How the HERO Act Aims to Fix the Military Child Care Crisis

For years, the surest way for a military spouse to learn whether an on-base child development center had an opening wasn't a government hotline or an official DoD portal; it was a Facebook group. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) said as much when she signed onto a new bipartisan bill this spring, describing a military child care system so short on centralized information that families around the country have had to rely on word of mouth to track waitlists and vacancies.

In highly concentrated military communities, child care demand consistently outpaces supply, but the exact scale of the shortage remains difficult to pin down. Because the DoD lacks a centralized, accurate way to track capacity at individual bases, local waitlists often become clogged with duplicate entries or outdated requests. For families, the consequence of this data failure is high, as military spouses often put their careers on hold, and families stretch their budgets to cover private off-base care, simply because they cannot get a clear timeline on when an on-base spot might actually open.

That gap (not just the shortage of child care itself, but the absence of reliable data about the shortage) has become the animating idea behind the most significant military child care legislation working through Congress this year.

Three proposals, folded into a single bill and now advancing inside the Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), aim to reshape how the Pentagon recruits child care workers, partners with outside organizations to staff its centers, and tracks capacity and unmet need across the entire department on a standardized, recurring basis.

The Bill: HERO Child Care for Military Families Act

The legislation, formally the Helping Ensure Reliable Opportunities (HERO) in Child Care for Military Families Act, was introduced on April 16, 2026, by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a combat veteran and senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. She was joined by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.), and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), giving the bill bipartisan, bicameral backing from the start. Ernst has said the measure is meant to strip away bureaucratic friction that keeps military parents waiting and keeps the DoD itself in the dark about the scale of the problem.

The bill's core provisions fall into three buckets:

1. Growing the number of available child care spots. The bill removes a prior-service requirement that has narrowed the pool of eligible child care workers at military Child Development Centers (CDCs), and it authorizes voluntary job-sharing arrangements. This allows two part-time employees, each working at least 20 hours a week, to split a single full-time position. That's aimed squarely at military spouses and caregivers who can't commit to a 40-hour week but could otherwise fill classroom vacancies. It also creates a preclearance system, requiring background checks and health screenings to be completed before a position even opens, rather than after. This change is intended to stop new hires from quitting during the months-long clearance process, a problem DoD officials have acknowledged costs them staff before they ever start.

2. Creating new partnerships. The bill authorizes the Secretary of Defense to enter into an interagency partnership with a federal agency, namely AmeriCorps, to place trained national service volunteers inside military CDCs as providers, tapping an entirely new staffing pipeline outside the traditional federal hiring process.

3. Standardizing data collection. Perhaps the most structurally significant piece: the bill establishes a first-of-its-kind, department-wide Child Care Readiness Data System. It would require the Pentagon to standardize how each military branch collects and reports data on capacity and utilization by installation; staffing levels, vacancies, turnover, and pay ranges; waitlists broken out by families with no access, families relying on temporary or off-base care, and those needing nontraditional-hours care; and demand by age group, with particular attention to children under 5.

The system must be updated at least every 90 days, and the Pentagon would have to brief the House and Senate Armed Services Committees annually on what the data shows and what it's doing about the gaps. A companion provision requires a report within 90 days specifically addressing waitlist accuracy, including how many children are double-counted across multiple lists, a distortion that has long made it hard to tell real shortages from data noise.

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Why Now: The Numbers Behind the Push

The Defense Department runs the largest employer-sponsored child care system in the country, and the strain on it has been documented for years, but rarely with real consistency from base to base.

These statistics illustrate exactly why lawmakers from both parties have made military child care a recurring focus in consecutive National Defense Authorization Acts. The FY2025 NDAA, enacted in December 2024, required a new compensation and staffing model for child care workers. The FY2026 NDAA, signed into law in December 2025, protected teachers and child care workers from layoffs tied to broader civilian workforce cuts and extended a fee-assistance pilot for families using in-home care. Both were incremental. The HERO Act, backers argue, is the first to go after the underlying visibility problem rather than adjusting benefits or protections around the edges.

“Many military spouses seek flexible, part-time employment because of the unique demands and unpredictability of military life,” said Stephanie Rose, MOAA’s director of military family and survivor policy.

“Expanding part-time opportunities within CDCs helps address two important needs at once: it strengthens the child care workforce that military families depend on while providing spouses with employment options that fit their family’s circumstances. This solution meets military families where they are by recognizing the caregiving and household responsibilities that spouses often manage in support of military service, while also creating opportunities for workforce participation that strengthen the family’s financial stability.”

Fixing the Problem Congress Can't Fully See

What sets this year's push apart from prior NDAA child care provisions isn't a new benefit or a bigger subsidy. It's an acknowledgment that Congress and the DoD have been trying to solve a problem they can't accurately measure. GAO's own reporting has repeatedly noted that waitlist figures mix real unmet need with duplicate entries, families already receiving care but still listed for a preferred alternative, and inconsistent methodology from base to base. The HERO Act's waitlist-accuracy report is a direct response to that murkiness, requiring the DoD to explain how much of the "crisis" narrative reflects genuine shortages versus data artifacts.

That has made this year's debate less about whether military families face real child care strain and more about whether Washington has ever had good enough information to fix it at scale. Advocates for military families have long argued anecdotally that child care gaps ripple into retention, readiness, and spouse employment; the bill's separate mandate for a report on the relationship between child care availability and readiness, retention, dual-military families, and spouse workforce participation is designed to convert those anecdotes into evidence lawmakers can act on.

“When service members cannot fully focus on their duties because they cannot secure care for their children, readiness suffers,” said Rose.

“And when military spouses cannot pursue employment, family financial readiness suffers. Over time, these pressures may become retention issues as service members and their families grow weary of shouldering gaps in support that should exist to encourage continued service.”

Where It Stands

The FY2027 NDAA cleared the Senate Armed Services Committee in mid-June by an 18-9 vote and is now before the full Senate. The House is working through its own version of the defense bill in parallel, and any differences between the chambers would need to be reconciled in conference before a final bill reaches the president's desk; a process that, in recent years, has typically concluded in November or December.

The inclusion of the HERO Act provisions in the final NDAA will test whether the DoD can successfully modernize its family support infrastructure to meet current workforce demands. Defense officials and military family advocates have repeatedly testified that unresolved child care shortages directly impact the retention of the all-volunteer force. If these data and staffing reforms are stripped during conference negotiations, the military risks maintaining a status quo where the logistical challenges of securing reliable child care continue to factor into service members' decisions to leave the Armed Forces.

Conversely, if the provisions become law, the legislation could establish a new model for federal child care management. Specifically, the interagency partnership allowing AmeriCorps volunteers to staff DoD classrooms represents a distinct shift in how the government handles chronic child care vacancies. By looking outside traditional federal hiring pathways to fill critical support roles, the Defense Department’s approach could eventually inform how other federal agencies manage their own employer-sponsored child care systems.