Military families in five major communities account for an outsize share of the children still waiting for care across the Defense Department’s sprawling child care system.
Hawaii, the National Capital Region, Norfolk, San Antonio and San Diego represented more than one-third of the almost 9,000 children whose need for care had not been met by the date their parents requested it, according to a Government Accountability Office report released in June.
The Pentagon defines “unmet need” more narrowly than a general waitlist: It counts children who have reached the date when their parents said care was required but still have not received a placement. The GAO report did not disclose totals for each community or rank the five from worst to best.
The shortage of child care services continues, even though the Department of Defense operates the largest employer-sponsored child care network in the country, which served approximately 171,000 children in the past fiscal year. While the Pentagon relies on a combination of on-base centers, home-based providers, and civilian subsidies, the system is struggling under two main pressures: a lack of physical space and a chronic difficulty in retaining staff.
Staffing remains the most unpredictable factor.
A Shortage of Workers as Well as Buildings
In 2022, turnover rates among child care workers fluctuated between 34% and 50%, meaning military centers frequently lose experienced employees to more appealing opportunities offered by civilian employers.
Moreover, the hiring process is hampered by mandatory health screenings and multi-state background checks, which can take up to six months to complete. In a competitive labor market, some candidates accept faster-moving civilian jobs before that process is complete.
The services have tried to plug those leaks with bonuses and retention payments. The Air Force, Army and Marine Corps issued 4,955 recruitment and retention incentives in 2024, including 4,450 retention payments. California, Colorado, Florida, Texas and Virginia received the largest concentrations of those incentives, placing three of the five highest-need military communities within states where the services were spending heavily to maintain their child care workforces.
The Navy’s figures could not be included because the service did not maintain data that allowed GAO to separate the incentives from performance awards.
The military also offers workers benefits such as free care for their first child at a DOD center, priority enrollment, tuition assistance and, at some installations, commissary access.
Service officials told investigators that the 100% discount for an employee’s first child had been particularly effective, but the latest GAO review did not measure whether the incentives had reduced waitlists.
Here is what public records show about the five communities with the greatest unmet need.
Hawaii
Hawaii combines an enormous military population with the constraints of an island labor market, where the broader federal workforce has struggled with high living and relocation costs. Those pressures can make it harder for military child care centers to compete for workers and for families to find affordable civilian alternatives when installation care is unavailable.
In 2023, the Army began construction on two new child development centers in Hawaii to enhance capacity. A $53.1 million facility at Aliamanu Military Reservation is expected to be completed by the end of 2026, while a $44.7 million center at Schofield Barracks is scheduled to finish in 2027. At the time of the announcement, Army officials noted that the garrison currently operates six existing centers.
Families moving to Hawaii are advised to request child care before arriving on the island. U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii’s newcomer guidance emphasizes the importance of applying in advance to avoid delays. For those who are unable to secure on-post care, the guidance suggests exploring fee assistance options for civilian providers.
Hawaii is also one of the locations covered by the Child Care in Your Home pilot, which subsidizes 30 to 60 hours of weekly care provided by a nanny or other employee hired by the family. The program is designed in part for parents working overnight shifts, irregular hours or jobs that installation centers cannot accommodate.
National Capital Region
The National Capital Region encompasses Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Northern Virginia, resulting in a fragmented child care market governed by various state and local licensing systems for military families.
That patchwork has complicated one of the Pentagon’s principal solutions: expanding the number of civilian centers eligible for military fee assistance. As of March, Maryland and Virginia participated in the expanded program, but Washington, D.C., did not. The expansion allows some providers without national accreditation to qualify based on state quality ratings, widening the pool of centers where families can use military subsidies.
The scale of the need is visible at Fort Meade, Maryland. Army budget documents supporting a planned 232-child development center said surveys showed a total requirement for 1,200 spaces in the Fort Meade area.
The Pentagon has also contracted with the Armed Services YMCA to operate a child development center in Arlington, Virginia, along a major Pentagon commuting corridor. The current ASYMCA directory lists the Arlington center as open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. DOD previously said the facility would hold approximately 200 children and charge the same income-based rates used at military-operated centers.
DOD has separately pursued agreements to reserve spaces inside existing civilian centers for military families in the Washington area, rather than waiting for entirely new facilities to be constructed.
Norfolk
Norfolk sits within one of the military’s largest fleet concentration areas, where thousands of Navy families compete for infant and toddler care alongside civilian families throughout Hampton Roads.
The region became the first site of DOD’s nonprofit child care expansion initiative. An Armed Services YMCA center opened in Norfolk in 2025 with capacity for approximately 200 children. Its current listing shows weekday hours from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., longer than many traditional civilian centers and potentially more useful for families dealing with watches, shift work and early-morning reporting times.
The Pentagon also announced plans for a second Armed Services YMCA facility in Virginia Beach and agreements to purchase spaces from existing Norfolk-area providers. The GAO listed Norfolk among the locations where the Navy is constructing another child development center.
The Navy said in April that a child development center project at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story remained under construction as part of an expansion expected to add more than 900 spaces across several fleet concentration areas through 2028. The service is also adding 1,000 community-based fee-assistance spaces during fiscal 2026.
Those additions may reduce the backlog, but they also require the Navy to recruit enough workers to staff them. Virginia was among the five states where the Air Force, Army and Marine Corps issued the most worker incentives in 2024, and GAO said Navy officials reported strong post-pandemic competition for child care employees.
San Antonio
Joint Base San Antonio is the largest joint base in the Defense Department, supporting more than 250 mission partners and approximately 80,000 full-time personnel across 11 geographically distinct locations.
DOD designated San Antonio a priority child care region by 2022, joining Hawaii, San Diego, Norfolk and the National Capital Region. The original four priority regions had reduced their waitlists by about 10% between 2020 and early 2022, but San Antonio remained among the five communities with the greatest unmet need in the department’s 2025 data.
Texas was also one of the five states receiving the largest number of recruitment and retention incentives for military child care workers in 2024, suggesting that staffing remains a major part of the department’s response.
Unlike Norfolk, Hawaii and San Diego, San Antonio was not named in the latest GAO report’s examples of communities receiving new military child development centers or purchased blocks of civilian spaces. It is, however, included in the Child Care in Your Home pilot and the broader fee-assistance expansion intended to give families access to more civilian providers.
San Diego
San Diego’s shortage reflects the collision of a vast Navy and Marine Corps population with one of the country’s most expensive civilian child care and housing markets.
The problem is not simply finding providers. It is finding providers who can satisfy DOD’s licensing, inspection and quality requirements. Pentagon officials told GAO that the department and Child Care Aware of America spent approximately four years working with California officials to address delays in San Diego County’s annual child care facility inspections. Providers need current inspections to remain eligible for military fee assistance.
DOD has since expanded the pool of eligible San Diego providers and announced plans to purchase existing civilian spaces for military families. The Navy is also constructing a new child development center at Naval Base Point Loma. The project was still listed as ongoing in April as part of the Navy’s plan to add more than 900 child care spaces by 2028.
Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego acknowledges the pressure regarding its extensive child care waiting list and advises incoming families to explore alternative options.
What Families Can Do While Waiting
MilitaryChildCare.com recommends that parents apply as soon as they are aware of their next duty station and tentative arrival date. Families can search for multiple child care centers and request installation-based care, certified Family Child Care homes, and fee assistance all through the same system.
If parents are offered an interim placement, they may remain on the waitlist for a more preferred program. Families looking for civilian care can apply for assistance through Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood (MCCYN). Additionally, MCCYN-PLUS allows more state-rated providers to participate in areas where nationally accredited care is limited. Parents are encouraged to start contacting civilian providers while they wait for a fee assistance offer.
Family Child Care homes may offer evening, overnight, weekend or 24-hour schedules that traditional centers do not. Military OneSource also maintains an expanded hourly-care database that allows eligible families to search for flexible and on-demand providers outside standard working hours.
Families in all five highest-need communities may also apply for the Child Care in Your Home pilot, though participation is limited and parents become the legal employer of the caregiver they hire.
Service members arriving at a new duty station may qualify for travel reimbursement to bring a relative or other designated caregiver to help temporarily when full-time care will not be available within 30 days. The pilot reimburses up to $500 for moves within the United States and up to $1,500 for moves to or from overseas locations.
Why the Waitlists Will Not Disappear Quickly
The Pentagon is pursuing several tracks at once: building centers, purchasing spaces from civilian operators, expanding fee assistance, subsidizing in-home care and paying incentives to retain workers.
But construction is the slowest tool in the box. DOD officials told GAO that a new on-base child development center can take as long as 10 years to plan and build. That delay is why the department has increasingly turned to civilian providers and nonprofit partnerships.
“We simply can’t build fast enough,” Chad Sheldon, DOD’s associate director for child and youth programs policy, said while discussing the expansion effort last year.
As of March, the expanded fee-assistance program operated in 18 states and two counties. The Pentagon was also purchasing civilian spaces in several high-need communities, opening military-only nonprofit centers and constructing new facilities in Hawaii, Norfolk and San Diego.
Those measures add seats, but every new classroom still needs qualified adults inside it. Until the services can shorten hiring times and reduce the rapid churn among child care workers, some military families will continue arriving at their requested start date with nowhere to take their children.
