Texas Workforce Commission approves $4.5 million to boost Texas Rising Star centralized assessments

The Texas Workforce Commission on Wednesday approved adding $4.5 million in fiscal-year 2025 statewide-initiatives funding to support Texas Rising Star (TRS) assessment services conducted by the program’s centralized assessment entity (CAE).

Commission staff said the CAE has faced workload challenges and needs additional staff to complete required initial assessments, annual monitoring visits and other assessments for child-care providers statewide.

Lisonbee Wilson of the commission’s Child Care and Early Learning Division told commissioners that state law required TWC to select a single entity to operate a statewide roster of qualified TRS assessors and that the CAE’s “expenditures with the needed additional staffing will total approximately $34,000,000 over a 3 year period.” She said the commission previously approved about $29,900,000 for the CAE through FY23–FY25 statewide initiatives budgets and recommended a $4,500,000 addition for FY25 to meet assessment requirements.

Wilson said the additional funds would pay for more assessors and related staffing. She said the CAE will use a mix of full-time employees and contracted assessors; contracted assessors allow the CAE to scale up or down with demand. Reagan Miller noted the commission reserve balance and confirmed the funding is available.

Commission discussion focused on sustainability, staffing models and how caseloads will change. Commissioners asked whether the assessors are state employees; Wilson responded the assessors are provided through the vendor contract and are not state employees. She gave caseload ranges the CAE expects as it adjusts: about 65–75 programs per assessor under the CAE’s plan, compared with about 36 programs per assessor under the earlier board-administered model.

Wilson also said the commission will add contract language in the renewal that sets benchmarks for the number of assessments to be completed by specified dates and ties those benchmarks to liquidated damages.

A motion to approve the $4.5 million addition was made and seconded and the commission vote carried.

The commission did not set a public timeline in the meeting for when the additional staff must be hired, but Wilson said the CAE is in its third year of operation and that the agency is “learning as we go” about statewide implementation.