December 2, 2025 • 41 mins
In this week's episode, Matthew and Eleanor speak with K-12 education reporter Jaden Edison and early learning advocate David Feigen about the shortage of affordable child care in Texas and how the school voucher program may or might not help.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
The trip Cast is brought to you by members of
the Texas Tribune. Hello and welcome to the Texas Tribune
trip Cast for December second, twenty twenty five. I am
Matthew Watkins, editor in chief of the Texts Tribune, joined
(00:27):
as usual by Eleanor Klibanoff Law and Politics reporter.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hello, Hello, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I got a little bit. I'm sure that I got
through yah. We are joined this week by K through
twelve reporter Jaden Edison.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Hey, Jaden Greens. Hello, how are y'all?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
We were discussing in the newsroom. How great this sweatshirt looks.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
On It is a sweater trip cast.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
You're not watching on YouTube?
Speaker 4 (00:52):
This is one to watch on you.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
We look so cozy.
Speaker 5 (00:55):
Anybody in Texas just waiting on his weather so we
can put out our winter fits?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Also joining us and also in a sweater, is David Fagan,
director of Early Learning policy with Texans Care for Children.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Hello, David, Hey, good to see y'all, and I was
delighted to see you all also in sweaters. I didn't
know how I was gonna dress for this, but I
feel good, I feel welcome, and I feel cozy, So
I need to.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Talk David, the first Trip Cast guest to have played
basketball with me.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Oh wow wow. On five and five.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
It was an old game back in the day again,
started by former Texas reporter now for the New York Times,
Brian Rosenthal. We would play a weekly Saturday game Sunday game.
Games still going on, although David David left us quit.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Yeah, well, you know, the invite stopped coming. I think
maybe I played too well or something.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah, the standard is too high.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I love it, I get it.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
I don't want to embarrass anybody.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah. Yeah, we'll move on.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
You know, maybe someday we'll have robbed down in on
the show and we talk about my vicious block of
him and the one toy he played in that game too.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
He still talks about it.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah, that's why he left the Texas Tribune.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
It is, yes, because I kept bringing it up.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yeah, yes, but that's not what we're talking about today,
although maybe we can talk.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
A little bit more about it.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Of the conversation tapes and said we were going to
talk about early childhood care early learning, a topic near
and dear to the hearts of many working parents such
as myself and David as we were talking about earlier
before we started on. If you are a parent in
Texas where both parents work, you know about the challenges
(02:40):
of finding adequate care for your children. I remember when
I was in Dallas when we had our first kid.
You know, one of the first things you are told
is a soon to be parent, is you better get
on a childcare wait list as soon as possible. Many
of the places in Dallas at the time the wait
list was more than nine months, So you actually needed
(03:01):
to get onto the wait list when you were thinking
about having a kid, not even when you found out
you were going to have a kid. The problem even
worse in rural areas or for low income Texans. I
am going to cite a stat that is from David
that says that eighty eight percent of working families with
low incomes live in childcare deserts, where demand is three
(03:24):
times greater than the availability of high quality childcare seats.
Two notable things happened this legislative session in this regard,
the first one being the legislature approved one hundred million
dollars toward childcare scholarships in an effort to shrink the
nearly ninety five thousand member waiting list for those scholarships.
The money was spent, the waiting list did not shrink,
(03:48):
thanks in large part to increased childcare costs. We'll get
into that here in a little bit. Second, the state
voted a little bit more not under the radar politically,
but under the radar toward this issue to approve a
one billion dollar school voucher program. It was designed and
touted as a way to use state dollars to help
kids pay for their private school tuition. But what was
(04:09):
not discussed as much was that the vouchers can also
be used for private pre k something that the comptroller
confirmed last week, so that could be a major change.
But I want to start first with you, David, on
this scholarship issue. Lay out for me, first of all,
just what this program was and how it works. Just
(04:32):
you know how it has worked over the years.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
So the Childcare Services program is managed by the Texas
Workforce Commission, and it does so because it helps parents
go to work. And the Workforce Commission is proud to
have this as the largest line item of its budget
is supporting this program. It provides financial aid, also known
as scholarships or subsidies to eligible families who meet work
(04:58):
and income requirements have a child under the age of thirteen.
It gives them financial assistance so that they can go
to work and their children can thrive in really high
quality childcare programs. There's about thirty thousand Texas employers right
now who have somebody working there who's there because they
have access to one of these scholarships. So we know
this is a really important program for the Texas economy
(05:18):
and for Texas families. The funding has primarily come from
the federal government the Childcare and Development Block Grant the
Congress provides, but states around the country have infused additional
dollars to serve more families. Prior to last session, Texas
was not one of those states. Texas took the federal money,
spent it, but did not add in any state dollars
(05:39):
to serve more parents. We were excited that last session
that changed, and as you said, one hundred million new
dollars got invested into this program to serve more families,
and we're excited that win happened, that it was bipartisan,
But as we'll talk about, there's a lot more work
to do to actually serve more families and bring down
(06:00):
the very long wait list for that program, which sits
at around one hundred thousand kids.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah, can you talk a little bit about just the
discussion about this during the legislative session. I mean, I
gave sort of my own personal experience at the top
of the show. But you know, was it a reflection
of the childcare problems in Texas that led to this
larger infusion of cash and how was that problem discussed
(06:24):
among lawmakers and people who came to the capital to
advocate for this.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Well, you know, I have been working on this issue
in Earnest really since two thousand and seventeen or so,
and I've sort of watched the journey of this in
the Texas legislature where back then the conversation around childcare
was almost exclusively on ensuring minimum health and safety standards
were met by childcare programs. It was you guys might
(06:51):
recall a big expose that was done by the Austin
American statesmen around you know, children who had died in
childcare programs, and that led to a series of reforms
to try to crack down on unlicensed care. You know,
there was some efforts to improve the nutrition standards in
childcare but over the last few years there's really been
a shift where lawmakers have understood, you know, we have
(07:14):
a role too and actually ensuring families can afford high
quality childcare, that the childcare that they can afford is
not just safe, but supporting children's school readiness. And so
going into session for really the first time, it was
very clear that childcare was on the agenda. Both the
House and Senate held interim hearings trying to tackle ways
in which we can address this during the session. In
(07:37):
my time, the Senate had never had a hearing on
this topic during the interim, and so we knew that
it was going to be a big priority. We didn't
know how that would manifest, and you know, we worked
with partners to really bring up this issue of the
wait list, that there's children who are eligible for this
program but are waiting for six months to two years
(08:00):
because they're the lack of funds. This is not a
program where every child who's eligible gets served. There's a
certain number of scholarships we fund, and after that you
have to wait for somebody to come off the program.
And so there are families waiting because we don't have
enough funds. You know, we told the stories not just
of families who were struggling, but the families who actually
benefited from this program. You know, we talked to a
(08:20):
mom who was literally homeless before she got access to
one of these scholarships. She was able to work a
couple hours a week cleaning houses with her baby strapped
to her because she had no childcare. She eventually got
a scholarship. Now she's working full time, she's housed, and
her child is in a really high quality program here
(08:40):
in Austin. And we were able to tell stories like
that and say, look at all of this program is achieving.
Don't we want to see more Texas families benefit in
the ways that these parents have. And so, you know,
we also told the stories of frankly, lots of Republican
led states around the country who to Texas and was
(09:01):
really investing. And so between that, I think we were
able to make a winning case that investing in this
program is research based, it's popular, it's it's something we
can do very simply in serving more parents. And so
we were able to get that win. And I will
say that the leadership of Representative Armando Wally was really key,
(09:22):
as well as the speaker of the House and you know,
the Appropriations Center finance chair chair women, chairwoman, and chairman.
So it was a big bipartisan win for sure.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Two things I sort of want to get your your
read on is like what shifted this conversation and move
childcare into the more like mainstream political conversation here. Yeah,
one being you know, the thing I covered for a
long time, which was the you know, ban on abortion
and sort of this attention that Republican lawmakers sort of
felt called to address, you know, women's health issues, supporting families,
(09:55):
sort of making good on some of these promises that
they brought to bear, which sort of I've searched seen
that play out of the last couple of years. The
other one being, though that I'm not as clear on,
is like the COVID pandemic and the way that that
sort of felt like suddenly we were all talking about
childcare in a way we hadn't been before.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Yeah, you're totally right. I mean it's not just in Texas.
There was you know, we wrote a policy brief around
as I mentioned, how different Republican led states have addressed
this issue, and what you'll find is a lot of
their big investments came right on the heels of you know,
right after the pandemics sort of began in twenty one
or in twenty twenty three, and so there has been
(10:35):
an explosion of attention on this. I think there's a
few reasons. One is the need for childcare became quite
clear to people, many of whom were home with their
kids all day. If their childcare program had to close,
or you know, they had to take time off work
to be with their kids at home, I think the
need for childcare became very visible. The other thing that
(10:56):
I think was really important was the federal government, under
both the Trump administration and the Biden administrations, invested significant
federal dollars into states to stabilize childcare. And what we
found was that worked. It turned out that spending a
lot of money to ensure that programs can retain staff,
(11:17):
that they can receive funding so they don't have to
rt increase costs on parents, that that's a very popular
and effective way to help families go to work. So
a lot of states saw once those federal dollars ran out,
said what can we do to fill the gaps? And
I think that it essentially served as an unintentional pilot
program where states got to see, hey, if we invest
(11:39):
money into these programs, we can get really good returns.
And I think that's essentially opened the valve of investments
that we're now seeing across the country.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yeah, it's I think also worth at least making the
point that there has been a political shift, there's been
a willingness to invest more money on this. You know,
it was one hundred million dollars, which is a big investment.
You know, the state did spend fifty one billion dollars
on reducing property taxes this year, so there's there's something
(12:10):
about the priorities there. But it's also worth pointing out
that as your report on this, David noted that this
money was you know, not actually state money that was
being added to this. It was unspent federal dollars from
the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. That basically there
was this pot of money that Texas had that had
(12:30):
sort of decided not to spend, not to find a
use for, and then they kind of decided, oh, maybe
we should use it to boost this scholarship program.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
That's right. Yeah, it took quite a journey. The House
passed in its budget one hundred million of state dollars
that it evolved into, as you say, these unexpended tan
OF funds. Our opinion on this, frankly is that the
parents who will benefit won't really know the difference that
(13:00):
it came from an unspent tantiff pot or an unspent
general revenue pot. I think that the point is lawmakers
found a way to make this investment, and we know that,
you know, states across the country are using TANAF dollars
for this purpose, so it's not a stretch to say
that this is a really valid use of those dollars
when we have them. I think that moving forward, we
(13:23):
should look at that uninspent tant IF pot as a
way to fund this program, but also state general revenue
and continue to explore other revenue streams because this problem
is significant. This is not something that is a one
session fix or a even one funding stream strategy. We
have to figure out how to make investments at the
state level, the local level. Philanthropy is going to continue
(13:46):
to play a role. It's going to take a lot
of resources to really get this problem addressed.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah, you're sort of addressing what was going to be
my next question. Which is how much of the need
is this filling, how how much of this is moving
the needle in terms of the childcare challenges in the state.
I mean, you know, you talk about a wait list
of ninety five thousand kids, I would imagine there's a lot,
a lot, a lot more families that you know are
(14:11):
struggling to pay for childcare in Texas.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Yeah, no question. I mean, you know, maybe I'm burying
the lead a little that, you know, we hoped that
this investment, because of estimates that were provided by the
Texas Workforce Commission during the legislative session, would essentially allow
us to serve around ten thousand more children in the program.
That was their estimates during the legislative session. However, after
the legislative session, the Workforce Commission partners with the University
(14:39):
of Texas, who conducts a survey to essentially figure out
how much each of these scholarships costs, and that's based
on the market rate of childcare. And what they unfortunately
found was childcare costs are continuing to skyrocket and what
that means is that the cost of scholarships skyrockets. And
it's a simple math equation if each scholarship costs more,
(14:59):
you can you know, you can't provide as many without
increasing the amount of funds. So this hundred million dollars
was just as essential as we thought it would be. Unfortunately, though,
it was to prevent a reduction of the number of
scholarships rather than to serve more families. So in fact,
the urgency was actually even greater than maybe we presented
during the legislative session, that we were actually at risk
(15:20):
of having to serve fewer children in this program. Fortunately
lawmakers came together to make this investment, but it's a
reminder that we have so much more work to do
to actually serve more parents in the program.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
So if one hundred million dollars sort of held the
line or prevented, you know, this program from taking a
step back. Is there like a dollar amount you guys
see that would like what would it cost to make
that weightless zero?
Speaker 4 (15:48):
You know, our goal has not been to make the
weightless zero. I think that you know, even during the
legislative session, we really tried to convey that the goal
is to serve more families. You know, we can increase
the wait lists just by doing a better marketing campaign, right,
and that doesn't necessarily, but if we're serving more families,
I think that's really the goal. So for us, I
(16:10):
think we need to take this, you know, one step
at a time and understand that it's going to take
a number of years, a number of it's gonna take
the state level, the federal level, the local level to
really address this problem. In earnest, it's going to take
us providing more funding for scholarships, but also doing more
to bring down the cost of childcare so that this
(16:31):
cost for scholarships doesn't continue to rise. You know, childcare
programs are facing increased costs across the board, and parents
are bearing the brunt of that right now. So we
need to be able to tackle this one step at
a time. I think we made good progress this legislative session,
but lawmakers, I hope we're getting used to talking about
this issue because it's not a one session conversation. Unfortunately,
(16:53):
there's a lot more work to do.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Before we move on.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Can you just clarify, just to make sure I understand
it correctly, who's eligible for this program?
Speaker 3 (17:00):
How do you get it?
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Yeah, so it's based on income. It's essentially eighty five
percent of state median income, right, and you have to
have a child under the age of thirteen. You have
to be working or in job training, so there are
work requirements in their income requirements. We also prioritize scholarships
based on a number of factors, including if you have
a child with a disability, or The legislature also passed
(17:26):
to build a session that actually, if you're a child
of a childcare educator, that you're part of this priority list.
So we have priorities among those eligible children. But eighty
five percent of state median income is what that main
eligibility is. So a lot of families are eligible, but
unfortunately the number of scholarships does not meet the demand.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
And I would imagine there's a lot of families that
don't even know that this programming exists.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Said you could double the weight list, probably with a
good marketing campaign.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah right, exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Okay, let's pause for a second to hear from our sponsors.
Then I want to bring Jaden in to talk about
the school voucher angle to this. You can give every
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Speaker 3 (18:18):
Right, Jaden.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
So we talked about one hundred million dollars toward these
scholarships through the Texas Workforce Commission. Of course, ten times
that amount was allocated toward school vouchers. The big brunt
of that conversation, the big conversation among lawmakers advocates of
this was that this is needed for you know, parents
(18:41):
who have their kids in public schools, you know, over
the age of five, who maybe are unhappy or not
being served well by those schools, wanting to get state
help to go to private schools. Less discussed was the
issue that has now come up since the state Controller
has been in charge of setting the rules for how
this money will be dispersed, and that is money that
(19:03):
goes to three and four year rolds to go to
PreK programs, particularly private PreK programs that you know are
run you know, all all across the state. Tell us
a little bit about that discussion and where the state
landed on the issue.
Speaker 5 (19:18):
Yeah, So I think it's important to understand kind of
the process and the way things have played out. Right,
So the law passes, which obviously says to framework for
kind of how this is supposed to work. Now the comptroller,
you know, Texas chief financial officers tasked with, hey, here's
the law, here's the framework, now put this into action.
Design kind of a set of basically rules that will
allow you know, parents to be able to understand, for example,
(19:39):
what kind of documentation you need to submit, how certain
processes will work, things that it kind of gets into
the details in the way that the law doesn't, right.
And so what we've seen since the passage of the
law was very much that process.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Right.
Speaker 5 (19:51):
There was the introduction of proposed rules and also a
public comment period for people Texans all across you know,
to you know, for their insight and say hey, here's
what we like, what we don't like, what you should change,
what you shouldn't. And so what's happened in that process
is that during the public coming period, they were about
roughly two hundred to three hundred comments, right, and we reviewed.
(20:13):
We were all the ones we could get right with
about two hundreds. So and what we kept seeing was
the overwhelming majority of those comments seemed to be from
private pre K providers who were saying, hey, comtroller, you
seem to have made a mistake, right, And what we're
seeing in the rules that you proposed, was that private
pre K you know families or you know pre K
(20:33):
families in general, you kind of allocated and put them
in the bucket of two thousand dollars per student, which
under the law is actually designated for homeschool students. And
what the argument was is that, hey, the law is
pretty clear, you know, pre K students are eligible for
the full roughly ten thousand dollars amounts that you set
aside for everybody else outside of homeschool. And so basically
(20:58):
it went through that process and we arrived at you
know where we did and the most in last week basically,
which was the comtroller, you know, after going through the process,
you know, going through the law and honestly hearing from
the bill authors as well, basically setting in stone that hey,
you guys are right. It is the full ten thousand
dollars amount and as long as students kind of meet
(21:20):
what are currently the free public pre K requirements, they
are they're eligible for the full ten thousand dollars amount now.
And just for clarification, for free public pre K, it's
more of kind of a you know, for students for example,
who are on free and reduced lunch students who you
know are not fluent in English per se. If you're
a child of a public school teacher or you know
(21:40):
someone in the military, right, you be eligible. So there
is a more kind of type framework around that. But
basically that's kind of how we landed at where we
are now.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, I mean I remember being a parent right and
Zeomike daycare and being sort of shocked at the idea
of I'm paying more in daycare tuition then I would
be paying to send my kid for tuition to go
to a state university in the state, right, Like, this
is a massive cost. And I think this idea, I
(22:12):
can certainly see why a lot of daycares, a lot
of people would be saying, like, if you can make
this ten thousand dollars available to us imediately, you know,
pre K is a only a couple of years in
that pre to five year you know, kindergarten time, that's
that's a major benefit opportunity for families, you know, upper
middle class families at but especially lower income families and
(22:37):
things like that.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
What was the argument.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Did they explain why they initially proposed spending less for
those parents?
Speaker 5 (22:44):
Yeah, you know what, It's interesting because there was a
lot of conversations about this. I really don't think it
was anything like intentional per se, right. I think what
happened was and that's why you kind of have the
rule making process was that you know, this was their interpretation.
And really, when you go back and look the law, like,
if you're looking for it, it is clear to say, right
pre k ten k. But if you were, you know,
(23:05):
to the average person just kind of glancing through, unless
you were specifically looking for that, it maybe wouldn't be
something that's the most apparent. And so in the controller
has been very clear Acting Controller Kelly Hancock, you know,
he said publicly right like, we're going to follow the
intent of the law. And so it wasn't necessarily surprising
to me that they changed it to the full ten thousand.
I always expect that that would be the case, and
I just think that this was just a situation where
(23:27):
you go through the rule making process and you know,
you had Representative Brad Buckley and then former Senator Creighton's
now Texas Tech chancellor who submitted written as someone to said, hey,
here's kind of just to clear up many confusion, here's
what we were intending with this and then throughout the process,
you know, they made the adjustment. And so again I
don't think it was anything that was like intentionally we
wanted to be this. It just seemed to be more
(23:47):
again from my perspective that there are so many aspects
of the law, and so the rule making process allowed
them to kind of get it right as intended.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
There's always sort of that period. I mean, I think
it comes up of like more and controversial ways than this,
But where the you know, what the legislators wrote into
the law and how the people on the ground actually
have to enact it. Sometimes it's like they're not necessarily
seeing all of the potential roadblocks and then putting into action.
You're like, oh, okay, you like not change the law,
(24:16):
but look at the what the intent was at the time.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
I mean that was the one thing I was looking
at with the rules, right, was how much will the
controller on any issue right deviate from what the law
says right?
Speaker 3 (24:28):
The law shits a foundation.
Speaker 5 (24:29):
Is the controller in a way going to go above
and beyond kind of what that says?
Speaker 4 (24:33):
Right?
Speaker 5 (24:33):
And so that's why I kind of land at the
conclusion that I have because really on a number of
issues the controller make clear and the way they actually structure,
you know, the final rules. The office offered like actually
like detailed commentary to almost like each comment submitted and
explained its rationale for hey, here's why we're going to
decline or accept this suggestion, and again it it. You know,
(24:55):
I think it was pretty clear they you know, they
made it clear that hey, here's you know what, here's
what the law says. Is what the bill author says,
so you know we'll follow that.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, I was just so struck when I learned about
this kind of pre K option, about this and my reaction.
I had a few different reactions. I'm going to sort
of like throw them out there to y'all to get
you to react to. The first one was just why
didn't they talk about this when they were passing the bill?
Because when this the knowing that it's available for private
(25:24):
pre K, it feels to me like it opens up
the pool of people who could benefit from this so
much larger than it was before.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Right.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I'll just again bring my own experience in this. My
kids go to public school. We're happy with our public school.
We don't have any intentions of pulling them out of
their public school. But my kids went to private pre K, right,
and we would have been thrilled to join that. I
would imagine that there's a lot of parents in that
position now who maybe have no plans on sending their
(25:55):
kids to private school, but are going to send their
kids to the church down the street, or you know,
some other kind of private you know, not associated with
the school's system for pre K, who now might get
significant help from this. So a just a little bit
of confusion. Coalition, Yeah, why didn't you get those people
(26:15):
on your side when you're advocating for this bill? But
then also does this not create any concerns for the
people who were advocating for this of we just dramatically
increased the number of people who are going to want
to have access to this program in a way that
it's going to be a lot more competitive. And that
(26:35):
one billion dollars we already knew was going to disappear
pretty quickly, now maybe it will disappear.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Even quicker than that.
Speaker 5 (26:42):
Yeah, well, I think if that were to have in
this state, would totally welcome that outcome, right in terms
of the demand, and I think, you know, the expectation
is that you know, demand forward will go above what
the appropriations are and so the different priorities of KI
can and things of that nature.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Men.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
I will say, the one thing with the way they
struggle it is that like it's not you know, just
a you know, a mom and pop kind of PreK
provider can can pop up, right, it does require that
you know, what are called education service providers. So in
this case, whoever the pre K provider is right, does
kind of follow the existing requirements for private PreK providers,
which could be for example, I think think it's accreditation
(27:19):
with the state that or had wrote a couple down
as well, it's like good standing with the Department of
Family and Protective Services, you know, different partnerships with you
know a lot of them have existing partnerships with districts
and things of that nature. So the framework that already
exists for private PreK providers is also the framework that
you know, those who you know want to you know,
take part in this program are also going to have
(27:39):
to follow. But it's also to your point, it is interesting.
I don't have the magic answer as to as to
why they didn't talk about it as much. I mean,
there were so many different aspects, and you would think too,
it would have been a talking point given like a
lot of the talk about public school pre K funding, right,
which is a whole that's a whole other conversation, you
know that we could have, you know, you could have
a whole hour long discussion you know about that. But yeah,
(28:02):
it was interesting, and again it was one of those
things that unless you were specifically looking forward in the law,
it wouldn't have been apparent to you because I think
a lot of the focus from lawmakers was on homeschool students.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Right.
Speaker 5 (28:12):
It was two categories, right, you're you know, you're you're
the average student who's going to get the average kind
of ten thousand dollars or the up to thirty thousand
if you know you're a student with the IEP, you know,
student with a disability, and then the separate bucket for
homeschool students. And so it wasn't kind of apparent again
until you know, you go through two hundred and three
hundred comments and literally clearly the private pre cab bodies
(28:34):
knew about this because and they all copied and pasted
the same messaging across the board. So clearly it was
a very coordinated effort, and everybody kind of was in
the know one kind of what was happening.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Yeah, the other thing. My other reaction to this was Wow,
this this has sort of stealthily become the biggest state
investment in you know, these childcareage topics that we've seen.
I'm curious, David, what your reaction to my reaction to
(29:09):
that is, Like, am I right in thinking that that's
possibly the case? How do you feel about this scenario?
Speaker 4 (29:15):
Yeah, it's it's going to be really interesting because and
you know, you asked the question of why this wasn't
a bigger topic during the session, And I do think
this is something we run into in early childood education
all the time, which is anytime it's a K through
twelve discussion and pre K has implications. These sorts of
issues pop up because the way we govern our pre
(29:37):
K program. If you're a parent of a child of
a four year old, your access points to education are
very different than when you're a parent of a five
year old. When you're a parent of a five year old,
you have access to a universal kindergarten program that is
available in every corner of the state for free. If
you have a four year old. There are some families
eligible for free pre K, but many families are on
(30:00):
their own and they are looking at private options because
there's not a public option available to them. I think
it's really worth re emphasizing what Jayden said, which is
the ESA program is universal, but for pre K it's not.
It's still only those families who are eligible for public
pre K, those who are on free and reduced lunch
or meet one of the other eligibility criteria. So there's
(30:21):
going to be a lot of parents who are parents
of four year old who think great, I have access
to financial aid for pre K, which these families really
need because they don't necessarily have a public school option
right now, but they're not going to be eligible for this.
It's just those who are part of existing pre K eligibility.
So I think we really need to watch and see
(30:45):
how many families actually are able to navigate that. Because
these other grades don't have the as restrictive of eligibility criteria,
there's going to be a lot of implementation questions here.
You know, one of the ways that you can be
eligible for free pre K is to be a child
who's homelandanguage is not English. That's done through a home
language survey by the school district. How's that going to
be done with an essay? We don't know yet. We
(31:07):
haven't seen guidance on that yet. So I think that
there's a lot of questions about how many children actually
will ultimately end up being served that are for year
olds and three year olds. I think that the demand
is certainly significant, as we've seen from the Childcare Services Program,
a lot of parents want access to financial aid for
early childhood education. I think we don't know how many
(31:28):
of them are going to end up with the essays,
but I would remind folks that the Childcare Services Program
is a financial aid program for parents to access childcare
as well, and it has a much more generous eligibility
than the essays do. So we're gonna have to see
how all these puzzle pieces fit together, but we're curious
to see how many families benefit.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
I would say to add to I think the free
public pre K requirements also limits it to three year olds, right,
so you actually won't have the four year olds in
the category as well, which is interesting. But it made
me think something that David was saying earlier. We're talking
about the scholarship right in and sort of the awareness
right anytime. I think we all know this right when
you're you've seen kind of these, you know, big programs
(32:09):
that specifically target you know, low income families. One of
the big hurdles, as was acknowledged here is the awareness component,
and it'll be interesting to see it if that changes
at all here, right. I think one of the things
that voucher advocates had talked about, you know, one of
the benefits they saw in this program was that hey,
we actually have a whole year to get the word
out about all the different benefits of it in ways
(32:31):
that a state like Tennessee, for example, they passed their
law and they were ready to roll you know soon after. Again,
I don't know how much it's going to change. I
think ultimately what you'll see is what we see, you know,
with these huge universal programs, is that especially in these
early years, you're going to see those like for example,
look at for example, you had all these private pre
K providers who had who had testified and said hey,
(32:53):
this isn't right. Those are probably going to be the
providers who go to families who will qualify and say hey,
if you don't know about this. Hey, this is a
benefit you can have, right, so initially you probably see
you know, the students who ultimately benefit from it will
be those who already in some way are connected to
people who are kind of in the know, and it'll
be a challenge for the state over time with the
(33:14):
entire program, with the awareness component, like we see with
all these other programs as well.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Absolutely, Okay, I want to test one more reaction with
with you, David, which.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Is one may not have another kid to try to
get this right.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
That's question.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Don't worry, don't worry. That is that is not my
reaction at all. Yes, you know, one thing we haven't
talked about much lately is this. We've talked a lot
about the financial struggle for parents. We haven't talked as
much about the financial struggle for these actual daycare centers. Again,
citing your report, childcare programs are operating on barely sustainable
(33:55):
profit margins you say, typically less than one percent, which
puts them at considerable risk of closure. That is, even
though childcare educators are paid on average around twelve dollars
per hour with little to know benefits. The challenge here,
one of the issues that I have heard about as
I have been an interested person in this subject, is
(34:16):
the idea of the battle for three and four year olds.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Right.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
One of the things that happens is in day care facilities,
it's much more expensive to care for the infants than
it is to care for the three and four year
olds because the infants need more attention, they're less able
to sort of, you know, obviously take care of themselves.
(34:39):
You need more adults per child in that area. There
has been a push, a very well intentioned push to
get more three and four year olds into public pre k.
But what that does is it takes away the sort
of profit generators for the daycare operators and leaves them
(35:00):
having to care for, you know, or care for a
higher percentage of infants compared to three or four year olds,
which either forces them to lose revenue, go out of business,
or increase their prices for the infants and everything like that.
Does this create a situation where maybe you can pull
(35:21):
some of those three and four year olds back into
these private daycare providers, which can make them more financially
sustainable or allow them to make infant care more affordable
for you know, the general population. What do you think
about that possibility.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
David, Yeah, I mean, I do want to just speak
quickly about you know, your point about the struggle that
truck care providers are facing, because it is significant. Again,
that is why the scholarship costs are going up. You know,
they're facing rising labor costs. They're paying around twelve dollars
per hour, but they're losing staff to BUCkies and Amazon
and all sorts of places, so they have to try
to compete, which means those costs go up, and that
(36:00):
means parents pay more. They're rising food costs if childcare
program provides food. We all can look at our grocery
bill and see that that's going to affect childcare providers.
Insurance is crushing right now, so childcare programs are facing
rising insurance costs, rent property taxes they face that as well,
and parents are bearing the brunt of all of those increases,
right And so, just like we would never rely on
(36:25):
tolls to pay for our entire highway system, relying on
just parents to pay for the full brunt of early
care and education leads to these really unfortunate outcomes that
we see. And so I understand deeply the pain that
childcare providers are feeling and the hope that these these
opportunities give. I would say about just you know, the
(36:47):
idea that we need to consider pulling you know, folks
from these public settings and ensure that they return to
private settings. First of all, I think it's important to
remind us why they choose these public settings, which is
that they can afford them. And I think we want
to make sure that families can afford high quality options
in a variety of settings, whether that be a head
start program, a childcare program, a for profit nonprofit. We
(37:09):
also want to make sure parents, if they want to
keep their kid at home, have the resources to do that,
and the public schools in many cases a good option
for them. I also think it's important to remember that
only about half of four year olds in our state
are enrolled in public pre K, so there are plenty
of four year olds to go around, and I think
we should make sure that they can afford and access
(37:31):
these high quality programs, and many of them will choose
private options if they have the ability to. And for
three year olds, I will say it's even less. It's
only around eleven percent of three year olds are enrolled
in public schools, so there's plenty of children. I don't
think it has to be a competition between these settings.
I think we can do more to make childcare and
preschool more affordable, more high quality across settings, and I
(37:55):
think the legislator took some promising steps, but yeah, we
have a lot more work to do.
Speaker 5 (38:00):
Can I ask one good question that David, I'm curious
like to you. And one of the things I've heard
though about the pre k thing is is just a
general concern. It's something like an optic conversation right where
it's like, even after this legislative session, the state still
isn't funding public pre k at a full day level, right,
which I know has been some of the concern of
advocates and whatnot. And so you're going to have some
(38:21):
who come out and say, well, clearly, if the will
is there, you can get it done because you've set
aside money now for private PreK providers you know, to
be able to benefit from this. How do you look
at that kind of argument and that kind of debate
that folks will have Avialy.
Speaker 4 (38:37):
Yeah, I mean I think that there there's a lot
of rea. Like I said, I think from a parent's perspective,
the way we do things doesn't seem to make a
lot of sense. If you have a four year old,
you are lost in trying to figure out what is
an option for you and your family. You're trying to
figure out how to cut costs to or this. Do
(39:00):
you quit just one of you quit your job so
that you can just stay at home with your kid
because the costs for care are so expensive. But then
the moment your child turns five, it's like, Okay, great,
now I have a universal program that I can enroll in.
I think that a parent of a four year old
and a parent of a five year old feel like
their needs are similar, but the way the state responds
is quite different, whether they be in public schools or not.
(39:22):
So I think whether you're a superintendent or a childcare
program director, you have a lot to say that, hey,
the state needs to do way more than we're doing,
and we are ready to play a role in helping
provide those high quality options for families because I just
I really just don't think that. I think the competition
(39:43):
that gets presented between these sites is really missing the mark.
Like I think everybody struggling to meet the needs of
these families because we're not investing enough in famili's ability
to access these programs. So our perspective at Texans Care
for Children it is that we want families to be
able to afford an access private settings, public settings, and
(40:05):
we want them to have the resources to figure out
what best meets their families' needs.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
Well, I think we found the solution here.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
You mentioned that you know, the employees can get better
wages at BUCkies, and I think we just need to
put childcare and all the BUCkies. Yeah right, they're in
rural areas.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Right, they're everywhere, very popular. Yeah, building new ones every day, exactly, exactly.
All right, great job everybody. Yeah, solved.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Yeah, Well, I think thank you so much David for
I think what has been a really informative discussion. Thank
you as well to Jaden and Eleanor. Thank you to
our producers, Rob and Chris, and thank you to our sponsors,
the Texas Tribune Membership program Texas Tribune dot org slash
donate to keep this podcast and all of our journalism
(40:50):
free and available to anyone who wants to access it.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
We'll be back next week.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
Yeah,
The trip Cast is brought to you by members of
the Texas Tribune. Hello and welcome to the Texas Tribune
trip Cast for December second, twenty twenty five. I am
Matthew Watkins, editor in chief of the Texts Tribune, joined
(00:27):
as usual by Eleanor Klibanoff Law and Politics reporter.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hello, Hello, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I got a little bit. I'm sure that I got
through yah. We are joined this week by K through
twelve reporter Jaden Edison.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Hey, Jaden Greens. Hello, how are y'all?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
We were discussing in the newsroom. How great this sweatshirt looks.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
On It is a sweater trip cast.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
You're not watching on YouTube?
Speaker 4 (00:52):
This is one to watch on you.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
We look so cozy.
Speaker 5 (00:55):
Anybody in Texas just waiting on his weather so we
can put out our winter fits?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Also joining us and also in a sweater, is David Fagan,
director of Early Learning policy with Texans Care for Children.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Hello, David, Hey, good to see y'all, and I was
delighted to see you all also in sweaters. I didn't
know how I was gonna dress for this, but I
feel good, I feel welcome, and I feel cozy, So
I need to.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Talk David, the first Trip Cast guest to have played
basketball with me.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Oh wow wow. On five and five.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
It was an old game back in the day again,
started by former Texas reporter now for the New York Times,
Brian Rosenthal. We would play a weekly Saturday game Sunday game.
Games still going on, although David David left us quit.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Yeah, well, you know, the invite stopped coming. I think
maybe I played too well or something.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah, the standard is too high.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I love it, I get it.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
I don't want to embarrass anybody.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah. Yeah, we'll move on.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
You know, maybe someday we'll have robbed down in on
the show and we talk about my vicious block of
him and the one toy he played in that game too.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
He still talks about it.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah, that's why he left the Texas Tribune.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
It is, yes, because I kept bringing it up.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yeah, yes, but that's not what we're talking about today,
although maybe we can talk.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
A little bit more about it.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Of the conversation tapes and said we were going to
talk about early childhood care early learning, a topic near
and dear to the hearts of many working parents such
as myself and David as we were talking about earlier
before we started on. If you are a parent in
Texas where both parents work, you know about the challenges
(02:40):
of finding adequate care for your children. I remember when
I was in Dallas when we had our first kid.
You know, one of the first things you are told
is a soon to be parent, is you better get
on a childcare wait list as soon as possible. Many
of the places in Dallas at the time the wait
list was more than nine months, So you actually needed
(03:01):
to get onto the wait list when you were thinking
about having a kid, not even when you found out
you were going to have a kid. The problem even
worse in rural areas or for low income Texans. I
am going to cite a stat that is from David
that says that eighty eight percent of working families with
low incomes live in childcare deserts, where demand is three
(03:24):
times greater than the availability of high quality childcare seats.
Two notable things happened this legislative session in this regard,
the first one being the legislature approved one hundred million
dollars toward childcare scholarships in an effort to shrink the
nearly ninety five thousand member waiting list for those scholarships.
The money was spent, the waiting list did not shrink,
(03:48):
thanks in large part to increased childcare costs. We'll get
into that here in a little bit. Second, the state
voted a little bit more not under the radar politically,
but under the radar toward this issue to approve a
one billion dollar school voucher program. It was designed and
touted as a way to use state dollars to help
kids pay for their private school tuition. But what was
(04:09):
not discussed as much was that the vouchers can also
be used for private pre k something that the comptroller
confirmed last week, so that could be a major change.
But I want to start first with you, David, on
this scholarship issue. Lay out for me, first of all,
just what this program was and how it works. Just
(04:32):
you know how it has worked over the years.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
So the Childcare Services program is managed by the Texas
Workforce Commission, and it does so because it helps parents
go to work. And the Workforce Commission is proud to
have this as the largest line item of its budget
is supporting this program. It provides financial aid, also known
as scholarships or subsidies to eligible families who meet work
(04:58):
and income requirements have a child under the age of thirteen.
It gives them financial assistance so that they can go
to work and their children can thrive in really high
quality childcare programs. There's about thirty thousand Texas employers right
now who have somebody working there who's there because they
have access to one of these scholarships. So we know
this is a really important program for the Texas economy
(05:18):
and for Texas families. The funding has primarily come from
the federal government the Childcare and Development Block Grant the
Congress provides, but states around the country have infused additional
dollars to serve more families. Prior to last session, Texas
was not one of those states. Texas took the federal money,
spent it, but did not add in any state dollars
(05:39):
to serve more parents. We were excited that last session
that changed, and as you said, one hundred million new
dollars got invested into this program to serve more families,
and we're excited that win happened, that it was bipartisan,
But as we'll talk about, there's a lot more work
to do to actually serve more families and bring down
(06:00):
the very long wait list for that program, which sits
at around one hundred thousand kids.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah, can you talk a little bit about just the
discussion about this during the legislative session. I mean, I
gave sort of my own personal experience at the top
of the show. But you know, was it a reflection
of the childcare problems in Texas that led to this
larger infusion of cash and how was that problem discussed
(06:24):
among lawmakers and people who came to the capital to
advocate for this.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Well, you know, I have been working on this issue
in Earnest really since two thousand and seventeen or so,
and I've sort of watched the journey of this in
the Texas legislature where back then the conversation around childcare
was almost exclusively on ensuring minimum health and safety standards
were met by childcare programs. It was you guys might
(06:51):
recall a big expose that was done by the Austin
American statesmen around you know, children who had died in
childcare programs, and that led to a series of reforms
to try to crack down on unlicensed care. You know,
there was some efforts to improve the nutrition standards in
childcare but over the last few years there's really been
a shift where lawmakers have understood, you know, we have
(07:14):
a role too and actually ensuring families can afford high
quality childcare, that the childcare that they can afford is
not just safe, but supporting children's school readiness. And so
going into session for really the first time, it was
very clear that childcare was on the agenda. Both the
House and Senate held interim hearings trying to tackle ways
in which we can address this during the session. In
(07:37):
my time, the Senate had never had a hearing on
this topic during the interim, and so we knew that
it was going to be a big priority. We didn't
know how that would manifest, and you know, we worked
with partners to really bring up this issue of the
wait list, that there's children who are eligible for this
program but are waiting for six months to two years
(08:00):
because they're the lack of funds. This is not a
program where every child who's eligible gets served. There's a
certain number of scholarships we fund, and after that you
have to wait for somebody to come off the program.
And so there are families waiting because we don't have
enough funds. You know, we told the stories not just
of families who were struggling, but the families who actually
benefited from this program. You know, we talked to a
(08:20):
mom who was literally homeless before she got access to
one of these scholarships. She was able to work a
couple hours a week cleaning houses with her baby strapped
to her because she had no childcare. She eventually got
a scholarship. Now she's working full time, she's housed, and
her child is in a really high quality program here
(08:40):
in Austin. And we were able to tell stories like
that and say, look at all of this program is achieving.
Don't we want to see more Texas families benefit in
the ways that these parents have. And so, you know,
we also told the stories of frankly, lots of Republican
led states around the country who to Texas and was
(09:01):
really investing. And so between that, I think we were
able to make a winning case that investing in this
program is research based, it's popular, it's it's something we
can do very simply in serving more parents. And so
we were able to get that win. And I will
say that the leadership of Representative Armando Wally was really key,
(09:22):
as well as the speaker of the House and you know,
the Appropriations Center finance chair chair women, chairwoman, and chairman.
So it was a big bipartisan win for sure.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Two things I sort of want to get your your
read on is like what shifted this conversation and move
childcare into the more like mainstream political conversation here. Yeah,
one being you know, the thing I covered for a
long time, which was the you know, ban on abortion
and sort of this attention that Republican lawmakers sort of
felt called to address, you know, women's health issues, supporting families,
(09:55):
sort of making good on some of these promises that
they brought to bear, which sort of I've searched seen
that play out of the last couple of years. The
other one being, though that I'm not as clear on,
is like the COVID pandemic and the way that that
sort of felt like suddenly we were all talking about
childcare in a way we hadn't been before.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Yeah, you're totally right. I mean it's not just in Texas.
There was you know, we wrote a policy brief around
as I mentioned, how different Republican led states have addressed
this issue, and what you'll find is a lot of
their big investments came right on the heels of you know,
right after the pandemics sort of began in twenty one
or in twenty twenty three, and so there has been
(10:35):
an explosion of attention on this. I think there's a
few reasons. One is the need for childcare became quite
clear to people, many of whom were home with their
kids all day. If their childcare program had to close,
or you know, they had to take time off work
to be with their kids at home, I think the
need for childcare became very visible. The other thing that
(10:56):
I think was really important was the federal government, under
both the Trump administration and the Biden administrations, invested significant
federal dollars into states to stabilize childcare. And what we
found was that worked. It turned out that spending a
lot of money to ensure that programs can retain staff,
(11:17):
that they can receive funding so they don't have to
rt increase costs on parents, that that's a very popular
and effective way to help families go to work. So
a lot of states saw once those federal dollars ran out,
said what can we do to fill the gaps? And
I think that it essentially served as an unintentional pilot
program where states got to see, hey, if we invest
(11:39):
money into these programs, we can get really good returns.
And I think that's essentially opened the valve of investments
that we're now seeing across the country.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yeah, it's I think also worth at least making the
point that there has been a political shift, there's been
a willingness to invest more money on this. You know,
it was one hundred million dollars, which is a big investment.
You know, the state did spend fifty one billion dollars
on reducing property taxes this year, so there's there's something
(12:10):
about the priorities there. But it's also worth pointing out
that as your report on this, David noted that this
money was you know, not actually state money that was
being added to this. It was unspent federal dollars from
the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. That basically there
was this pot of money that Texas had that had
(12:30):
sort of decided not to spend, not to find a
use for, and then they kind of decided, oh, maybe
we should use it to boost this scholarship program.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
That's right. Yeah, it took quite a journey. The House
passed in its budget one hundred million of state dollars
that it evolved into, as you say, these unexpended tan
OF funds. Our opinion on this, frankly is that the
parents who will benefit won't really know the difference that
(13:00):
it came from an unspent tantiff pot or an unspent
general revenue pot. I think that the point is lawmakers
found a way to make this investment, and we know that,
you know, states across the country are using TANAF dollars
for this purpose, so it's not a stretch to say
that this is a really valid use of those dollars
when we have them. I think that moving forward, we
(13:23):
should look at that uninspent tant IF pot as a
way to fund this program, but also state general revenue
and continue to explore other revenue streams because this problem
is significant. This is not something that is a one
session fix or a even one funding stream strategy. We
have to figure out how to make investments at the
state level, the local level. Philanthropy is going to continue
(13:46):
to play a role. It's going to take a lot
of resources to really get this problem addressed.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah, you're sort of addressing what was going to be
my next question. Which is how much of the need
is this filling, how how much of this is moving
the needle in terms of the childcare challenges in the state.
I mean, you know, you talk about a wait list
of ninety five thousand kids, I would imagine there's a lot,
a lot, a lot more families that you know are
(14:11):
struggling to pay for childcare in Texas.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Yeah, no question. I mean, you know, maybe I'm burying
the lead a little that, you know, we hoped that
this investment, because of estimates that were provided by the
Texas Workforce Commission during the legislative session, would essentially allow
us to serve around ten thousand more children in the program.
That was their estimates during the legislative session. However, after
the legislative session, the Workforce Commission partners with the University
(14:39):
of Texas, who conducts a survey to essentially figure out
how much each of these scholarships costs, and that's based
on the market rate of childcare. And what they unfortunately
found was childcare costs are continuing to skyrocket and what
that means is that the cost of scholarships skyrockets. And
it's a simple math equation if each scholarship costs more,
(14:59):
you can you know, you can't provide as many without
increasing the amount of funds. So this hundred million dollars
was just as essential as we thought it would be. Unfortunately, though,
it was to prevent a reduction of the number of
scholarships rather than to serve more families. So in fact,
the urgency was actually even greater than maybe we presented
during the legislative session, that we were actually at risk
(15:20):
of having to serve fewer children in this program. Fortunately
lawmakers came together to make this investment, but it's a
reminder that we have so much more work to do
to actually serve more parents in the program.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
So if one hundred million dollars sort of held the
line or prevented, you know, this program from taking a
step back. Is there like a dollar amount you guys
see that would like what would it cost to make
that weightless zero?
Speaker 4 (15:48):
You know, our goal has not been to make the
weightless zero. I think that you know, even during the
legislative session, we really tried to convey that the goal
is to serve more families. You know, we can increase
the wait lists just by doing a better marketing campaign, right,
and that doesn't necessarily, but if we're serving more families,
I think that's really the goal. So for us, I
(16:10):
think we need to take this, you know, one step
at a time and understand that it's going to take
a number of years, a number of it's gonna take
the state level, the federal level, the local level to
really address this problem. In earnest, it's going to take
us providing more funding for scholarships, but also doing more
to bring down the cost of childcare so that this
(16:31):
cost for scholarships doesn't continue to rise. You know, childcare
programs are facing increased costs across the board, and parents
are bearing the brunt of that right now. So we
need to be able to tackle this one step at
a time. I think we made good progress this legislative session,
but lawmakers, I hope we're getting used to talking about
this issue because it's not a one session conversation. Unfortunately,
(16:53):
there's a lot more work to do.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Before we move on.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Can you just clarify, just to make sure I understand
it correctly, who's eligible for this program?
Speaker 3 (17:00):
How do you get it?
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Yeah, so it's based on income. It's essentially eighty five
percent of state median income, right, and you have to
have a child under the age of thirteen. You have
to be working or in job training, so there are
work requirements in their income requirements. We also prioritize scholarships
based on a number of factors, including if you have
a child with a disability, or The legislature also passed
(17:26):
to build a session that actually, if you're a child
of a childcare educator, that you're part of this priority list.
So we have priorities among those eligible children. But eighty
five percent of state median income is what that main
eligibility is. So a lot of families are eligible, but
unfortunately the number of scholarships does not meet the demand.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
And I would imagine there's a lot of families that
don't even know that this programming exists.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Said you could double the weight list, probably with a
good marketing campaign.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah right, exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Okay, let's pause for a second to hear from our sponsors.
Then I want to bring Jaden in to talk about
the school voucher angle to this. You can give every
text and access to reliable information by giving news this
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Speaker 3 (18:18):
Right, Jaden.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
So we talked about one hundred million dollars toward these
scholarships through the Texas Workforce Commission. Of course, ten times
that amount was allocated toward school vouchers. The big brunt
of that conversation, the big conversation among lawmakers advocates of
this was that this is needed for you know, parents
(18:41):
who have their kids in public schools, you know, over
the age of five, who maybe are unhappy or not
being served well by those schools, wanting to get state
help to go to private schools. Less discussed was the
issue that has now come up since the state Controller
has been in charge of setting the rules for how
this money will be dispersed, and that is money that
(19:03):
goes to three and four year rolds to go to
PreK programs, particularly private PreK programs that you know are
run you know, all all across the state. Tell us
a little bit about that discussion and where the state
landed on the issue.
Speaker 5 (19:18):
Yeah, So I think it's important to understand kind of
the process and the way things have played out. Right,
So the law passes, which obviously says to framework for
kind of how this is supposed to work. Now the comptroller,
you know, Texas chief financial officers tasked with, hey, here's
the law, here's the framework, now put this into action.
Design kind of a set of basically rules that will
allow you know, parents to be able to understand, for example,
(19:39):
what kind of documentation you need to submit, how certain
processes will work, things that it kind of gets into
the details in the way that the law doesn't, right.
And so what we've seen since the passage of the
law was very much that process.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Right.
Speaker 5 (19:51):
There was the introduction of proposed rules and also a
public comment period for people Texans all across you know,
to you know, for their insight and say hey, here's
what we like, what we don't like, what you should change,
what you shouldn't. And so what's happened in that process
is that during the public coming period, they were about
roughly two hundred to three hundred comments, right, and we reviewed.
(20:13):
We were all the ones we could get right with
about two hundreds. So and what we kept seeing was
the overwhelming majority of those comments seemed to be from
private pre K providers who were saying, hey, comtroller, you
seem to have made a mistake, right, And what we're
seeing in the rules that you proposed, was that private
pre K you know families or you know pre K
(20:33):
families in general, you kind of allocated and put them
in the bucket of two thousand dollars per student, which
under the law is actually designated for homeschool students. And
what the argument was is that, hey, the law is
pretty clear, you know, pre K students are eligible for
the full roughly ten thousand dollars amounts that you set
aside for everybody else outside of homeschool. And so basically
(20:58):
it went through that process and we arrived at you
know where we did and the most in last week basically,
which was the comtroller, you know, after going through the process,
you know, going through the law and honestly hearing from
the bill authors as well, basically setting in stone that hey,
you guys are right. It is the full ten thousand
dollars amount and as long as students kind of meet
(21:20):
what are currently the free public pre K requirements, they
are they're eligible for the full ten thousand dollars amount now.
And just for clarification, for free public pre K, it's
more of kind of a you know, for students for example,
who are on free and reduced lunch students who you
know are not fluent in English per se. If you're
a child of a public school teacher or you know
(21:40):
someone in the military, right, you be eligible. So there
is a more kind of type framework around that. But
basically that's kind of how we landed at where we
are now.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, I mean I remember being a parent right and
Zeomike daycare and being sort of shocked at the idea
of I'm paying more in daycare tuition then I would
be paying to send my kid for tuition to go
to a state university in the state, right, Like, this
is a massive cost. And I think this idea, I
(22:12):
can certainly see why a lot of daycares, a lot
of people would be saying, like, if you can make
this ten thousand dollars available to us imediately, you know,
pre K is a only a couple of years in
that pre to five year you know, kindergarten time, that's
that's a major benefit opportunity for families, you know, upper
middle class families at but especially lower income families and
(22:37):
things like that.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
What was the argument.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Did they explain why they initially proposed spending less for
those parents?
Speaker 5 (22:44):
Yeah, you know what, It's interesting because there was a
lot of conversations about this. I really don't think it
was anything like intentional per se, right. I think what
happened was and that's why you kind of have the
rule making process was that you know, this was their interpretation.
And really, when you go back and look the law, like,
if you're looking for it, it is clear to say, right
pre k ten k. But if you were, you know,
(23:05):
to the average person just kind of glancing through, unless
you were specifically looking for that, it maybe wouldn't be
something that's the most apparent. And so in the controller
has been very clear Acting Controller Kelly Hancock, you know,
he said publicly right like, we're going to follow the
intent of the law. And so it wasn't necessarily surprising
to me that they changed it to the full ten thousand.
I always expect that that would be the case, and
I just think that this was just a situation where
(23:27):
you go through the rule making process and you know,
you had Representative Brad Buckley and then former Senator Creighton's
now Texas Tech chancellor who submitted written as someone to said, hey,
here's kind of just to clear up many confusion, here's
what we were intending with this and then throughout the process,
you know, they made the adjustment. And so again I
don't think it was anything that was like intentionally we
wanted to be this. It just seemed to be more
(23:47):
again from my perspective that there are so many aspects
of the law, and so the rule making process allowed
them to kind of get it right as intended.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
There's always sort of that period. I mean, I think
it comes up of like more and controversial ways than this,
But where the you know, what the legislators wrote into
the law and how the people on the ground actually
have to enact it. Sometimes it's like they're not necessarily
seeing all of the potential roadblocks and then putting into action.
You're like, oh, okay, you like not change the law,
(24:16):
but look at the what the intent was at the time.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
I mean that was the one thing I was looking
at with the rules, right, was how much will the
controller on any issue right deviate from what the law
says right?
Speaker 3 (24:28):
The law shits a foundation.
Speaker 5 (24:29):
Is the controller in a way going to go above
and beyond kind of what that says?
Speaker 4 (24:33):
Right?
Speaker 5 (24:33):
And so that's why I kind of land at the
conclusion that I have because really on a number of
issues the controller make clear and the way they actually structure,
you know, the final rules. The office offered like actually
like detailed commentary to almost like each comment submitted and
explained its rationale for hey, here's why we're going to
decline or accept this suggestion, and again it it. You know,
(24:55):
I think it was pretty clear they you know, they
made it clear that hey, here's you know what, here's
what the law says. Is what the bill author says,
so you know we'll follow that.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, I was just so struck when I learned about
this kind of pre K option, about this and my reaction.
I had a few different reactions. I'm going to sort
of like throw them out there to y'all to get
you to react to. The first one was just why
didn't they talk about this when they were passing the bill?
Because when this the knowing that it's available for private
(25:24):
pre K, it feels to me like it opens up
the pool of people who could benefit from this so
much larger than it was before.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Right.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I'll just again bring my own experience in this. My
kids go to public school. We're happy with our public school.
We don't have any intentions of pulling them out of
their public school. But my kids went to private pre K, right,
and we would have been thrilled to join that. I
would imagine that there's a lot of parents in that
position now who maybe have no plans on sending their
(25:55):
kids to private school, but are going to send their
kids to the church down the street, or you know,
some other kind of private you know, not associated with
the school's system for pre K, who now might get
significant help from this. So a just a little bit
of confusion. Coalition, Yeah, why didn't you get those people
(26:15):
on your side when you're advocating for this bill? But
then also does this not create any concerns for the
people who were advocating for this of we just dramatically
increased the number of people who are going to want
to have access to this program in a way that
it's going to be a lot more competitive. And that
(26:35):
one billion dollars we already knew was going to disappear
pretty quickly, now maybe it will disappear.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Even quicker than that.
Speaker 5 (26:42):
Yeah, well, I think if that were to have in
this state, would totally welcome that outcome, right in terms
of the demand, and I think, you know, the expectation
is that you know, demand forward will go above what
the appropriations are and so the different priorities of KI
can and things of that nature.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Men.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
I will say, the one thing with the way they
struggle it is that like it's not you know, just
a you know, a mom and pop kind of PreK
provider can can pop up, right, it does require that
you know, what are called education service providers. So in
this case, whoever the pre K provider is right, does
kind of follow the existing requirements for private PreK providers,
which could be for example, I think think it's accreditation
(27:19):
with the state that or had wrote a couple down
as well, it's like good standing with the Department of
Family and Protective Services, you know, different partnerships with you
know a lot of them have existing partnerships with districts
and things of that nature. So the framework that already
exists for private PreK providers is also the framework that
you know, those who you know want to you know,
take part in this program are also going to have
(27:39):
to follow. But it's also to your point, it is interesting.
I don't have the magic answer as to as to
why they didn't talk about it as much. I mean,
there were so many different aspects, and you would think too,
it would have been a talking point given like a
lot of the talk about public school pre K funding, right,
which is a whole that's a whole other conversation, you
know that we could have, you know, you could have
a whole hour long discussion you know about that. But yeah,
(28:02):
it was interesting, and again it was one of those
things that unless you were specifically looking forward in the law,
it wouldn't have been apparent to you because I think
a lot of the focus from lawmakers was on homeschool students.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Right.
Speaker 5 (28:12):
It was two categories, right, you're you know, you're you're
the average student who's going to get the average kind
of ten thousand dollars or the up to thirty thousand
if you know you're a student with the IEP, you know,
student with a disability, and then the separate bucket for
homeschool students. And so it wasn't kind of apparent again
until you know, you go through two hundred and three
hundred comments and literally clearly the private pre cab bodies
(28:34):
knew about this because and they all copied and pasted
the same messaging across the board. So clearly it was
a very coordinated effort, and everybody kind of was in
the know one kind of what was happening.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Yeah, the other thing. My other reaction to this was Wow,
this this has sort of stealthily become the biggest state
investment in you know, these childcareage topics that we've seen.
I'm curious, David, what your reaction to my reaction to
(29:09):
that is, Like, am I right in thinking that that's
possibly the case? How do you feel about this scenario?
Speaker 4 (29:15):
Yeah, it's it's going to be really interesting because and
you know, you asked the question of why this wasn't
a bigger topic during the session, And I do think
this is something we run into in early childood education
all the time, which is anytime it's a K through
twelve discussion and pre K has implications. These sorts of
issues pop up because the way we govern our pre
(29:37):
K program. If you're a parent of a child of
a four year old, your access points to education are
very different than when you're a parent of a five
year old. When you're a parent of a five year old,
you have access to a universal kindergarten program that is
available in every corner of the state for free. If
you have a four year old. There are some families
eligible for free pre K, but many families are on
(30:00):
their own and they are looking at private options because
there's not a public option available to them. I think
it's really worth re emphasizing what Jayden said, which is
the ESA program is universal, but for pre K it's not.
It's still only those families who are eligible for public
pre K, those who are on free and reduced lunch
or meet one of the other eligibility criteria. So there's
(30:21):
going to be a lot of parents who are parents
of four year old who think great, I have access
to financial aid for pre K, which these families really
need because they don't necessarily have a public school option
right now, but they're not going to be eligible for this.
It's just those who are part of existing pre K eligibility.
So I think we really need to watch and see
(30:45):
how many families actually are able to navigate that. Because
these other grades don't have the as restrictive of eligibility criteria,
there's going to be a lot of implementation questions here.
You know, one of the ways that you can be
eligible for free pre K is to be a child
who's homelandanguage is not English. That's done through a home
language survey by the school district. How's that going to
be done with an essay? We don't know yet. We
(31:07):
haven't seen guidance on that yet. So I think that
there's a lot of questions about how many children actually
will ultimately end up being served that are for year
olds and three year olds. I think that the demand
is certainly significant, as we've seen from the Childcare Services Program,
a lot of parents want access to financial aid for
early childhood education. I think we don't know how many
(31:28):
of them are going to end up with the essays,
but I would remind folks that the Childcare Services Program
is a financial aid program for parents to access childcare
as well, and it has a much more generous eligibility
than the essays do. So we're gonna have to see
how all these puzzle pieces fit together, but we're curious
to see how many families benefit.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
I would say to add to I think the free
public pre K requirements also limits it to three year olds, right,
so you actually won't have the four year olds in
the category as well, which is interesting. But it made
me think something that David was saying earlier. We're talking
about the scholarship right in and sort of the awareness
right anytime. I think we all know this right when
you're you've seen kind of these, you know, big programs
(32:09):
that specifically target you know, low income families. One of
the big hurdles, as was acknowledged here is the awareness component,
and it'll be interesting to see it if that changes
at all here, right. I think one of the things
that voucher advocates had talked about, you know, one of
the benefits they saw in this program was that hey,
we actually have a whole year to get the word
out about all the different benefits of it in ways
(32:31):
that a state like Tennessee, for example, they passed their
law and they were ready to roll you know soon after. Again,
I don't know how much it's going to change. I
think ultimately what you'll see is what we see, you know,
with these huge universal programs, is that especially in these
early years, you're going to see those like for example,
look at for example, you had all these private pre
K providers who had who had testified and said hey,
(32:53):
this isn't right. Those are probably going to be the
providers who go to families who will qualify and say hey,
if you don't know about this. Hey, this is a
benefit you can have, right, so initially you probably see
you know, the students who ultimately benefit from it will
be those who already in some way are connected to
people who are kind of in the know, and it'll
be a challenge for the state over time with the
(33:14):
entire program, with the awareness component, like we see with
all these other programs as well.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Absolutely, Okay, I want to test one more reaction with
with you, David, which.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Is one may not have another kid to try to
get this right.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
That's question.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Don't worry, don't worry. That is that is not my
reaction at all. Yes, you know, one thing we haven't
talked about much lately is this. We've talked a lot
about the financial struggle for parents. We haven't talked as
much about the financial struggle for these actual daycare centers. Again,
citing your report, childcare programs are operating on barely sustainable
(33:55):
profit margins you say, typically less than one percent, which
puts them at considerable risk of closure. That is, even
though childcare educators are paid on average around twelve dollars
per hour with little to know benefits. The challenge here,
one of the issues that I have heard about as
I have been an interested person in this subject, is
(34:16):
the idea of the battle for three and four year olds.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Right.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
One of the things that happens is in day care facilities,
it's much more expensive to care for the infants than
it is to care for the three and four year
olds because the infants need more attention, they're less able
to sort of, you know, obviously take care of themselves.
(34:39):
You need more adults per child in that area. There
has been a push, a very well intentioned push to
get more three and four year olds into public pre k.
But what that does is it takes away the sort
of profit generators for the daycare operators and leaves them
(35:00):
having to care for, you know, or care for a
higher percentage of infants compared to three or four year olds,
which either forces them to lose revenue, go out of business,
or increase their prices for the infants and everything like that.
Does this create a situation where maybe you can pull
(35:21):
some of those three and four year olds back into
these private daycare providers, which can make them more financially
sustainable or allow them to make infant care more affordable
for you know, the general population. What do you think
about that possibility.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
David, Yeah, I mean, I do want to just speak
quickly about you know, your point about the struggle that
truck care providers are facing, because it is significant. Again,
that is why the scholarship costs are going up. You know,
they're facing rising labor costs. They're paying around twelve dollars
per hour, but they're losing staff to BUCkies and Amazon
and all sorts of places, so they have to try
to compete, which means those costs go up, and that
(36:00):
means parents pay more. They're rising food costs if childcare
program provides food. We all can look at our grocery
bill and see that that's going to affect childcare providers.
Insurance is crushing right now, so childcare programs are facing
rising insurance costs, rent property taxes they face that as well,
and parents are bearing the brunt of all of those increases,
right And so, just like we would never rely on
(36:25):
tolls to pay for our entire highway system, relying on
just parents to pay for the full brunt of early
care and education leads to these really unfortunate outcomes that
we see. And so I understand deeply the pain that
childcare providers are feeling and the hope that these these
opportunities give. I would say about just you know, the
(36:47):
idea that we need to consider pulling you know, folks
from these public settings and ensure that they return to
private settings. First of all, I think it's important to
remind us why they choose these public settings, which is
that they can afford them. And I think we want
to make sure that families can afford high quality options
in a variety of settings, whether that be a head
start program, a childcare program, a for profit nonprofit. We
(37:09):
also want to make sure parents, if they want to
keep their kid at home, have the resources to do that,
and the public schools in many cases a good option
for them. I also think it's important to remember that
only about half of four year olds in our state
are enrolled in public pre K, so there are plenty
of four year olds to go around, and I think
we should make sure that they can afford and access
(37:31):
these high quality programs, and many of them will choose
private options if they have the ability to. And for
three year olds, I will say it's even less. It's
only around eleven percent of three year olds are enrolled
in public schools, so there's plenty of children. I don't
think it has to be a competition between these settings.
I think we can do more to make childcare and
preschool more affordable, more high quality across settings, and I
(37:55):
think the legislator took some promising steps, but yeah, we
have a lot more work to do.
Speaker 5 (38:00):
Can I ask one good question that David, I'm curious
like to you. And one of the things I've heard
though about the pre k thing is is just a
general concern. It's something like an optic conversation right where
it's like, even after this legislative session, the state still
isn't funding public pre k at a full day level, right,
which I know has been some of the concern of
advocates and whatnot. And so you're going to have some
(38:21):
who come out and say, well, clearly, if the will
is there, you can get it done because you've set
aside money now for private PreK providers you know, to
be able to benefit from this. How do you look
at that kind of argument and that kind of debate
that folks will have Avialy.
Speaker 4 (38:37):
Yeah, I mean I think that there there's a lot
of rea. Like I said, I think from a parent's perspective,
the way we do things doesn't seem to make a
lot of sense. If you have a four year old,
you are lost in trying to figure out what is
an option for you and your family. You're trying to
figure out how to cut costs to or this. Do
(39:00):
you quit just one of you quit your job so
that you can just stay at home with your kid
because the costs for care are so expensive. But then
the moment your child turns five, it's like, Okay, great,
now I have a universal program that I can enroll in.
I think that a parent of a four year old
and a parent of a five year old feel like
their needs are similar, but the way the state responds
is quite different, whether they be in public schools or not.
(39:22):
So I think whether you're a superintendent or a childcare
program director, you have a lot to say that, hey,
the state needs to do way more than we're doing,
and we are ready to play a role in helping
provide those high quality options for families because I just
I really just don't think that. I think the competition
(39:43):
that gets presented between these sites is really missing the mark.
Like I think everybody struggling to meet the needs of
these families because we're not investing enough in famili's ability
to access these programs. So our perspective at Texans Care
for Children it is that we want families to be
able to afford an access private settings, public settings, and
(40:05):
we want them to have the resources to figure out
what best meets their families' needs.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
Well, I think we found the solution here.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
You mentioned that you know, the employees can get better
wages at BUCkies, and I think we just need to
put childcare and all the BUCkies. Yeah right, they're in
rural areas.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Right, they're everywhere, very popular. Yeah, building new ones every day, exactly, exactly.
All right, great job everybody. Yeah, solved.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Yeah, Well, I think thank you so much David for
I think what has been a really informative discussion. Thank
you as well to Jaden and Eleanor. Thank you to
our producers, Rob and Chris, and thank you to our sponsors,
the Texas Tribune Membership program Texas Tribune dot org slash
donate to keep this podcast and all of our journalism
(40:50):
free and available to anyone who wants to access it.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
We'll be back next week.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
Yeah,
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