More than 200 childcare and industry leaders converged in Coronado this week for a summit that paired NASA-style decision-making lessons and a former TOPGUN pilot's insights with an urgent, practical question: how to fix America's broken childcare system. The gathering, hosted by San Diego-based TOOTRiS, brought together officials and providers from across the country to trade strategies on funding, access, and support for families and childcare providers alike.
The event, known as the WINGS Summit, was organized by TOOTRiS, the childcare technology platform founded in San Diego in 2019 by CEO Alessandra Lezama, according to FOX 5 San Diego & KUSI News. The company has since grown into a nationwide network connecting more than 200,000 state-licensed childcare providers with working parents and employers, per the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Lezama said the summit was designed to send attendees home with ideas they could put into practice in their own communities, and organizers said the goal was to give leaders confronting similar childcare challenges a chance to exchange ideas face-to-face.
Six childcare programs pitched their community initiatives during the summit, competing for more than $10,000 in funding and support, the station's report noted. Attendees compared notes on approaches to childcare access and shared ideas throughout the sessions, with leaders describing growing demands on childcare programs paired with limited resources back home.
Lessons From Space and the Cockpit
Two unconventional speakers anchored the summit's programming: a NASA engineer and a former TOPGUN pilot, both of whom addressed attendees on decision-making and complex problem-solving under pressure, according to the same account. The pairing framed childcare policy work as a high-stakes operational challenge requiring the same discipline demanded in aerospace and military aviation.
Stacey Byarse, one of the attendees, said collaboration between states had helped drive progress in her own community, and she came to the summit seeking information on how to help her state further. States across the country are confronting similar hurdles around childcare access, funding, and support for both families and providers, the outlet reported, underscoring why leaders traveled to San Diego to compare notes rather than work the problem in isolation.
A National Price Tag in the Billions
The stakes behind the summit's discussions are steep. A nationwide analysis published by the Bipartisan Policy Center in September 2025 estimated that 4.2 million U.S. children lack access to childcare, a shortage that could cost the national economy up to $329 billion over ten years in lost productivity, family income, and tax revenue. Separately, a report from the Center for American Progress in April 2026 pegged current annual U.S. economic losses from childcare shortages — including lost parental earnings, job search expenses, and workplace productivity losses — at roughly $172 billion.
San Diego itself has become something of a case study in that national crisis. The San Diego County Board of Supervisors adopted a two-year County Child Care Blueprint citing data showing 77% of local parents struggle to find care, with median-income families spending roughly 40% of their income on housing and childcare combined, according to the City of San Diego's own planning documents. Infant childcare in the county now averages between $1,700 and $2,400 a month depending on ZIP code, well above the federal affordability benchmark of 7% of household income, as reported by Axios.
Public-Private Fixes and Regulatory Growing Pains
Local and state governments have leaned on technology platforms to try to close some of that gap. In 2024, TOOTRiS partnered with the California Department of Social Services to launch T4Kids, a state-funded initiative that tapped $200 million in expansion funds to streamline childcare subsidy access for low-income families starting in San Diego County. The City of San Diego also entered a municipal agreement with TOOTRiS in December 2024 to manage childcare benefit software and administrative services for city employees under a pilot program.
San Diego Unified School District has pursued its own fix, expanding its PrimeTime program in April 2026 to offer free after-school care for TK-8 students across 144 campuses in an effort to eliminate long waitlists and ease bills for working parents, as Hoodline previously reported. But rapid expansion of subsidy funding has also exposed vulnerabilities: federal law enforcement officers arrested 12 San Diego-area home daycare operators earlier this month for allegedly siphoning more than $10 million from government childcare subsidy programs by billing for children who rarely or never attended, a case Hoodline covered in detail.
After the Sessions, Speedboats and a Beach Boys Set
Once the strategy sessions wrapped, summit attendees traded conference rooms for the water, taking speedboat rides before a private concert under the stars featuring Christian Love of The Beach Boys, according to FOX 5 San Diego & KUSI News. The lighter capstone followed a day built around six programs presenting their childcare initiatives and summit leaders walking away with what organizers described as tangible solutions and toolkits for executing plans back home.
Lezama, who also chaired the Board of Directors for the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce in 2024, has positioned TOOTRiS as both a local success story and a national player in the childcare technology space. Whether the ideas swapped in Coronado translate into fewer families priced out of care, or fewer dollars lost to fraud, remains the test facing the leaders who gathered there this week.
