Statewide leaders and advocates want to build momentum on child care and early education conversations ahead of next year’s legislative session.
Representatives of more than a dozen Texas cities and a handful of state groups gathered in Fort Worth on Thursday to kick off the Momentum Early Learning Summit, a two-day event to discuss how they can better support children, parents and the workforce.
Alfreda Norman, former senior vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said one of the most pressing challenges for families across the state continues to be finding affordable, high quality child care.
The annual cost of infant care is comparable to that of a public university. Waitlists for child care scholarships are at an all-time high with more than 70,000 families currently hoping to receive such support, she said.
“Too many children are missing out on an opportunity to receive a high-quality early education,” Norman said.
The economy also takes a hit when parents can’t find options.
Texas loses about $9.4 billion annually because of child care issues, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.
Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath, Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker and Texas Workforce Commission Chairman Bryan Daniel in a panel spoke about the current landscape of early education in Texas. Kara Waddell, president and CEO of Child Care Associates, an advocacy nonprofit based in Fort Worth, moderated the discussion.
The group noted how, in 2019, lawmakers attempted to expand pre-K options for Texas families by encouraging partnerships between school districts or charter networks and child care programs.
However, only about 12 out of the state’s nearly 1,200 districts and charters figured out how to team up, Morath said.
“From a school district perspective, it is actually quite logistically difficult to make these partnerships work,” Morath said.
With districts already overburdened with other challenges, the Texas Education Agency recommends bringing in nonprofit organizations to act as intermediaries and simplify the process for school leaders, he suggested.
Waddell noted how states can experience a greater return on investment by bolstering programs in the first three years of childrens’ lives. However, most of the country instead pours more funds into students in kindergarten through high school.
“It’s far more efficient to invest in the younger kids to prevent the achievement gap from ever growing than it is to spend money on remediation,” Morath said.
However, if the money for such investments isn’t coming from more tax revenue, then it must be taken away from other areas.
“It’s very difficult policymaking to take more money away from other sections of education,” Parker added.
The summit began on the same day that Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick charged state senators to study up on a bundle of topics before they convene at the Capitol next year, forecasting his legislative priorities.
Among them, Patrick wants to look into ways to increase the state’s workforce productivity, including by improving child care accessibility, and to improve student achievement with an emphasis on early readiness starting in prekindergarten to “ensure every student has a strong academic foundation in reading and math.”
“If the Legislature can make progress on these challenges, it would represent a big step forward for Texas kids,” Texans Care for Children CEO Stephanie Rubin said in a statement.
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