Two-year-old Terriona Horton sits with two classmates squishing pink Play-Doh at American Care Academy in South Dallas. She has been coming to the Early Head Start program here since she was an infant.
For Terriona’s family, the program has meant more than childcare. Her grandmother, Marquito Craig, said Head Start allowed Terriona’s mother to finish high school. She now works in a hospital.
Without free childcare, Craig said the family would struggle to cover the cost.
“You talking $200 to $300 a week just for a kid to attend,” she said. “That’s $1,200 to $1,500 a month just to spend on childcare.”
More than 68,000 children are enrolled in Head Start programs in Texas, bringing roughly $800 million in federal funding to the state each year.
The program does more than subsidize care: Head Start also comes with federal standards governing staffing, safety, teacher qualifications, health screenings and how to measure quality and outcomes.
Now, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is considering streamlining some of those requirements and giving states more control.
Childcare advocates say the changes could have significant consequences in Texas, where some state licensing standards are less strict than Head Start requirements.
In Terriona’s Early Head Start classroom, for example, one teacher can care for no more than four two-year-olds. Texas licensing rules allow one teacher to care for as many as 11 two-year-olds.
“It’s insane,” said American Care Academy director Patricia Williams said.
“I’ve had that before,” Williams said. “And I could not keep a teacher very long.”
Williams has worked in early education for more than 25 years. She said smaller classes allow teachers to do more than simply supervise young children.
“This helps us better structure the classroom,” she said. “Provide a learning environment that’s personal.”
A fragmented system
The debate over Head Start comes as Texas is already examining how its early-childhood system is organized.
Roughly $4 billion flows through several state agencies and programs that have different rules, funding streams and oversight.
Earlier this year, Gov. Greg Abbott created an Early Education Task Force to study how that system could work better.
San Antonio Spurs owner Peter J. Holt chairs the group. He said the task force is looking at childcare through the lens of market efficiency.
“What is the cost to serve?" Holt said. "What is the cost for quality?”
He said it is still too early to know exactly what federal changes to Head Start could mean for Texas. But he said the current fragmented system “does create challenges.”
“Challenges with data sharing, challenges with funding mapping, challenges with serving certain populations,” he said.
The task force is considering ways to improve coordination and make better use of the money already flowing through the system.
Child care advocates are worried
Melanie Rubin, director of the North Texas Early Education Alliance, said efficiency alone will not solve Texas’ childcare problems. Thousands of Texas families already struggle to find affordable care.
In Dallas County, more than 9,000 children who qualify for subsidized childcare like Head Start are on a waiting list.
“The current system is not sufficient to take care of them at all,” Rubin said. “Their parents are ready and willing to go to work and we cannot serve them.”
Rubin said that problem could become more complicated if federal Head Start standards are loosened and Texas is left with more responsibility for determining what quality childcare should look like.
“A very key missing component is the funding piece,” Rubin said. “To really do key systemic and sustainable change, we need more resources for our youngest children.”
Most childcare assistance in Texas is funded with federal dollars. Unlike many states, Texas does not dedicate significant state revenue outside of its investment in public pre-K through school districts.
Rubin said states are increasingly recognizing that they may need to contribute more of their own money.
For American Care Academy director Patricia Williams, the stakes are more immediate.
Head Start requirements affect how many children she puts in a classroom, how she staffs the center and what systems are in place to ensure quality and safety.
She worries weakening those requirements without replacing them with comparable state standards could put programs like hers in a difficult position.
“I would not feel safe,” Williams said. “I probably would be looking at, how do I exit? Because when you take that away we are going to see something a little bit different in our country that we probably don’t want to see.”
Sujata Dand is KERA’s early childhood education reporter. Got a tip? Email her at sdand@kera.org.
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