[MaxGhenis]

We built this change on #10598, where we added the October 16, 2023 revision of the Board Contract Year (BCY) 2024 table.

What and why

PolicyEngine carries each parameter's earliest value back to January 2015, so it applied the BCY 2024 Texas Child Care Services (CCS) rates to every month before October 2023. The 4,032 cells in rates.yaml cross 28 Boards with 16 provider type and rating rows and 9 age and schedule columns. We add six dated values to each cell, one from each of six statewide tables the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) published before BCY 2024:

Effective	Source	PolicyEngine applies it to
2016-10-01	Maximum Daily Rates as of October 1, 2016	January 2015 to July 2018
2018-08-01	WD 12-18, Attachment 1	August 2018 to September 2019
2019-10-01	WD 23-19, Attachment 1	BCY 2020
2020-10-01	WD 25-20, Attachment 1	BCY 2021
2021-10-01	WD 24-21, Attachment 1	BCY 2022
2022-10-01	WD 22-22, Attachment 1	BCY 2023

TWC dated each of the October 2016 table's 448 Board rows by when its rates took effect, from September 1, 2010 to October 1, 2016. We date every value October 1, 2016, the earliest date in rates.yaml, so PolicyEngine applies each row from January 2015, including the 357 rows that took effect later. In WD 27-16, in December 2016, TWC had Boards suspend rate increases, and in WD 12-18 it rescinded that letter and set the August 2018 rates. TWC set all 672 regular rates in WD 12-18 at 102 percent of the October 2016 rates, rounded up to the cent, and left all 224 relative care rates unchanged. We found no earlier statewide table and no mid-year revision of any of the six: the Wayback Machine keeps one version of each, and we found no Change letter to any of the five letters.

TWC printed all six tables in the four age groups of 40 TAC §809.20(a)(2), which applied until December 1, 2023. The tables share BCY 2024's provider types, ratings and schedules, so we put each full-time and part-time rate and each school-age blended rate TWC printed in one existing cell.

Cells we fill or raise

We fill the cells TWC did not print with three rules and raise two rates to their floor:

Rule	Cells	Basis
A Texas School Ready (TSR) provider gets the regular rate for an age group outside §809.20(b)(2).	504 in October 2016, 504 in BCY 2020, 498 in BCY 2021, 502 in BCY 2022, 252 in BCY 2023	Under §809.20(b)(2), Boards set a TSR enhanced rate only for preschool children until October 3, 2022, and for infants, toddlers and preschoolers from then. TWC already printed infant and toddler TSR rates in WD 22-22's table, effective October 1, 2022, so we apply the wider scope from that table. In the October 2016 table, TWC printed TSR rates for preschool children alone. Every TSR rate TWC printed outside those ages (756 in WD 12-18, 6 in WD 25-20, 2 in WD 24-21) equals the regular rate.
We compute the school-age blended rate with TWC's school-year formula from WD 02-20: (175 × part-time + 30 × full-time) / 205, rounding half up to the cent.	448 in each of October 2016, BCY 2020, 2021 and 2022	TWC printed no blended rates in the October 2016 table and no blended column in WD 23-19, 25-20 or 24-21. All 1,792 blended rates in WD 12-18, all 364 school-age blended rates in WD 22-22 and every BCY 2025 blended rate match the formula. In its 2026 rule adoption, TWC's Commission dated to 2010 the method of weighting the part-day rate by estimated school days and the full-day rate by estimated non-school days.
We keep Texoma's registered child care home (RCCH) TSR preschool part-time rate for BCY 2022 at its BCY 2021 level, $20.07, which exceeds the $19.91 floor in §809.20(c)(1)(B).	1	TWC printed a dash in this cell in WD 24-21. Under §809.20(b)(2), Boards must set a TSR preschool rate, and in the same letter TWC kept any higher earlier rate in effect. Each of the 167 TSR preschool rates TWC printed in WD 24-21 equals the higher of that floor and the BCY 2021 rate, Texoma's licensed center and home part-time rates among them.
We raise South Texas's RCCH TSR preschool rates in the October 2016 table to the §809.20(c)(1)(B) floor, rounding up to the cent: $15.12 full-time and $11.05 part-time.	2	TWC printed $12.84 and $8.93 in a TSR row it dated April 1, 2016, below the regular rates of $14.40 and $10.52 it dated October 1, 2016. Boards must set TSR preschool rates at least 5 percent above the regular rate, and from August 2018 TWC set both at 105 percent of the new regular rate, rounded up.

In its BCY 2021 workbook, TWC filled each of the 4,032 cells we store, including the 498 TSR and 448 school-age blended cells we fill by rule for BCY 2021, and each equals our value.

TWC printed three Lower Rio Grande Valley TSR preschool rates in WD 12-18 at 105 percent of the new regular rate, rounded up, below its October 2016 rates. For full-time care at a licensed child care home (LCCH), it printed $17.46 and then $15.99, for part-time care there $16.79 and $14.93, and for part-time care at an RCCH $12.76 and $11.34. In WD 12-18, TWC set each full-time and part-time TSR preschool rate at the greater of 105 percent of the new regular rate and the Board's current TSR rate. In WD 27-16, TWC had Boards suspend increases and said nothing of cuts, so the Board may have lowered these rates after October 2016. We keep both tables' rates as TWC printed them.

In rates.yaml, 37 part-time rates exceed the matching full-time rate, all in Coastal Bend's licensed child care homes or Southeast's licensed centers. TWC printed 31 of them: 16 in the October 2016 table, 12 in WD 12-18, 2 in WD 23-19 and 1 in WD 25-20. We copy the other six from the regular rates under the TSR rule, four in the October 2016 table and Coastal Bend's TSR school-age rates in BCY 2020 and 2021. We keep all 37 and list each one in the tests.

We read each of the five letter attachments three ways: poppler's word positions, pdfplumber's ruled grid and tesseract OCR of 300 dpi renders. The first two agree on all 20,160 cells, 18,403 printed rates and 1,757 dashes or blanks. When we ran OCR on whole pages, it read 42 cells differently, taking a dollar sign for a 5 in 29 and missing the value in 13. When we ran it on each of those cells alone, it matched the other two readings. For the October 2016 table, poppler's word positions, pdfplumber and a second pdftotext parse agree on all 3,080 printed rates and all 448 row dates.

Test plan

• Fourteen new cases in tx_ccs_payment_rate.yaml check rates across table changes. Six cover the October 2016 table, one in 2015 and five across the August 2018 change, among them a Lower Rio rate TWC printed lower in WD 12-18 and a South Texas rate we raise to its floor. Eight cross an October change from 2019 to 2023 and cover the three fill rules. The BCY 2024 case now starts in September 2023, a month before its table. We also explain, in the comment on Add Texas CCS Board Contract Year 2024 provider payment rates #10598's East Texas relative care case, why TWC printed a lower rate there for BCY 2025.
• The 155 Texas CCS YAML cases pass (results)
• We record the source readings below in four backlog entries in source_conflicts/candidates.yaml. We add the register entries and # Source conflict markers once this change reaches main.
• ruff format --check and ruff check on the changed Python files
• Changelog fragment in changelog.d/

All 66 table tests pass locally, with the source-conflict and parameter-key tests.

Invariants

test_tx_ccs_rates_table.py checks each of these over every cell of all eight tables, from October 2016 to BCY 2025:

• Each Texas Rising Star rate meets its 5, 7 or 9 percent markup over the regular rate (§809.20(c)), and each star level exceeds the one below by at least 2 percentage points (§809.20(d)). Every full-time and part-time rate meets both with no rounding allowance. Since blended rates follow WD 02-20's formula from their own part-time and full-time rates, some fall under a cent short of a bound after rounding to the cent. The test pins the count of shortfalls: 30 in the October 2016 table, 4 in WD 12-18, 56 in BCY 2022 and 63 in BCY 2023.
• Each TSR rate for an age group in §809.20(b)(2) meets the 5 percent floor, South Texas's two October 2016 rates once we raise them. TWC printed those rates equal to the 2-star rate from BCY 2023, and every TSR rate equal to it from BCY 2024, and the test checks both. In WD 09-23, effective June 12, 2023, TWC set the 2-star rate as the minimum for those age groups. Through BCY 2023, TSR rates for other ages equal the regular rate: TWC printed it throughout WD 12-18 and in eight later cells, and we supply the rest under the TSR rule.
• Outside relative care, each blended rate lies strictly between its part-time and full-time rates. Each part-time rate outside relative care lies below its full-time rate, except the 37 above it and those that equal it, which the test lists. We count 67 such ties in the October 2016 table, 38 in WD 12-18, 15 in BCY 2020, 14 in BCY 2021 and 10 in each of BCY 2022, 2023 and 2024.
• Each blended rate matches WD 02-20's formula, except the BCY 2024 school-age rate for East Texas relative care. TWC printed $12.21 there, where the formula gives $12.12, the rate TWC printed for BCY 2025.
• No rate falls from one table to the next, except the three Lower Rio rates into WD 12-18 and that East Texas rate into BCY 2025.
• Each cell has values on the eight table dates and no others.
• PolicyEngine's parameter loader agrees with a plain YAML read for every cell on each table's first day and, from WD 12-18 on, the day before, and a Hypothesis property checks any day from October 2016 through 2030. The Panhandle YAML case checks the carry-back to January 2015.

We seeded errors to see what these tests catch. Six each fail two to seven tests: a cut rate, a part-time rate above full time, a misdated key, a blended rate a cent off, a TSR rate above the regular rate and a 4-star rate below its floor. Ten in the October 2016 values each fail one to seven, among them South Texas's rate at TWC's printed $12.84 and Lower Rio's LCCH TSR preschool full-time rate at its WD 12-18 level. The tests still pass some wrong values, such as a rate copied from another age group or Board, so we rely on the cell-by-cell comparison with TWC's tables for each value.

Impact

We change no rate from October 2023 on, so microsimulations of later years don't move. We lower PolicyEngine's 2017 daily rate for full-time infant care at a regular licensed center in Alamo from $44.40 to $34.25, and its September 2023 rate for the same care at a 2-star center from $46.63 to $41.37.

Source readings

We follow the regulation over TWC's tables in three cells: Texoma's BCY 2022 rate, where TWC printed a dash, and South Texas's two October 2016 rates, which TWC printed below the floor. For the three Lower Rio rates, we keep both tables as TWC printed them. From BCY 2024, TWC gives TSR school-age care the 2-star rate, and we follow its tables. Since October 3, 2022, TWC has limited TSR enhanced rates to infants, toddlers and preschoolers in its own rule, §809.20(b)(2). In June 2023, it told Boards to set TSR rates for those three groups at or above the 2-star rate (WD 09-23). We record the four readings in source_conflicts/candidates.yaml as us-tx:ccs-tsr-preschool-rate-below-regular, us-tx:ccs-tsr-preschool-rate-cut-2018, us-tx:ccs-tsr-preschool-rate-missing and us-tx:ccs-tsr-school-age-enhanced-rate.

TWC also posted summaries of Board maximum rates effective August 1, 2018 and as of March 25, 2020. They match the letter attachments in nearly every cell, and where they differ we follow the attachments, whose rates TWC said it would enter into The Workforce Information System of Texas (TWIST).

Not modeled

• Board rates in force before each October 2016 row took effect. We found no statewide table for those months, so PolicyEngine applies all 448 rows from January 2015, although TWC dated 357 of them later.
• Blended rates for children under school age. We store no blended cells for younger children in rates.yaml, so PolicyEngine gives a child under school age on a blended schedule a rate of zero. TWC printed infant, toddler and preschool blended rates in WD 12-18 and in its BCY 2021 workbook, and in WD 02-20 it says it calculates a blended rate for full-day pre-K children.
• Local Board rates that exceed TWC's calculated rates, which TWC kept in effect in each letter from WD 12-18 on.
• The temporary COVID-19 enhanced reimbursement. After TWC's commissioners authorized it on April 14, 2020, Boards added 25 percent to their payments to open providers, except relative caregivers. From April 2021, TWC cut it by 5 percentage points a month and ended it in August (WD 20-20, Change 2).
• The 20 percent growth support payments that Boards added on the same terms from October 2021 to September 2022 (WD 29-21).

axiom: TheAxiomFoundation/rulespec-us#2004 queued

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[MaxGhenis]

Ready for hub review
15dc3f9

We ran the 13 Texas child care YAML files under policyengine_us/tests/policy/baseline/gov/states/tx/twc/ccs/ with policyengine-core test, and four Python test files with pytest: test_tx_ccs_rates_table.py, test_tx_ccs_expanded_rates_table.py, test_source_conflicts.py and test_parameter_yaml_keys.py.

Tree	YAML cases passed	Python tests passed
15dc3f9320	155 of 155	226 of 226
15dc3f9320 merged with main at 04ad97c09e (tree 1afdcec8aa)	155 of 155	226 of 226

---

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✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
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[MaxGhenis]

Ready for hub review
3bf90d9

We made this head by merging main at 56e0a3a8f7, where #10598 landed.

• A Claude Opus 5.5 agent reviewed this head and agreed (~/reviews/tx-ccs-rates-2018-2023/review/oct2016/r3-fixes-check/live-r6/report.md), and we made its three wording edits in the PR body and our earlier comment. It found that, against main, this head adds and removes the same lines in the same six files as the diff it reviewed at c64af7f7ce, and changes no other file.
• On this head, 38 CI checks pass, three skip and gh pr checks exits 0. In the baseline states shard 2 job, all 155 cases in the 13 Texas CCS YAML files passed. In Python shards 1, 2 and 7, all 226 tests in the four Python test files passed: 66 in test_tx_ccs_rates_table.py, 23 in test_tx_ccs_expanded_rates_table.py, 103 in test_source_conflicts.py and 34 in test_parameter_yaml_keys.py.
• We set rates for January 2015 to September 2023 and change none from October 2023 on.
• Squash it with the subject "Add Texas CCS provider payment rates for October 2016 to September 2023 (Add Texas CCS provider payment rates for October 2016 to September 2023 #10622)" and the body in ~/reviews/tx-ccs-rates-2018-2023/drafts/squash_body.md. No hold, decision or other PR blocks the merge, and GitHub still requires one approving review.
• For steps 2 to 4 of "Source conflicts" in CONTRIBUTING.md, we queued the brief 2026-11-03/tx-ccs-register-10622-source-conflicts.md in cos backlog. After the merge, its runner moves the four us-tx:ccs-tsr-* entries from source_conflicts/candidates.yaml into rulespec-us's register and adds their # Source conflict markers here.

[MaxGhenis]

US + core hub merge audit, us#10622 at 3bf90d9dc6b9c3bb41f9f6dbe5c7e4e3478175e9 (squash): Add Texas CCS provider payment rates for October 2016 to September 2023.

• Review: Opus 5.5 agents read every rate in the six TWC tables three independent ways. Each printed rate matches rates.yaml at its table's date, except the two South Texas rates we raise to the regulation's floor. The agents recomputed each cell TWC left blank under our fill rules and found no difference. We fixed the comments and description their other findings flagged, and an Opus 5.5 agent agreed at this head (hand-off).
• Source conflicts: we record four readings in source_conflicts/candidates.yaml.
  • us-tx:ccs-tsr-preschool-rate-below-regular: TWC printed South Texas's October 2016 registered home TSR preschool rates, $12.84 full-time and $8.93 part-time, below the regular rates. We apply the 40 TAC §809.20(c)(1)(B) floor, 5 percent above the regular rate: $15.12 and $11.05.
  • us-tx:ccs-tsr-preschool-rate-missing: TWC printed a dash for Texoma's BCY 2022 registered home TSR preschool part-time rate. We apply $20.07, the greater of that floor and the BCY 2021 rate.
  • us-tx:ccs-tsr-preschool-rate-cut-2018: for three Lower Rio TSR preschool rates, we apply the October 2016 rates through July 2018 and the lower rates TWC printed in WD 12-18 from August 2018.
  • us-tx:ccs-tsr-school-age-enhanced-rate: from BCY 2024, TWC's tables give TSR school-age care the 2-star rate, while §809.20(b)(2) limits TSR enhanced rates to infants, toddlers and preschoolers. We take no reading yet; main follows TWC's tables, and we change no rate from October 2023 on.
• Gates the hub checked live at merge:
  • gh pr checks exits 0;
  • the latest Pull request run at the head concluded success;
  • MERGEABLE;
  • not a draft;
  • no reviewer's latest review requests changes;
  • the semantic-overlap guard: Set the DC EITC with-children match to 85% for 2026-2028 #10638 changed source_conflicts/candidates.yaml after this head's CI ran, so the hub merged this head into main da32a8c078 and ran test_source_conflicts.py there (103 passed);
  • head pinned.
• Impact: no output moves from October 2023 on, 2026 and 2030 included. From that month, each of the 4,032 cells in rates.yaml holds main's value, and we change only references in tx_ccs_payment_rate.py. Main applied the BCY 2024 rates back to January 2015. We apply the table in force each month, so Alamo's 2017 full-time infant rate at a regular licensed center falls from $44.40 to $34.25.
• Axiom: we queued the six tables for encoding in TheAxiomFoundation/rulespec-us#2004.

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