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DIBOLL – Shortly after her eldest son was born in 2021, Acacia Tarver applied for a state scholarship to help her pay for child care. Then she waited. And waited.

As time dragged on with no word on aid, Tarver and her husband, Ty’Kiedren, a police officer, discussed who would quit their job to stay at home with their son, Hudson. That July, Tarver put 3-month-old Hudson in a Montessori day care so she could return to work as a surgical coordinator at an insurance company.

The Tarvers learned four months later that they were awarded a scholarship, which is funded by taxpayer dollars. It couldn’t come soon enough.

“The day care was sending emails of a tuition increase, and it was increasing by $150 to $200 a month,” Tarver said. “Who can afford that? You’re basically working to send your child to day care.”

Today, nearly 95,000 Texas children are waiting for similar aid, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. About 1,300 of them live in Deep East Texas communities. Those at the top of the list in Deep East Texas have been waiting for a scholarship since May 2024, officials said.

State lawmakers are considering pumping the scholarship program with more money.

“My goal would be to infuse some dollars to reduce that wait list,” said state Rep. Armando Lucio Walle, a Houston Democrat. “So many families would like to go to work, but it’s just cost prohibitive.”

However, child care professionals say that won’t help much. Like most of the nation, Texas has a shortage of child care centers and workers. Despite the extraordinarily high tuitions families pay to place their children in day care and after-school programs, those fees are rarely enough to cover the costs of operating these facilities.

That’s especially true in Deep East Texas, said Marilyn Hartsook, the interim director of Workforce Solutions in Deep East Texas.

“Without new day care centers around the region, we’re probably not looking at a whole lot more (children) that we can serve,” Hartsook said.

Charles Miller, director of health and economic mobility at Texas 2036, an Austin-based think tank, said the state needs better data to address its child care deserts and support existing facilities.

“We don’t even have the basic insight into where there is a supply gap, and where there is a demand gap,” Miller said. “These are core information gaps as we talk about how to intelligently spend and invest state resources.”

Child care is expensive

The Tarvers paid $630 a month to put their son in the infant room before they received assistance — about 70% of the average cost of child care in Texas, which is $892 a month, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

The cost forced difficult conversations with her husband.

“What bill can be late? What bill can we push back?” Tarver said. “Rent has to be paid because you need a roof over your head. But basic expenses like deodorant that you need for yourself you don’t get because that money has to go toward day care.”

Texans on average pay about $2,000 more per year for infant child-care than in-state college tuition and $1,300 more to send a 4-year-old to preschool, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Scholarships are doled out to families based on several factors. Priority families, like those who care for foster children, are typically among the first to receive financial assistance. Then, those who are on the waiting list are addressed when there is space and funding.

The amount of money paid varies by region. The funding is calculated by the facility’s capacity, the local market rate and other factors. And the scholarship may not cover the entire cost. Tarver, who now has two boys in day care, still pays $200 a month.

Despite the costs to families and the state, many child care facilities are stretched thin themselves.

“Child care has not been exempt from inflation,” said Cody Summerville, CEO of the Texas Association for the Education of Young Children. “The cost of operating child care has gone up significantly, and there’s really no way for child care programs to cut costs in a meaningful way that families are going to feel it.”

Staff turnover is a significant concern in the industry. It creates additional expenses and is largely blamed on the working conditions for child care workers.

Workers make $12 to $14 per hour on average with no benefits, such as retirement plans, health insurance or paid leave, according to research from job websites such as Indeed. Most in Deep East Texas are on the low end of that range, Hartsook said. And the job is difficult.

Depending on the age range, child care workers spend eight to 10 hours a day caring for a dozen small children, many of whom are still learning to walk, speak or potty by themselves. In the cases of infants, they need to be fed often, have their diapers changed regularly and be given appropriate stimulation.

On a recent Tuesday, two women in the infants room of the Katherine Sage Temple Early Learning Center had their hands full with hungry 6-month-olds. Down the hall, teachers led small children in singing songs, read books and coordinated activities to encourage interest in STEM and the arts.

Temple was established in 1971 as a child care center for employees of Temple Inland, a locally owned packaging and building materials manufacturer. It became a community center in the 1980s. It has served generations of Diboll residents. Temple is a nationally accredited nonprofit child care facility and serves children from infants to 13-year-olds in all-day and after-school programs.

It is a unique program. It is one of just 300 early childhood learning centers in Texas that are accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children and the only one within 50 miles of the city. There were nearly 7,000 child care providers in December 2024.

Accreditation, while valuable for proving standards of excellence, also requires more of the centers like Temple. To achieve accreditation, the center had to cut enrollment down from the number of children it was licensed to enroll so class sizes were smaller.

Temple is also unique in its ability to pay staff better than many others in the region. Elisha Richardson, the director, worked at the facility for years before she took on an administrative role. She believes the facility’s staff sticks around because they offer a retirement plan, health insurance and paid leave.

Some employees have been there for decades.

Temple is not, however, immune to the staffing pressures many care facilities face, especially as some of their staff near retirement age.

But they have big plans.

Child care is elusive

Achieving national accreditation required Temple to cut enrollment from 176 children per day to 120 so the classrooms would be smaller and the program better for those children it does serve.

Richardson is working toward expanding Temple’s physical location and hiring more staff to take on more local children. The center has a lengthy wait-list, with about half of the children eligible for the state scholarship.

“We would need to build more – a gym and two more classrooms – and hopefully that will come in the near future,” she said. “Then we can hopefully up our capacity.”

Diboll, which is a few miles south of Lufkin, is an oasis in a region peppered with child care deserts, data shows.

A child care desert, defined by the research and advocacy nonprofit Children At Risk, is a zip code where the “number of children under the age of 6 with working parents is three times greater than the capacity of child care providers in the area.”

“We’re very limited on the number of available spots in certain counties, we have some, but in other counties we have zero spots for children to enroll,” Hartsook said of Deep East Texas.

There lies an even deeper problem at the root of Texas’ child care system: Even if lawmakers were to pass legislation to increase funding for scholarships, Texas does not keep adequate data on child care facilities, Miller of Texas 2036 said.

The state doesn’t know what areas need more funding and in what format compared to others. For example, Diboll is a vastly different community than Zavalla, another small city within minutes of Lufkin that is considered a desert. They need different forms of support.

A lack of data is largely a result of the way Texas child care is managed. Facilities don’t answer to one agency; they answer to six or more. And those agencies don’t work together to paint a unified picture of what the child care industry needs in Texas, Summerville said.

Scholarships could help families in Lufkin, where there are more child care seats available. But other areas of Deep East Texas need support to build capacity and staff resilience, Hartsook said.

There is no easy fix

Richardson, the child care executive, has learned to be patient as she waits for change.

She wants lawmakers to recognize the impact they could have, though.

“We’re helping families as much as we can, but without funding, some places can’t even stay open,” Richardson said. “Just look at the importance of child care. It’s not just babysitting. We care for the children. We’re teaching the children. We are a real need in today’s society.”

Child care is a vital part of Texas’ economy. It permits parents to remain in the workforce and can set children up to be successful adults, Hartsook said.

First and foremost, creating an accurate picture of the industry will give Texas the information it needs to invest in child care moving forward. Walle filed House Bill 2271, which would require child care programs to update their available seats in an online portal.

This is a step that could have a massive impact on Texas’ investment moving forward, Walle said.

Next, retaining child care workers is crucial to the future success of the industry. Lawmakers this year are considering putting children of those workers at the top of the waitlist for scholarships and acceptance. This is House Bill 3807.

Miller hopes this will have compounding effects. By getting those kids in day care it cuts down the waitlist, and it adds staff who may not otherwise be there, which increases capacity, he said.

The Texas Workforce Commission has already implemented some programs that encourage teacher appreciation and incentivize longevity. But there is always more that can be done, Hartsook said.

Miller believes Texas could ease the burden child care facilities face to operate by creating ways to support child care providers as they navigate the business world. If they learn to grow their businesses then they can provide more to the communities they serve, he said.

“A lot of our child care providers are not big, established businesses with access to huge lines of capital,” Miller said. “They are the kind of individuals who love taking care of kids. And the business side of things is not, not necessarily their personal aim.”

And Texas has fallen behind in how much it provides for the program, even compared to other Republican-controlled states, and should still plan to invest more broadly in scholarships, Summerville said.

Summerville hopes Walle will make this a reality.

It remains unclear how child care will be affected by lawmakers this session. Walle asked for an additional $181 million, but his request was added to Article XI, the place for wishlist items in the House’s budget proposal.

“This session, I’ve been working with stakeholders to serve another 10,000 kids on the waitlist each year,” Walle said. “I am hopeful that I can continue working with Chairman Bonnen and House leadership to help these children.”

Disclosure: Texas 2036 has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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