HIGH-IMPACT COSTS
entryways and playgrounds. Paul Ahren, who opened a Kids R Kids Seven Lakes facility in south Katy in 2021 and previously directed a Kids R Kids child care center from 2004-17 in north Katy, said in ation has increased the annual tuition for his child care center higher than average. “Normally, another ve bucks a year would cover in ation, but we did a little bit steeper [increase] this time because of the cost of gasoline and food,” he said. Sta ng challenges Child care o cials in Katy said they face challenges in recruitment and retention and struggle to pay sta a livable wage. Ahren said he does not employ enough teachers to support the full capacity of his facility and that good teachers are harder to come by. “We are barely at a break even; [we have] about 200 kids, and we are licensed for 360,” he said. “We want to be above ratio so that we can do more activi- ties in the room and not just be managing kids.” For Ahren, teacher pay is higher than it was ve years ago and more di cult to maintain. Despite recruitment e orts, securing sta has been hard. “A lot of people are looking for a lot more money than the child care business can really produce,” Ahren said. A September 2021 National Association for the Education of Young Children survey reported 86% of child care centers in Texas saw sta ng shortages; 79% of those surveyed identi ed wages as the main recruitment challenge. Meanwhile, in May 2021, the Bureau of Labor Sta- tistics reported the average annual wage for a child care worker in the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land metropolitan area was $24,150—the ninth low- est-paying occupation out of the 709 occupations in the region that receive an annual wage. Wu said in ation has made it harder to pay his sta a livable wage, which makes retention much more challenging. Retention is particularly important to parents who want to build a rapport with the profes- sionals caring for their children and to provide chil- dren with stability, he said. “On the parents’ side, they are looking for the cen- ters [with] those teachers that have been there for years,” Wu said. “They don’t want to see that teacher change very often. So that is a big challenge for us.” Resources and funding In August, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo— alongside Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis and several members of Congress—announced the $84 million Brighter Futures for Harris County Kids program, which encompasses several early education and child care initiatives. “This is a historic investment. Never before has Harris County had this focus on children,” Hidalgo said in a news release. “Each component of the Brighter Futures for Harris County Kids initiative demonstrates that local government can improve the lives of residents for the long term when work- ing with partners, community members, parents, teachers, and caretakers.” One portion of the three-part package includes the $48 million Child Care Contracted Slots program,
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Policy Institute. By this standard, 15.8% of families could a ord infant care. While child care is an important service for working parents, it can be costly due to state sta ng require- ments, local child care and early education center o cials said. At Vanguard Academy, an early education center serving Katy since November 2020, owner Hao Wu cited necessary increases to teacher salaries as a cat- alyst for the increased price of tuition from $200 per week to $215 per week in April. “We have to increase the teacher salary because after the pandemic, in ation [caused] all the costs [to go] high,” Wu said. “We have to increase teacher sala- ries if we want to keep that teacher here.” Both Harris and Fort Bend counties have made recent e orts to alleviate child care costs. Fort Bend County closed applications for its Child Care Voucher Program on Aug. 18. The proj- ect, designed and launched in early 2021, admin- istered $2.4 million to more than 1,200 low- to moderate-income families across the county who were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. On June 14, the Harris County Commissioners Court approved the use of $48 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds for a new child care and early child- hood development program that aims to increase the accessibility of child care in Harris County by 10%. The three-year pilot program is designed to cre- ate more child care options for children age 3 and younger in Harris County communities. It is also designed to provide funding to child care workers for better wages and to child care centers to recover from pandemic-induced hardships. Increasing costs Brightwheel, a child care management software company, reported the average price of child care in the Houston region is $1,087 monthly, an 8% average increase from 2021. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index—a measure of the average change in prices—the cost for day care and preschool rose 3.2% nationally from May 2021 to May 2022. While parents are spending more on child care than they were two years ago, child care centers in Katy face a unique challenge due to the city’s continued development and Katy ISD’s draw for young families, o cials said. Lou Ann McLaughlin, who has served Katy for 23 years with ve Primrose preschools and infant care centers, said she had to reduce the playground size for two of her early education centers because of the price of land. “To put a child care site [in Katy] is more expen- sive,” she said. “Because of the land cost, we couldn’t get quite as much land for the [sites] we built at West Cinco [Ranch]. It is getting more expensive for sure, as is everything.” Child care centers are required to have a minimum of 30 square feet per child, per Texas Health and Human Services Commission regulations. This means a facility aiming to hold 100 children would require at least 3,000 square feet—excluding o ce space,
The Economic Policy Institute broke down the cost of living for two adults and two children within Harris, Fort Bend and Waller counties. According to the EPI’s Cost of Living Calculator, child care costs followed closely behind housing and transportation costs in all three counties.
FORT BEND COUNTY COST OF LIVING
MONTHLY EXPENSES AND COST
20.5% 17.1% 17.1% 15% 11.1% 10.2% 9% % OF BUDGET
Housing Transportation Child care Health care Other necessities Food Taxes Monthly total
$1,496 $1,249 $1,247 $1,099 $813 $747 $656 $7,307
ANNUAL TOTAL: $87,684
HARRIS COUNTY COST OF LIVING
MONTHLY EXPENSES AND COST
% OF BUDGET
Housing Transportation Child care Health care Food Other necessities Taxes Monthly total
$1,127 $1,111
18.3% 18% 17.3% 16.2% 11.8% 10.9% 7.4%
$1,069 $1,000 $727 $672 $458 $6,164
ANNUAL TOTAL: $73,968
WALLER COUNTY COST OF LIVING
MONTHLY EXPENSES AND COST
% OF BUDGET
15% 19.4% 15.3% 20% 12.4% 9.9% 8%
$979 $1,264 $998 $1,306 $807 $647 $520 $6,521
Housing Transportation Child care Health care Food Other necessities Taxes Monthly total
ANNUAL TOTAL: $78,252
SOURCES: ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE, COMMUNITY IMPACT
SOURCE: THE ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE COMMUNITY IMPACT NOTE: PERCENTAGES MAY NOT EQUAL 100% DUE TO ROUNDING
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