Major overhaul of Kansas’ child care system advances as state grapples with big shortage

The Republican-controlled Kansas House voted Wednesday to establish a new state office dedicated to child care, with guarantees from Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly that her administration will reconsider key regulations.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle lauded the bill as a major step forward toward resolving Kansas’ shortage of child care – currently nearly 80,000 slots short of the state’s total demand.

“Child care is a need and it’s evident,” Rep. Troy Waymaster, a Bunker Hill Republican, said during debate on the House floor Wednesday.

The House approved the bill 107 to 10 after extensive negotiations between House Republicans and Kelly over the structure of the office and GOP hopes for loosened regulations.

“The major key is getting the governor to sign and what was really important to her is that the ratios do not go into statute,” Rep. Tory Blew, a Great Bend Republican and top proponent of the bill, said.

Kelly is almost certain to sign the bill if it reaches her desk. In a statement Wednesday her chief of staff, Will Lawrence, called the bill a “step in the right direction” and urged the Legislature to send it to the governor quickly.

But it still needs to get through the state Senate where lawmakers will be asked to accept the concessions made by the House. Speaking to The Star Thursday, Sen. Renee Erickson, a Wichita Republican, indicated she would seek significant changes before sending the bill to Kelly.

“On first glance, I’m not sure where the compromise was,” Erickson said. “It sounds like the governor got everything she wants and we got the short end of the stick.”

Solving a shortage

Kelly and Kansas lawmakers renewed focus on child care in recent years as the state’s shortage of care slots grew and was highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Child Care Aware of Kansas, the state would need 79,259 child care slots to fill the state’s demand for care. That accounts for just 46% of the total potential demand.

In response, Kelly proposed the state government consolidate all child care operations into one new state agency in an effort to more efficiently use state funds and resources.

But Republicans have instead narrowed in on Kansas’ regulations around care.

Kansas has some of the strictest rules around child care in the nation because of Lexi’s law, a bill passed in 2010 in response to a death at a Kansas child care center. While the law was designed to keep children safe in centers, critics say that the regulations imposed became overly restrictive to those who wanted to open or expand child care in Kansas.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment wrote new regulations last year in an attempt to respond to those issues. Those regulations are currently in the review process but Blew said she worried they didn’t go far enough especially in regards to the permitted adult to child ratios in Kansas.

If providers could accept more infants with the same number of staff members, she said, it would allow them to open up slots and pay workers more.

“By doing that it allows providers to decide if they want to increase that or not,” she said.

An original version of the bill would have forced KDHE to increase ratios. After negotiations, that language was removed from that bill and Blew said she received assurances from Kelly’s office that KDHE would bring the ratios closer to what she had proposed.

Several advocates remain concerned by that change, however, they said they are more comfortable with ratios being increased in regulations rather than statute because they can be easily changed.

“That’s something that I think we’ll see how that evolves over time but I know providers are committed to protecting families,” David Jordan, President of the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund, said.

But Erickson said she doesn’t trust KDHE to change ratios enough. Kansas, she said, is taking choice away from parents through regulations and needs to make drastic changes if it is going to close the child care gap.

“We’ve shown that KDHE is not going to raise the ratio,” she said. “At this point that’s not good enough in my mind.”

Next steps

Child care advocates are optimistic that the bill, which includes an increase in Kansas’ child and dependent tax credit, will go a long way to helping families in Kansas access and afford child care.

“It’s a really important first step to ultimately get to increased funding for the system,” said John Wilson, president of Kansas Action for Children, a left leaning group that works on child care among other issues.

But they say it should be looked at as a first step. They’re urging lawmakers to go further this session and approve the $56 million Kelly recommended in child care spending in her budget.

“We need to really invest in the workforce,” said Paula Neth, president of the Family Conservancy, a Wyandotte County organization that helps families access childcare.

State grant dollars in the past, she said, played a key role in stabilizing the field as it faced blows from COVID-19

But the fate of that funding is uncertain. The Kansas House and Senate both stripped some of that funding from their final budget proposals earlier this month. Lawmakers have argued the funds don’t create enough slots to be worth it.

“We cannot fund our way out of this,” Erickson said. “We’ve got to be willing to give parents some more measure of control over their childcare in Kansas.”

Republicans have talked significantly about increasing home based childcare in the state. Speaking to his GOP colleagues in the House on Wednesday, Rep. Sean Tarwater, a Stillwell Republican, said Kansas needs to allow more competition within the child care sphere so parents have freedom to choose the option they can best afford.

“When you have a high demand and a low supply costs are prohibitive,” Tarwater said.

But Neth said the state should move in the opposite direction and instead treat child care the same way it treats K-12 education.

“This is our next future workforce so are we really willing to compromise quality so we can get more slots?” she said. “To me that seems very short sighted.”

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