As San Antonio military bases face an ongoing child care shortage, hundreds of families on waitlists have trouble finding child care.
A new partnership between Joint Base San Antonio and Pre-K 4 SA promises to expand and add unconventional child care options for military families left to wait.
Pre-K 4 SA, the voter-approved public preschool system, in July announced the initiative with the City of San Antonio and JBSA to refer military families on base currently on waitlists for child care to Pre-K 4 SA and its partner child care centers.
“Our common goals will expand availability of child care, care for children with special needs, support military members’ unique mission hour requirements, all at off-installation child care centers or home providers,” said Mayor Ron Nirenberg in a press release.
According to partnership documents, the number of military families needing access to high quality early learning and medical and special needs child care exceeds available capacity. JBSA faces a significant child care shortage at its military bases, offering only 990 slots, the city said in a press release.
And San Antonio has the highest number of Exceptional Family Member Program families, with more than 1,600 families participating in the program that helps navigate special medical and education services at JBSA-Lackland.
Currently, all child care slots are at full, said JBSA Spokesman Rob Strain. Families left to wait are pointed to militarychildcare.com or program teams or organizations who can help in their child care search.
Since the partnership started, more than 300 service members have already enrolled in child care, Strain said.
In the meantime, Pre-K 4 SA has 350 additional child care slots in development on the South Side, and the Department of Defense is building three new child development centers, one at each JBSA base. Construction on the facility at Fort Sam Houston started in April and will be complete near the end of 2025, according to Strain. Construction for the centers at Randolph and Lackland will start later next year.
Will the referral program work?
Officials say the program will expand the availability of Military Child Care In Your Neighborhood providers that offer special needs, extended duty, weekend and unique child care hours in San Antonio, and will create more high-quality slots for children 6 weeks to 5 years old.
Pre-K 4 SA said it’ll do that by encouraging its partner child care centers to become military-affiliated providers and expand operating hours.
The partnership will also explore transportation to Pre-K 4 SA child care centers for children that live on JBSA-Lackland, Randolph and Fort Sam Houston.
Two new independently-owned family care providers will open new child care centers in San Antonio through the partnership and will be “focused specifically on the needs of military families.”
“Our partnership with Pre-K 4 SA is just one step forward in providing that high-quality care, and we look forward to more enrollments opening in December,” Strain said.
The partnership opens doors to advertising and referring families directly to Pe-K 4 SA partner child care centers, said Pre-K 4 SA CEO Sarah Baray.
Pre-K 4 SA is currently developing a marketing campaign with JBSA to launch on base and citywide to promote applications opening Dec. 1.
Kayla Corbitt, founder of Operation Child Care Project, a national nonprofit based in San Antonio that helps families get subsidized child care outside of military bases, said it can be hard to get centers on board with the NCCYN program due to the red tape.
“Centers don’t want to participate in the MCCYN program,” she said. “There aren’t any incentives for them to do so. They don’t get additional money, they don’t get more support. It’s pretty much through the goodness of their own heart that they want to go through this process and sign up.”
Pre-K 4 SA said the incentive is that it will help its partner centers increase enrollment by sending families who need child care to those centers.
“I hope that what it really does is expand the rhetoric around the need for nontraditional care,” Corbitt said, adding that expanding hours and leveraging a network in order to fill gaps is going to be “huge.”
“Maybe this will start to push San Antonio or local government to find a way to incentivize providers to accept this fee assistance program,” she said.
24-hour child care center in San Antonio
Karina Asencio is the director of Yogi Land Too Learning Center, a level 4 Texas Rising Star certified center on Bandera Road, that has accepted military subsidies for decades.
She’s looking for grant or startup funding to help her open an entirely new 24-hour center, the first in Military City USA, other than a few home daycares, she said. None of the child care centers on base operate 24 hours a day, Strain said.
Round-the-clock child care centers are available in large cities such as Houston, Dallas and Austin, but not in San Antonio.
“It’s a desert area in need right now,” she said at a classroom at the center. Yogi Land Too Learning Center is one of about 270 partner centers that are taking part in the new partnership with Joint Base San Antonio.
Besides military families, service, medical and overnight factory workers have fueled her desire to reopen a 24-hour child care center like the one she once operated in Helotes 20 years ago. It had 40 slots and closed in 2003 following Asencio’s divorce.
She wants to offer between150 to 200 child care slots and intends to allocate a specific number per industry — 50 for military, 50 for service workers and 50 for medical workers.
Asencio said she isn’t sure where the center would be located, but is seeking an area with a higher need for overnight child care.
Having a civilian-run, 24-hour center helps military families get around barriers. Often at on-base centers, the care isn’t available unless the servicemember is working the overnight shift. It can also be a problem for workers who need overnight child care while their spouses are deployed.
Military parents need Pre-K starting at 4 a.m. sometimes, Corbitt said, and need child care for children with special needs.
“The transportation piece is usually the compounding factor. Because of the age requirements, it creates a barrier to access because multiple drop-offs are required,” she added. “Logistically that’s a nightmare.”