OKPOLICY.ORG
With the passage of House Bill 1979, Rep. Trish Ranson, D-Stillwater, and Sen. Chuck Hall, R-Perry, have taken the right approach to finding long-term solutions to Oklahoma’s childcare crisis and other urgent early childhood needs. The bill creates an Early Childhood Task Force to conduct a two-year study of Oklahoma’s early childhood services delivery system. A preliminary report will be due in November 2027, with the final report and recommendations due in November 2028.
Passage of HB 1979 was not easy. Rep. Ranson filed the bill during the 2025 session, but it did not receive a committee hearing in the House. In response, she held an interim study before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Health in October 2025 to examine the feasibility of creating an Oklahoma Department of Early Childhood. During the 2026 session, the bill passed out of committee, failed on the floor, and then passed on reconsideration. Sen. Hall, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, signed on as the Senate principal author during the 2026 session, likely helping the bill reach final passage and the governor’s signature.
Like some other states, Oklahoma has not kept pace with the needs of dual-income and single-parent families seeking quality childcare, health care, and education for their children. Prior to the 2026 session, DHS requested $70 million for childcare, including $57 million for the childcare subsidy program and $11.5 million for teacher recruitment and retention. The Legislature ultimately appropriated only $7.6 million for childcare subsidies and $4.5 million for teacher recruitment and retention.
The Early Childhood Task Force will look for gaps, inefficiencies, and redundancies in services and recommend ways to better coordinate among state agencies and funding streams, which may include creating a new independent agency.
The 18-member task force will include the heads of the Department of Human Services, the Oklahoma State Department of Health, the Department of Commerce, the State Department of Education, and the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, or their designees, as well as a broad range of members with expertise and various community stakeholders.
Areas of study will be “access to affordable and quality health care, nutrition, early education and care, mental health, home visiting, early intervention, support for families, early learning, and other services in the critical prenatal to five-year age period.” The task force will give “intentional” focus to families and young children in health care, early education, and care deserts “furthest from opportunity and existing resources.”
Importantly, the task force will make recommendations to maximize efficiencies for early childhood providers and their workforce, including “how licensing, workforce development and support, and facility review can be improved to eliminate barriers to entry for providers and professionals.”
The task force is charged with drafting a proposed transition plan to ensure the continuous operation of services upon the creation of a new governance structure for early childhood, including recommendations on which programs and services should remain in their current place or transition into the new structure.
Finally, the task force will draft proposed legislation to create a new governance structure for Oklahoma’s early childhood education and care programs, which would presumably be considered in the 2029 legislative session.
The challenge of finding the best and most efficient way to provide quality early childhood health, education, and childcare services for young families is worth putting the right people together for two years of study and work.
It will likely not be a surprise that, despite new efficiencies with better governance, part of the answer will be the need for additional funding. Hopefully, the task force findings and recommendations will provide the momentum the Legislature needs to fund early childhood services.
