Tandem Is Now Live in Dallas

Dallas directors have a new option for covering a classroom. Tandem is now live across the Dallas area!

Texas is our seventh state, joining Ohio, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky.

Why we came to Texas

Texas already treats substitute coverage as part of the solution, and it is putting funding behind it.

In its 2026 to 2028 Child Care Strategic Plan, the Texas Workforce Commission says it will encourage local Workforce Solutions offices, including Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas, to use quality funds to subsidize substitute teachers, so regular staff can attend the training they need. Directors told the state that a lack of substitute coverage was one of the things keeping their teachers out of training.

That matters. Reliable substitute coverage keeps classrooms running and gives teachers room to grow, and it is exactly the type of problem that we built Tandem to solve.

Dallas is growing faster than its child care

The Dallas-Fort Worth area added more than 123,000 residents between July 2024 and July 2025, the second-largest gain of any metro in the country. Child care has not kept pace. In its 2026 analysis, the nonprofit Children at Risk counted 413 Texas zip codes as child care deserts, where young children with working parents outnumber licensed slots three to one. For low-income families the picture is worse: about three in four low-income children with working parents live in a subsidy desert.

The cost lands close to home. A June 2026 report from the Texas Women’s Foundation, Addressing the Texas Childcare Crisis, estimates that Dallas County families lose $1.63 billion in earnings every year because of gaps in affordable, accessible child care. Local leaders see it. Hillary Evans of the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas has said that nearly 19,000 Dallas County parents who want to work cannot, because of child care barriers.

Building new capacity takes years. In the meantime, the classrooms that already exist still have to open every morning, fully staffed.

What Tandem is

Tandem is a staffing platform built only for child care. Every part of how we vet teachers and match them to classrooms was designed around licensing rules, ratios, and the way a center actually runs.

You set the rate. Not us. That keeps your substitute pay in line with what you pay your own teachers, and it keeps your costs below traditional agencies.

One simple fee. Tandem adds a 35% admin fee on top of the hourly rate you set. If you set a rate of $15 an hour, the substitute earns $15 and you pay $20.25 an hour in total. No subscriptions, no monthly minimums, and you only pay when a teacher works a shift. We pay the substitute directly daily and bill you weekly. Tandem covers the cost of fingerprinting and notarizing the affidavit, so there is no separate charge for either.

Compliance is handled before you book. Before their first shift, every Texas substitute in our pool has cleared a fingerprint-based background check, has a signed and notarized affidavit for applicants for employment, completed a TB screening and first aid training, and finished 10 hours of pre-service training.

You are not starting a background check. Tandem submits every background check, so you never start your own. The determination is in the substitute’s file when you book.

You pick your requirements. Post a shift with the credentials, age group and availability the classroom needs. We match teachers who meet them.

What the first few weeks look like

We are building the Dallas pool now, recruiting teachers and walking each one through Texas’s compliance steps. That work is finished before a substitute can apply to a shift at your center, which is why the pool grows steadily rather than all at once.

Setting up a center profile takes a few minutes. Doing it now means that when you need someone, you are posting a shift instead of creating an account.

What happens after the shift

After a Tandem teacher works 120 hours at your center, you can bring them onto your staff. No placement fee, no strings.

That is deliberate. Our goal is never to keep good teachers from you. It is to help you find them. A center books a sub for a hard Monday. They come back the next week, then the week after. Before long they know the kids and the routines, and the center realizes it has found someone.

Get started

Centers in Dallas: Create a free profile at join-tandem.com. There is no commitment and no upfront cost. The next time you are short a teacher, you will be posting a shift instead of making phone calls.

Teachers in Dallas: Download the Tandem app to begin your onboarding. We will walk you through every Texas compliance step required to start booking shifts at centers near you.

🧸 Crib Notes

• Tandem is live across the Dallas area. Texas is our seventh state.
• Texas’s own child care plan calls for funding substitute teachers, and Dallas County families lose an estimated $1.63 billion a year to child care gaps.
• You set the rate, and Tandem adds a 35% admin fee. No subscriptions or minimums.
• Every substitute is cleared and compliant before their first shift, and you never start your own background check.
• After 120 hours, you can hire a Tandem teacher onto your payroll with no placement fee.