Travis County invests $21 million in affordable child care

County commissioners have taken their biggest step yet towards getting families tangible access to child care following a voter-approved tax increase to fund sweeping investment in that sector last November. Of the $75 million approved last year, the county has awarded $21 million in two contracts with Workforce Solutions Capital Area to provide direct scholarships to families and gap funding to prop up inadequately state-subsidized providers. 

Currently, Workforce Solutions Capital Area serves about 3,000 children with a network of 300 providers, but there are thousands of families still waiting to receive child care. The current waitlist time listed on the website is two years. The new contracts will provide at least 1,000 more children with child care, making a significant dent in what was an almost 5,000-person waitlist this time last year. 

“This is huge,” said Commissioner Brigid Shea at Tuesday’s meeting. It’s the biggest investment the county has made so far since the Affordable Child Care Act passed last year in the wake of federal and state funds drying up after the pandemic. The county approved short-term investments in May, geared toward providing out-of-school-time services like daycare for families. And, in August, the county approved interlocal agreements with Austin, Del Valle and Manor school districts to provide child care and after-school services to an estimated 2,000 youth. The long-range plan for the rest of the $75 million is yet to come, but first drafts will be presented to the court in November.

The long-term strategy promises to: 1) increase subsidized spots and release parents from the waitlist; 2) expand options for parents that work out of the traditional 9-5 schedule; 3) incentivize employers to provide child care as an employee benefit; and 4) plug gaps in the state’s funding system for child care. These contracts are the first step toward solving items one and four on that list.

The first contract deals with a program dubbed “Raising Travis County,” which will provide direct scholarships to families at 85 percent or less of the state’s median family income, or about $87,000 for a family of four. That program, which is funded by $17.3 million of the $75 million available, will be available for 1,000 children from 0-3 years old and will be administered by Workforce Solutions Capital Area. It will take into account “the cost of providing quality care,” said Corey Darling, who is the research and planning division director at Travis County Health and Human Services. 

The cost of care was a focal point of discussions at the time of the vote. Last year, the county said it aimed to provide enough funding to pay child-care providers at least a $20 minimum wage. The industry experiences more than 30 percent turnover annually due, in part, to its low wages, which are about $14 an hour in Austin. That’s largely because state reimbursements for child-care providers are not adequate to fund a living wage. 

“Each day, hundreds of providers open our doors and welcome children into a space that is safe, enriching and fun,” said Tamitha Blackmon, owner of Nehemiah Christian School, in a press conference Tuesday. “We do this work because we are deeply committed to the children and their families in our care. It’s our calling, our passion – but at the end of the day, it’s also our job. We have a facility that we have to pay either a mortgage or rent for, staff salaries (and) other costs of doing business that can’t be ignored. We’re grateful that families have scholarships to alleviate costs, but the true cost of providing care outpaces those scholarships, leaving providers on the line for the balance.”

“The funding approved by the Commissioners Court this morning will … make sure that those of us in the child care community can continue doing what we love for years to come,” said Blackmon.

The second contract, for $4.16 million to Workforce Solutions Capital Area, aims to solve that problem by making gap funding payments to state-funded providers. That contract will include quarterly reporting that tracks the number of children served by each provider receiving the gap funding and the number of providers, with the goal of serving, altogether, about 850 children a month. Better wages, the county argues, will not only reflect the dignity of the job, but also boost retention in an industry that desperately needs more providers to meet growing demand. 

 “We’re raising child-care quality by investing in our teachers and people who care for our children,” said County Judge Andy Brown at the press conference. “This funding aims to make providers whole, so they can continue to provide world-class child-care services to kids in our community.”

Commissioners also approved the creation of an oversight body, which will be staffed by about 20 community members including parents, youth ages 18-24, providers and representatives from key stakeholders like the city of Austin, the Chamber of Commerce, school districts like AISD and nonprofits like Go Austin/Vamos Austin. It will also include five at-large seats, appointed by each commissioner and the judge.

Yael Lawson, the interim CEO for Workforce Solutions Capital Area, expressed that the funding “ensures that more working families can access life changing opportunities at Workforce Solutions Capital Area.”

“We focus on building pathways to economic mobility, that includes removing one of the most persistent barriers keeping parents, particularly women, out of the workforce – access to affordable quality child care,” she said.

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