Item 10 - Child Care and Out of School Time Slideshow — original pdf

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Travis County Voter Approved Child Care and Out of School Time Fund Overview January 2025 Background On November 5, 2024, Travis County Voters approved a 2.5 cent tax rate increase per $100 valuation that will generate approximately $75 million to increase access to affordable and high-quality child care and afterschool/summer programming and related services for low-income families and develop and administer related workforce and economic development programs. Recognition • Recognize the collective work that has taken place to create a dedicated revenue fund for child care and out of school time programming. This includes all the research, advocacy, and community input gathering by community organizations like Success by 6 Coalition, Andy Roddick Foundation, and the Children’s Funding Project. • Recognize that there is a big need for child care and out of school time services and we want to move quickly to put services in place while also being intentional. • Recognize that this is the first County voter approved child care fund in the state! There are more than 50 voter approved children’s funds in the country. • Recognize that it will take time to build internal County infrastructure, systems, procedures, processes in alignment with County mandates and systems. • Recognize that community input is essential to stewardship and to stabilize and strengthen child care and out of school time systems. Overview of Strategies These four strategies will serve as a baseline for expanding and strengthening child care and afterschool and summer programming in Travis County.  Strategy 1: Expand slots for infants/toddlers (ages 0-3) and for afterschool and summer programming (PreK-12th grade)  Strategy 2: Expand non-traditional hour care  Strategy 3: Build quality and capacity  Strategy 4: Build a Business Government Alliance for leveraging business contributions and matching public funds to reduce employee child care costs Transition Plan • Hiring County staff • Online survey • Community Input Sessions- Gather input from stakeholders to inform program design to strengthen our local childcare and out of school time ecosystems and ensure that this fund is reflective and responsive to the needs of our community • Three large listening sessions (March) • Targeted community input sessions stakeholder groups (February-March) • Community Advisory Council – Composed of community members and child care and out of school time stakeholders (application process - late Spring - Summer 2025) • Short term investments - Explore amending existing County contracts to serve more families while planning and procurement for services is underway. Next Steps in Procuring Services • As a government entity collecting and investing public tax dollars we use a multi-step procurement process to fund services. • The process to plan and procure services within the four baseline strategies includes: • Refining initial strategy design by learning from other communities, analyzing community input, and aligning with County policies, procedures, and systems. • Seeking approval of program policies by Commissioner’s Court. • Developing scopes of work for County services. • Releasing solicitations, evaluating proposals, and negotiating new contracts. • A contracted third-party evaluator will evaluate all services and impact. • Solicitations for services will be staggered and will begin in Fall 2025 and new service contracts will begin throughout 2026. Emerging Timeline Community Input gathering February - April 2025 Recruit for Community Advisory Council Late Spring/ Summer 2025 Review and analyze community input April-May 2025 Present community input findings and seek approval of program policies from Court Summer 2025 Expand current contracts (Short-term Investments) by Summer 2025 Begin releasing phased solicitations for services Fall 2025 Contracts for services in all 4 strategies will begin by December 2026