Momentum appears to be building for the Texas Legislature, which convenes in January, to address the state’s child care system, which experts estimate cost the state between $9 billion and $11 billion annually in productivity and revenue losses.
A group of Texas business leaders who have been studying the issue for the past year has now joined the chorus of early childhood development advocates and social service organizations begging state lawmakers to make child care a priority during the 89th session, which convenes on Jan. 14.
“This is a major challenge for our workforce, and we have business members representing every industry, every part of the state of Texas,” said Kelsey Erickson Streufert, chief public affairs officer of the Texas Restaurant Association (TRA) during a press briefing Wednesday.
“And it’s because they know that their ability to grow and thrive and really keep this Texas miracle alive is wholly dependent on finding and keeping great employees, and we cannot do that if people cannot afford to work, because they cannot find safe, quality, affordable childcare.”
Food service industry hit hard
The food industry alone has roughly 30,000 unfilled jobs, the TRA estimates. In surveys, 60% of nonworking parents say a lack of affordable child care is the top reason they’re not in the workforce.
The food service industry recently became Texas’ largest private employer, supporting $1.4 million workers and generating $106 billion in sales last year. That industry has been particularly hard hit by the state’s child care shortage, prompting the TRA to create the Employers for Childcare Taskforce last year along with the Texas Association of Business and two nonprofits, Texas 2036 and Early Matters Texas.
Kyle Citrano, owners of three restaurants in Waco, sits on the task force and spoke Wednesday. He said the number one reason his employees can’t make shifts is because of lack of child care.
“We employ lots of working moms,” Citrano said, which he called one of his favorite populations to hire, “because they’re working to feed a mouth.” But when they miss shifts because they can’t find affordable child care, “those repercussions go on and on. These are employees that live paycheck to paycheck.”
Developing child care for non traditional hours, he said, “would tremendously help mothers and hospitality, not to mention health care and other industries” with workers who work round the clock. Other “deskless” industries that are particularly hard hit are those where workers cannot work from home or remotely, like construction and retail.
The task force now includes almost 70 businesses, chambers of commerce — including the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce — and other business-related associations. After months of listening and learning about the complex mix of issues facing the child care industry, the task force developed a set of policy proposals they believe could find bipartisan support in the legislature.
They learned that during the pandemic, roughly 5,000 day care centers and licensed home care businesses shuttered across the state, leaving Texas families with 27% fewer options for care. Roughly $4 billion in federal relief aid that flowed to the industry to help keep it afloat has been depleted.
Many remaining locations cannot operate at full capacity, because they cannot hire enough workers. That’s largely because child care workers in Texas — as in other states — earn poverty-level wages of $12 to $16 an hour, meaning many of them cannot afford child care for their own children.
In San Antonio, where more than 27% of children under 5 live in poverty, the cost of child care is nearly always an issue for parents who want to work. Mark Larson, executive director of EarlyMatters San Antonio, said 60% of local children under 5 have working parents and need child care.
Child care policy proposals
The task force’s first set of policy recommendations prioritizes “shoring up and strengthening” providers that already exist, and help employers find innovative ways to support their workers. That could include franchise tax credits for companies that provide child care benefits to employees and competitive grants to existing providers to expand.
It also calls for the Texas Workforce Commission and the state’s Health and Human Services Commission, each of which regulate different aspects of the industry, to collaborate on streamlining regulations that experts say can be inconsistent and drive up costs.
The task force recommended putting child care workers at the front of the line for subsidies to help pay for the cost of child care could help shore up that workforce, but stopped short of suggesting those subsidies be expanded. Today, roughly 78,000 children are on the waiting list for a child care subsidy.
There has been some movement toward relief for the industry. While a $2.3 billion bill to help keep child care providers afloat during the last legislative session did not pass, voters did approve a measure last year that allows local governments to give property tax exemptions to qualifying child care centers.
San Antonio approved the exemption in April, but only Texas Rising Star-certified child care centers with at least 20% subsidized enrollment qualified for the cuts, meaning just 176 local centers were eligible to apply.
Lawmakers started filing bills Tuesday for the upcoming legislative session; several address aspects of the state’s child care system.
Both House Speaker Dade Phelan and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick included child care in their interim charges this year; a House committee held a hearing in September, although more than half of the nine-member committee was absent, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Phelan also convened a series of working groups ahead of this session; one was to focus on child care.
Last month, a group of 120 organizations across Texas, including several based in San Antonio, released a statement urging the legislature to prioritize child care reform, offering its own set of policy priorities, many of which overlap with the employers’ task force, but that also included adding more funding to address the current waitlist.
“There’s not a silver bullet,” said Emily Williams Knight, president and CEO of the state’s restaurant association. “This is an incredibly complex, multi-layered [challenge], … and is going to be a multi-session effort.”
