Texas parents struggle to find child care amid COVID. Delta variant may make it worse

Alexis Gloria has been looking for child care since she moved to the region in March of this year.

She works in the health care field, a sector that is in high demand as hospitals again fill to capacity and nurses and doctors are burning out after a year on the front line.

The process, Gloria said, has been a nightmare, with low availability and high rates everywhere she has looked.

“I work in health care, and I can’t find anything that is less than a month’s pay,” she said. “It is not really feasible to go to work and have someone else raise my kid, just to give them my entire paycheck.”

Instead, Gloria is considering staying at home to raise her twin boys, a choice more and more parents are having to make as child care staffing shortages at centers coincide with urgent calls to return to life as normal.

Jerletha McDonald, the founder and CEO of Arlington DFW Child Care, said there is no return to normal, or revitalization of the economy, without ensuring that child care centers have what they need to return to full capacity.

“Without us, parents could not go back to work,” she said. “And without them going back to work, there is no economic recovery at all.”

McDonald operated her own home child care for over two decades, and planned to reopen after a brief hiatus when COVID-19 slammed the industry. She has since pivoted to consulting and training others in child care, and acting as a voice for child care providers as an advocate.

Bethany Edwards, the director of Early Learning Alliance, said she hopes the pandemic shifts the way early childhood education is viewed.

“There is really not another answer than public investment, and the government understanding that these are essential businesses,” Edwards said. “There is a lot of talk about labor force shortages, and urgency to get back to work. And that is reliant upon a working child care industry.”

While one-time public investment like the grants provided by the federal government are one step, public Investment in the form of subsidies has created a safety net for child care centers across the state that participated in Texas Rising Star, a quality rating and improvement system.

Two child care providers in Fort Worth, Treasure Chest Learning Center and Tiny Treasure Learning Academy, continued to be funded after enrollment plummeted at the outset of the pandemic.

For months, according to owner Monicha Neal, less than half of the students attended day care as mandates only allowed essential workers to use child care. Funding based on enrollment, not attendance, was still available.

But those funding sources do little to help childcare centers recruit new staff, as they compete with pre-K teaching assistant positions that pay more for similar work.

According to an August report by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, 86% of child care centers across Texas are experiencing a staffing shortage, with 53% of affected programs serving fewer children.

Now, with a new variant of COVID-19 sweeping through the county, advocates worry that the problem could only get worse.

This time it is different

Child care workers in homes and centers across Tarrant County were just beginning to recover from devastating losses incurred over the course of the pandemic. Now, with COVID-19 surging again, and infecting more kids, some are wondering if they can survive another hit.

Primrose School of Keller has reported 15 cases to the state since March of 2020, almost half of which were reported in the last week.

“It is different this time,” Patti Merryman, the owner of the childcare center said. “It’s not teachers getting it, we see a few more kids getting it.”

On Aug. 16, the day Merryman’s center reported seven new cases, Tarrant County reported 28 cases in child care centers — more than any other county in Texas. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Tarrant County has reported the second most cases in child care centers, behind Harris County, whose population is more than twice that of Tarrant’s.

The Texas Department of Health and Human Services collects data only from child care centers, school-age programs and before and after-school programs. Data for home-based child care is not available on the state level.

Merryman says her team is better prepared to respond to outbreaks more than a year into the pandemic.

“I’ve been through it once and I did have to quarantine a few classes, so 100% I have an idea how it happens,” she said.

Merryman said the resurgence is just the latest blow to the child care industry, with centers like hers still recovering from damage caused by the winter storm and staffing shortages that plagued the sector even before the pandemic.

But for smaller, home-based child care centers, which are the only options in some areas, the possibility of another prolonged outbreak is existential.

Just in the nick of time

Edwards, the director of the Early Learning Alliance in Tarrant County, said federal funds and other grants are being disbursed just in the nick of time, as previous costs from the pandemic meet the new threat of the delta variant.

“That is a little bit of weight off, but it is still really daunting,” Edwards said. “We have providers tell us that they can’t do this again, like their business won’t sustain through another set of shutdowns.”

Shutdowns like those seen in March of 2020 are unlikely, with officials at the federal and state level decrying the notion of a return to those conditions, but the prospect of continued enrollment declines could still be enough to cause some providers to close their doors for good.

“A lot of child care centers and homes are operating right now at razor thin margins,” Edwards said.

Zina Burchett, who runs a child care center in Arlington, faced the prospect of closing her doors at the height of the pandemic, as parents kept their children at home, and enrollment dwindled.

“I thought about closing down, but then I thought about the one parent that did need me,” Burchett said. “I stayed open for her.”

Six months later, as school started up again, business began to trickle back. School returning was essential for Burchett and other providers who take care of the children of teachers.

But with the financial hit of a salary cut lasting six months, Burchett tried unsuccessfully to apply for a grant from the Small Business Administration. She was later approved for a federal grant made available through the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act. The Texas Workforce Commission disbursed $775 million appropriated in the federal legislation to assist child care providers starting this month.

The money is much needed, Burchett said, and will go toward paying bills and expenses that have piled up as she focused on keeping her business afloat. Now, with the continuing threat of the virus returning for another school year she is again worried.

“I’m just praying that they don’t shut us back down again,” she said. “Because I don’t know what will happen. I just don’t.”

An uncertain future

Camille McClinton, who operates a home-based childcare in Grand Prairie, closed several times during the pandemic, and lost over half of her enrollment. When the pandemic first hit, her mind flooded with a list of questions.

“What am I going to do?” she asked. “How am I going to handle these kids? What happens now? How will we operate?”

Those questions were shared by providers across the region.

In Arlington, Burchett struggled to find food and cleaning supplies in the early days of the pandemic, waking up early in the morning to beat desperate shoppers as supplies ran low.

“My first priority was to make sure I had food for the kids,” she said. “Then after that I just made sure I had enough supplies week-to-week to wipe down.”

Answers to McClinton’s questions came slowly from the state, so she looked across the country to see what type of precaution measures were in New York. Masks, stopping parents at the door and temperature checks became ubiquitous in the following weeks.

Savings between McClinton and her mother, who helps run the business, helped keep the doors open, but after the last year and a half, McClinton said things are not going to go back to how they were.

“I don’t know that we will ever fully recover,” McClinton said. “The things that we were doing pre-COVID... we can’t do as easily now.”

As for Gloria, the health care worker, she is still keeping an eye out for child care options, but said it is an uphill battle.

“I don’t see a light and will more than likely just end up staying home with my twins for the remainder of their toddlerhood,” she said.