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Harris County, TX, April 16, 2026, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo released the following statement today ahead of the upcoming vote at Harris County Commissioners Court to “reduce barriers and strengthen support for early childhood providers and families with young children in Harris County”: 

“Today’s early childhood education proposal at Commissioners Court is an innocuous, if repetitive, addition to Harris County’s current early childhood work. It does no harm, but it mostly proposes initiatives that already exist and does not allocate any significant funding to continue those initiatives. As this item is proposed today, programs already serving tens of thousands of children, families, and providers are getting ready to wind down, starting in August of this year. 

I think that the only way to explain the proposal today is that some members of Court are having buyers’ remorse about the fact that, with their vote last August to not let the voters decide whether they wanted to continue our early childhood programs, they functionally voted to end programs that have served more than 97,000 families and kids since 2022. 

To be clear, the proposal last August was not for Commissioners Court to vote up or down on a penny tax for early childhood education. The proposal was to let the public vote up or down whether they – the public – would support a penny tax to continue our early childhood education programs. 

Last year, Harris County received a successful 80-page independent evaluation of the programs and an independent poll showing that ⅔ of voters saw the need for additional early childhood funding in Harris County. Because of the court’s vote last August, child care providers will lose funding for teachers’ wages, facility repairs and more. Children will lose access to high-quality early learning programs and summer programming, and parents will lose access to child care that allows them to continue working. 

And we just learned that Harris County faces a minimum $87M deficit going into this budget season. Departments are being asked to propose 8% cuts to their programs. The voter proposal would have provided $66.2M annually to continue the early childhood programs. There is simply no funding for that in Harris County.

I am convinced that the reason we are seeing this sudden proposal to ‘improve access’ to early childhood education is that the community is holding this Court accountable for its vote last year, keeping the public from opining on this issue. 

Just as the public has forced these members’ hands into proposing something, I think that the community can force their hand into allowing them to decide for themselves whether or not they want to see early childhood programs in our community continue. 

I’ll vote for this item today because it has to do with kids. I am encouraged by this turn of events and I hope it means that Commissioners will send the continuation of early childhood education funding to the voters this year,” said Judge Hidalgo.

The proposal at Commissioners Court today calls to:

1. Create an ‘Early Child Care Business Accelerator’ to help providers strengthen operations and provide targeted business support.

1. Conduct a review to “identify opportunities to streamline requirements, reduce delays, and potentially lower costs” to support providers and families.

1. Better connect families with child care by “identify[ing] gaps in outreach and awareness of child care, early learning, and other related resources, develop a plan to improve access and participation.”

1. Create a plan to advocate for early childhood education funding at the state level. 

Texas ranks among the lowest for early childhood education quality, according to a 2023 study from the National Institute for Early Education Research. In Harris County, 16 zip codes are considered ‘child care deserts’ where the demand for child care is at least three times greater than the supply for working families.