DALLAS (WBAP/KLIF News ) – Child care advocates are kicking off an 11-city Texas tour Tuesday to discuss solutions to an increase in child care deserts that’s costing the state billions of dollars a year.
It’s an issue that is being felt in North Texas.
Since 2017, the number of available child care seats per 100 dropped 45.4% for working parents in Dallas County. As of last year, Dallas has 32.7 subsidized child care seats per 100 low-income working parents, falling 5.4 seats behind the state average.
It’s a similar situation in Tarrant County, which reported a 49.4% drop in available seats since 2017. As of 2021, the county has 51.5 child care seats per 100 working parents, falling 3.4 seats behind the state average.
Kim Kofron is the Children at Risk Senior Director of Early Childhood Education and said one step could be for Texas to invest some of its $27 billion dollars in surplus funding for 2023 into childcare instead of relying soley on federal dollars.
“The state does not put any of our state dollars into our 0 to 5 child care system. We have federal money that comes down and it has increased over the years but its not nearly enough,” she said.
Another solution that’s being put forth is a push for the state to better support early childcare employees so parents can get back to work.
“So we have centers across the state and here in Dallas and Tarrant Counties where there’s classrooms…the center would have availability if they had educators. So we also have to focus on our educators and make sure they have compensation to be able to do that,” said Kofron.
In the midst of what advocates are calling a pressing situation, many families have expressed a sense of frustration and confusion about child care in their area.
Kofron said another viable solution is to make the current system more user friendly for parents.
“So that they know how to find child care, if they qualify for it and what’s the best way to get that application into the system,” she said.
Child care deserts have proven to have a negative ripple effect on the state’s economy.
“Texas is losing billions of dollar a year because we don’t have the availability of seats. Businesses can’t bear maximum profitability when those support systems underneath those families aren’t there to support them,” said Kofron.
Children At Risk and The Commit Partnership gathered state experts and advocates for a discussion and press conference Tuesday morning, to get information from organizations interested in providing technical assistance tailored to employers who want to explore the development of site-base child care to support their employees and to flesh out more solutions to child care deserts in Texas.
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