Child care isn't working for North Texas parents, educators. This institute wants to help.

Apr. 12—FORT WORTH — As masks come off and parents return to work in person, they are still struggling to find seats for their children in child care. Some who can find seats are paying rates rivaling college tuition for their children to attend, analysis shows.

The problems long precede recent attention, but the sector, which saw a mass exodus at the start of the pandemic, has been slow to recover, with local, state and federal funding keeping the sputtering industry afloat.

As those dollars dry up and early educators fail to return to the jobs they held before the pandemic, however, there are calls for systemic change in the way child care is funded, credentialed and run at every level.

"The pandemic has pulled the curtain back on child care, forcing many communities to finally reckon with a system on the brink of collapse," said Kara Waddell, the CEO of Child Care Associates. "We are at a unique moment with the opportunity to overhaul that long-broken system."

Child Care Associates, a nonprofit child development organization in North Texas, has been leading these conversations for years, and with the formation of a new institute, hopes to capitalize on the national attention following the pandemic to drive permanent change.

The effort will be known as The Institute to Advance Child Care at CCA.

'Broken system' has been on the brink of collapse for decades

The pandemic brought a fresh awareness of both the fragility and the necessity of the child care workforce in the U.S., something advocates refer to as the "workforce behind the workforce."

Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen highlighted the need for change when discussing a September Treasury report. In remarks, she called the sector a "textbook example of a broken market."

"The free market works well in many different sectors, but child care is not one of them," Yellen said, describing the report. "It does not work for the caregivers. It does not work for the parents. It does not work for the kids. And because it does not work for them, it does not work for the country."

According to the report, the average American family would have to spend 13% of their annual income in order to obtain quality child care, more than food and in some cases their mortgage or college tuition.

At the same time, early educators continue to make meager wages, driving some of them to leave for jobs in retail or restaurants.

The work of the institute follows the formation of a Blue Ribbon Commission on Child Care that includes business leaders, early educators and elected officials.

That commission was announced in November with all members being announced in March.

The new institute will take solutions and advice from the commission, as well as other nonprofits in the early education sector and implement them as pilot and eventually full-fledged programs in the community, Waddell said.

Institute will work with Blue Ribbon Commission on solutions

Once they work to implement the solutions in the workforce they plan to collect data on what is working and what isn't and share that information with the commission and more broadly.

"I think the institute goes a step further beyond ideating to also that implementation stage, the ability to really stand up and operate projects and communicate that out," Waddell said. "I think we're the natural next thing to the Blue Ribbon Commission to make sure that their ideas actually get implemented."

The commission already started piloting programs, with a historic investment of $2 million directed to fund raises for child care providers. The institute, which will work with other divisions within Child Care Associates, plans to track the impact of that raise, centralize the data and share it out.

"So did that do anything? Did it reduce turnover?" Waddell asked. "I think that we're going to be able to have time to really bundle and share."

The experiment will inform similar efforts elsewhere, Waddell said, adding that the investment was one of the largest in the state for such a purpose.

The results from that infusion of funding to give raises to early educators will inform future pilot programs with the goal of an eventual complete overhaul of how the sector works.

Waddell and Willie Rankin, a nonprofit leader who was named as the director of the institute, said that the implementation sets them apart from other advocacy organizations that study and explore child care programs.

"A differentiator in the policy space for Child Care Associates is we actually run things," Waddell said. "We operate child care programs on the ground. When I served on the governor's group that was looking at what we needed to do during COVID with child care, I was the only one in the room that operated a licensed child care program."

"We need more people who run things and stand things up and to have a greater and more active voice in Austin," she added.

Institute's director has history of nonprofit work in Tarrant County

Rankin, the Marine Corps and Iraq War veteran who was selected to lead the new effort, has worked with several organizations over the years to implement change and uplift marginalized voices.

He served as executive director of LVTRise, where he helped the organization raise more than $2 million to revitalize the Fort Worth Las Vegas Trail community.

In addition to his new role, Rankin serves as chair of the city of Fort Worth Zoning Commission, board treasurer for BRIDGE Fort Worth and is on boards of Leadership Fort Worth, Board Build and the Fort Worth Chamber.

Rankin said the institute provides a unique opportunity.

"The Institute has the opportunity to kind of take a step back, take a deep breath and say, 'If things were to go the way we want it moving forward, now with more investment, and awareness around the need of child care, what can we do?'" he said. "And what can we do to have a sustainable change over time? Not just the immediate impact, kind of like a band-aid, but how can we fix some of the infrastructure and reimagine child care?"

"I think this is what the institute gives us a chance to do," he said.

The issues the group is tackling are entrenched, and long-standing.

The current system has competing interests, with the expansion in one space running the risk of competing with providers in other spaces, a concern that center-based providers shared about the expansion of pre-K at DFW schools.

Rankin said that any solutions will need to be mindful of the fragile nature of the industry.

"We have to be careful with what we want to try just in case of the negative impact," he said. "I think that's the importance of having collaboration and communication and documentation ... being part of this process. Because we do know it is a system that can be easily impacted from change."

Rankin said that is what the institute is determined to find out how to do.

Waddell noted the urgency of finding and implementing solutions, with around 10% of area child care providers closing over the last two years. But unprecedented levels of funding make the next step a little bit easier.

"It's an unprecedented day for child care and early education and CCA is just glad to play our part and our role," she said. "But we think it's really time to formalize and have an Institute and have the kind of data that we need in order to make sure that we're spending resources wisely, that we're developing the things that families need."

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