Laid off from Child Care Associates.

What Child Care Associates layoffs have meant for employees

If you work at Child Care Associates, the May 2025 notices show what one of its layoff warnings looks like up close. CEO Kara Waddell described the notice as a precaution and communication tool, and the Fort Worth Report updated its first story on May 5 to say no layoffs would occur. Yet the notices covered real jobs. The letter the Houston Chronicle described, sent to elected officials in Tarrant County and Fort Worth, listed employees from instructional staff to leadership who could be laid off by June 30 unless funding was renewed, and it expected 14 locations to close. Both messages held at once, and which one won out was up to HHS.

The money behind those jobs is federal and runs on federal timing. Head Start funds go from HHS directly to local grantees rather than through the states, a 2014 Congressional Research Service report explains, and the 2007 reauthorization limited a grantee's designation to five years, after which its grant can be re-competed. In 2013 Head Start was about a third of CCA's annual budget, the Dallas Observer reported, and in 2025 Waddell's letter said the organization relies heavily on federal funding and grants and that HHS would finish its grant renewal process on June 30, the day the old grant cycle ended. That spring a leaked budget proposal had sparked fears of broader defunding, though HHS told providers on May 1 that grants would be awarded that summer.

The 2025 award kept the staff, the Report's July 1 follow-up said, but families still lost a summer of services. Head Start programming paused in June, after CCA had warned families that it would stop on June 4 and that summer services would end. CCA's June 30 statement then announced classes starting July 28 for infants and toddlers and August 11 for preschoolers. If you're weighing whether to ride out a gap like that, the 2025 uncertainty ran from early May notices to a late June answer. The 2013 reports came out before the shutdown ended on October 17, so they don't settle whether that warning became layoffs.

On Texas's 2025 WARN list, most of the May notices name a center, in Fort Worth, Arlington, Hurst or Mansfield. The largest, a 93-job entry in Fort Worth, names no center. Spring 2015 brought a 75-job Fort Worth notice, and that August the Business Press counted 24 centers and more than 500 staff as CCA won a five-year federal grant of more than $112 million, money the paper said would boost teachers' salaries and add family service advocate roles. By 2025 the Fort Worth Report described nearly 20 campuses. The two reports count sites in their own ways, and neither figure counts layoffs.

If a CCA job does end, the last workday can differ from the date a notice names, and the Texas Workforce Commission says to apply only after that last workday. TWC starts a claim on the Sunday of your application week and can't pay for weeks before you became unemployed. It also says you can apply while working reduced hours through no fault of your own, which may be worth knowing if a program pause cuts your schedule. TWC says deciding eligibility can take up to four weeks, and it gives a former employer up to 14 days for an initial response on why you're no longer working. What Texas pays, and how a claim gets filed, is set out on our Texas unemployment benefits page.