as well as business coaching to help them remain solvent.
Higher salaries and bonuses funded through the federal dollars helped the sector compete with rising salaries in other entry level jobs. Without that funding, some centers might not be able to afford the salaries necessary to retain staff.
Lopez said it is unclear just how many of the child-care providers in the region will take a hit when the funding runs out in the coming months.
Solutions
As providers scramble to find options, organizations are coming together to provide solutions.
A shared services model fostered by Pre-K 4 SA, which launched prior to the pandemic, has allowed providers to pool costs for services, curricula and even staff in order to save money.
“If individual child development centers come together in a network, they can use economies of scale to get better prices on some of the services that they need like landscaping, or maintenance and repair or even on their accounting services,” Baray said. “But also, with a hub agency like Pre-K 4 SA, we can help them with coaching, both pedagogical coaching and business coaching.”
Several members of the shared services alliance have achieved TRS status in recent years. Providers that are TRS-rated can charge more in tuition, and receive more in reimbursements from the state for maintaining quality. By the end of next year, all centers that receive state subsidies will be required to obtain TRS status.
Edna Bermea, who is the owner of Imagination Child Development Center 1 and 2, has received support in expanding her business through the alliance and was able to receive training for her staff and help getting them their CDAs.
“One of the biggest things is being able to bring better quality of care to the children,” Bermea said. “One of the great benefits was a lot of my teachers were able to get their CDA, which is get certified to be able to teach the kids and not just watch the kids.”
However, with the end of federal funding approaching, Bermea is concerned about the future of her center and the impact it will have on her staff.
“That funding has allowed me to offer my staff better benefits,” Bermea said. “I’m scared about what’s going to happen and how we’re going to survive without that money coming in anymore. It’s overwhelming at times, thinking that we’re not going to have that support.”
Salas, The Good Samaritan CEO, is also keeping an eye on the support of philanthropists and foundations, as well as the growing need for early childhood education.
“Everybody always wants to serve the needs that are out there,” he said. “But as needs are increasing, I’m not sure that the level of support is going to be able to be commensurate with the need. The needs aren’t diminishing. They are growing.”
Lopez, the Workforce Solutions CEO, said that business owners in child care are unlikely to give up easily.
“What you’ll find is a lot of these small businesses … are in there for the purposes of their commitment to children more … than their commitment to running a business that is operational,” he said. “The only reason I say that is I think that there is a willingness to try to find solutions, to continue operations.”
