When Michelle Rocca started searching for child care for her newborn son in 2019, she was surprised to find that there were only two state-licensed providers in her central Honolulu neighborhood, and both of them had months-long waitlists.

Rocca said it was a “white knuckle” experience scrambling to find a place to leave her son so she could return to work when he was 6 months old — a common experience for parents in Hawaii, where there are roughly four times as many children under the age of 5 as there are child care seats.

Helping working parents like Rocca — whose husband stays home now to take care of their son after preschool ends at 1:30 p.m. — has been a priority for education advocates and lawmakers during this legislative session.

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“Overall, I think this was a difficult year for tax credit bills,” said David Sun-Miyashiro, executive director of HawaiiKidsCAN, adding that he thinks there is solid interest in incentivizing work-based learning for students. “We are exploring a wide range of options moving forward, including reorganizing the structure of the bill as a grant program.”