Joint Base San Antonio has roughly 600 children sitting on waitlists for on-base childcare across its three installations, even as construction crews break ground on new centers meant to ease the crunch. JBSA says every existing seat at Fort Sam Houston, Lackland and Randolph is already filled, with no openings left to offer families who need care now.
According to the San Antonio Express-News, the Department of Defense named San Antonio one of the military's areas with the highest unmet childcare need in 2025, and the shortfall is visible in the numbers on the ground. JBSA has previously said its bases together offer about 990 child care slots, with another 135 closed because of facility system upgrades, according to the San Antonio Report. JBSA said in a statement that all seats are at full capacity and full enrollment, the outlet reported.
Fort Sam Houston currently has two child development centers with space for 189 children, while Lackland has three centers serving 628 children and Randolph has two centers with 278 spaces, per the Express-News. JBSA is now developing three new centers, one at each installation, to add to that base. Construction on a 41,000-square-foot center at Fort Sam Houston began in 2025, with JBSA planning to deliver that building in April 2027, the Express-News reports.
Groundbreaking At Lackland, A 2028 Target At Randolph
Crews began work on a 41,000-square-foot center at Lackland in October 2026, and leaders from the 502d Air Base Wing and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gathered on September 29 to formally break ground on the project, according to a JBSA announcement. That new building is expected to be finished in 2028 and will add 144 childcare spaces, with a commercial-size kitchen, three playgrounds, an integrated security system and 12 activity rooms, the Express-News reports. Randolph is also expected to get a new center by 2028, built to a standardized design shared with the Fort Sam Houston project.
JBSA spokesperson Diana Jones said the construction push at Lackland, Fort Sam Houston and Randolph is meant to reduce stress on families and support mission readiness, per the Express-News. Jones said the shortages stem partly from limited space and from shifting demand as military families move between postings. Earlier JBSA figures cited by the San Antonio Report show a $46.6 million child care development center at Fort Sam Houston was authorized for construction back in August 2023, and the base has said each project carries roughly a two-year construction timeline from its start date.
One Family's Wait, And A Caregiver's Way In
Master Sgt. Mario Hernandez, an active-duty U.S. Air Force service member who arrived at JBSA-Lackland in August 2025 with his wife Jolee and their two young children, told the Express-News his family waited a couple of months before their kids, 3-year-old Secilia and 1-year-old Silas, were enrolled. The family moved up the waitlist in part because of military priority rules: JBSA prioritizes waitlisted families based on military status, and the Hernandez children received top priority because their father is active duty and their mother took a caregiver job at Lackland's Gateway Child Development Center. Hernandez said caregivers are given top priority in part because the centers need staff to operate at all.
Hernandez said waitlist experiences vary widely by installation, recalling that California's waitlist was especially long, and said having childcare close to work gives parents peace of mind, letting them reach their children in under five minutes if needed. He estimated the three new JBSA centers combined will eventually have room for almost 1,000 children, and said he plans to move his kids to the new Lackland center if he is still stationed in San Antonio when it opens.
A Staffing Problem That Outpaces New Buildings
The construction boom addresses space, but staffing remains the harder problem. A 2024 House Armed Services Committee report found 4,352 childcare worker vacancies across the military, and noted that childcare wages nationally are comparable to food-service pay and often trail average retail wages, even though the Defense Department pays childcare workers in the 90th percentile of providers in the same geographic areas — a rate the committee said still has not kept pace with labor-market pressures. The Air Force, Army and Marine Corps reported providing 4,955 recruitment bonuses and retention allowances to childcare workers paid through nonappropriated funds in 2024, according to the committee's findings.
Kathryn Larin, who worked on a 2026 Government Accountability Office report, said low wages and demanding work make it difficult for the military to attract and retain childcare staff. The GAO report found that recruiting and retaining childcare workers has been difficult and has contributed to lengthy waitlists department-wide. Per Military Times, a 2024 GAO review found officials at eight installations reported that onboarding a new childcare worker could take one to six months, long enough that applicants sometimes take another job before they're ever hired. In fiscal 2024, about 19,000 childcare workers paid with nonappropriated funds cared for nearly 172,000 children of service members and Defense Department civilians nationwide, the outlet reported, and when the Army rolled out a new pay model in April, only 22 of its 68 installations had staffing levels at or above 90%, while nearly 3,000 children were waiting for space in Army centers alone.
Military childcare centers often lean on service members' spouses to fill caregiver roles, and frequent reassignments mean regular staff turnover and a constant need to recruit, according to the Express-News. The Defense Department has reported that San Antonio, Hawaii, Norfolk, San Diego and the National Capital Region — which includes Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. — together made up over one-third of nearly 9,000 children nationwide with unmet childcare need in 2025.
Families Look Beyond The Gate For Help
The military offers fee assistance programs for families who can't access on-base care, and families who do get a seat on base typically pay far less than they would for community childcare, per the Express-News. Without that access, service members risk missing duty and military spouses may have to leave their jobs, the outlet reported.
Some families are also being pointed off base entirely. A partnership between JBSA and Pre-K 4 SA has referred waitlisted military families to that program and its partner centers, and the San Antonio Report notes Pre-K 4 SA has 350 additional childcare slots in development on the city's South Side, with more than 300 service members already enrolled in care through the partnership. Separately, the Operation Child Care Project, which helps families find care, has estimated the three new JBSA centers could eventually add approximately 600 childcare spaces, assuming the base's staffing challenges get resolved — a figure that aligns with JBSA's own projection, reported by the San Antonio Report, that its finished construction projects will add more than 600 additional spaces for military families.
