The Texas Workforce Commission votes Sept. 1 on rules that would let local workforce boards pay their top rate to every quality-rated child care provider in their area, whatever that provider charges its other customers. Public comment closed July 6.
The rules carry out a law the Legislature passed last year. House Bill 2294, in effect since September 2025, allows a board to pay a Texas Rising Star provider the board’s maximum rate for that provider’s star level even when the provider’s own published price is lower — so long as paying more does not stop the board from serving the number of children the state expects it to serve. Texas Rising Star is the quality rating a provider must carry to take state child care scholarships, and the rating sets what the state will pay for each subsidized child.
The commission’s version adds conditions the statute does not. A board that adopts the higher rate must apply it to every provider in its area rather than choosing among them, and must adopt it in an open public meeting. The same package writes the agency’s long-standing formula for school-year rates into rule, which the agency says changes no math but touches the roughly 50,000 school-age children it counts in the program; lets providers keep their star rating through a sale, a move or an expansion; and narrows the licensing violations that can cost a provider its rating to the most serious ones.
The commissioners ordered the whole child care chapter reviewed at the same time, the four-year checkup state law requires of every agency rule. Also on the agenda: higher pay for the vendors that help people with disabilities find work, two rounds of federal money for the program that screens people drawing unemployment, a slate of local board nominees, and appeals in unpaid-wage and unemployment cases.
The agency re-filed this agenda Aug. 27, dropping one of its two case dockets and removing a federal reemployment spending plan the commissioners had been set to weigh. The child care rules survived the cut and are now item 12.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 10 a.m. CT Tuesday, September 1, 2026. The notice was filed August 24 at 4:54 p.m. and revised August 27 at 6:22 p.m. The next commission meeting is set for September 8.
- Where
- Room 244, Texas Workforce Commission building, 101 E. 15th St., Austin, and by Zoom. Virtual speakers had to register with the agency by 5 p.m. August 31.
- Governing body & chair
- Texas Workforce Commission — three members appointed by the governor to six-year terms, one each representing employers, labor and the public. Joe Esparza is chairman.
- Format
- Regular commission meeting, Docket 35. Public comment is taken near the top. The commission may recess to closed session on personnel, litigation and security matters; action is taken in the open.
- Live video
- Streamed and archived on the agency’s YouTube channel
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · agency meetings page
Commission members
- Joe Esparza — chairman, employer seat; Oatmeal; former deputy secretary of state.
- Brent Connett — public seat; Austin; the governor’s former deputy appointments director.
- Alberto Treviño III — labor seat; Harlingen; retired U.S. Border Patrol agent.
Roster taken from the governor’s appointment releases — Esparza named chairman and Connett appointed September 26, 2025 and Treviño appointed January 9, 2023 — because the agency’s own commissioners page is out of date: it still shows the chairmanship and public seat vacant, and a subpage still names a chairman who left in 2025. Steve Pier has been executive director since February 2026. Meeting contact: Erin Guzman, Office of General Counsel, (512) 936-3671.