Mayor Daniel Lurie just put $36,000 into the pockets of thousands of San Francisco families – including mine.
Lurie’s expansion of childcare subsidies, announced last week, will ease the crushing expense of raising children in the city. As my wife and I provide for our six-month-old daughter, Xiomara, we’re going to need every penny we can get, and the $3,027 per month childcare (opens in new tab) that will now be granted to families of four making under $230,000 a year is a blessing.
As a parent, I’m grateful. But as a journalist covering City Hall, I’m wary: I can easily see the influx of hundreds of new families overburdening the childcare network. And I can also see the expiration date for the program, which is being paid for through a one-time surplus of funds found in the couch cushions of 2018’s Prop C. Its time will run out in 2032.
Luckily for us, that’s ample time for my daughter to benefit. And while childcare providers say they’re ready for a surge of babies and toddlers to waddle into their arms, the city’s certified daycares and preschools may soon feel the strain.
When my wife Anna and I began planning for Xiomara’s care after parental leave, we pored over daycare and nanny-share options, searching for something affordable, safe, and enriching — we already saw how time with other kids encouraged her to sit and crawl for the first time. Most providers for infants charge over $2,000 a month. For childcare providers in the city’s Early Learning for All network (opens in new tab) – which uses city-provided curricula to prepare toddlers for school – the cost is even higher: a jaw-dropping $3,027 monthly.
For years, the city has provided childcare subsidies for low-income families. Those families eagerly snapped up available Early Learning for All seats, and waiting lists swelled.
Former supervisors Norman Yee and Jane Kim authored the 2018 ballot measure, Proposition C, which then single-handedly mopped up the wait and boosted the pay of childcare staff. Now, San Francisco’s annual staff turnover rate for childcare providers is 17%, better than the state average of 22% to 26%, according to the Department of Early Childhood.
“When you talk to any parent of young children, they want quality early education programs, people who know what they’re doing. Yet no one wants to pay for it,” Yee said.
City progressives, including supervisor Jane Kim, championed Proposition C, which is funding a new childcare initiative. | Source: Jeff Chiu/AP Photo
Prop C. fixed that problem. And while there has already been a 50% subsidy for families in San Francisco’s lower-middle income range, as measured by the area median income, Anna and I didn’t qualify, by just a hair.
That’s a common story, according to Yensing Sihapanya, the executive director of Family Connections Centers (opens in new tab), one of the city’s larger childcare providers, with centers near every neighborhood. “If you make twenty dollars over that limit, then you get nothing,” Sihapanya said. She sees families like mine every month.
Before Lurie’s announcement last Thursday, middle-income earners like my family — often dubbed the “missing middle (opens in new tab)” by lawmakers due to their flight from the city — had yet to benefit from Prop. C’s taxation of commercial real estate for the benefit of children. Those folks are sandwiched in a tough spot – not low-income enough to qualify for subsidies, but not wealthy enough to hang onto the fleeting hope of raising a San Francisco kid.
Anna and I are hanging onto that dream. Our rent is affordable enough that a steep childcare bill, while forcing some tradeoffs, would not make us flee the city. But anyone living in San Francisco long enough has seen friends and loved ones move away as their families grow.
Take my cousin, Jake Rodriguez, who is raising a ten-year-old son, Mortimer, with his wife, Alivia. Jake is a theater sound designer, working off and on for the American Conservatory Theater and Berkeley Repertory Theater, and Alivia is a dietician-turned-nurse in SoMa. Even with a rent-controlled apartment on Shotwell Street, with rent frozen during the first dot-com bust of the 1990s, they spent roughly one-third of their combined incomes on a Montessori daycare in South of Market when Mortimer was born.
“We ate it,” Jake said.
Jake told me it would’ve been a “game changer” if Lurie’s new middle-income childcare subsidy existed when Mortimer was a tot. When they looked for a larger apartment in San Francisco so their son could have his own room, the extra money spent on childcare put the rent out of reach.
Instead, Jake’s family moved to Richmond in the East Bay when Mortimer was 4. My family lost easy proximity to loved ones; the city lost two dedicated workers, a family of Giants fans with creative hearts.
The city knows this problem well. Prop. C was caught up in a legal limbo until 2021 (opens in new tab), which allowed the city to collect the taxes but not spend them. Jenny Lam, a spokesperson for the Department of Early Childhood, told me the agency needed several years to ramp up childcare staffing citywide, which currently serves 9,100 children. The number of families enrolled in city-subsidized childcare is expected to grow by 500 annually as the program expands.
“This is what we’ve been building toward for years now, and we’re ready,” Lam said.
Six-month-old Xiomara will soon partake in city-subsidized daycare. | Source: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/The Standard
In anticipation of growing demand, the Department of Early Childhood (opens in new tab) used Prop. C funds to help childcare providers hire more staff. They are also training other daycare centers to join the Early Learning for All network, helping them develop school-ready programming so they qualify. These are often the little mom-and-pop daycare centers with homespun banners you might spot in your neighborhood.
Major providers were beefed up, too. Mark Ryle is CEO of Wu Yee Children’s Services, which counts more than 400 daycares in its network. They’re leveraging Prop. C funds to build a new location at the edge of the Tenderloin at 1101 Sutter Street, he said.
While the Department of Early Childhood says it’s poised for the surge of families, Ryle said it was a herculean effort to bring smaller daycares up to speed with the city’s requirements so they can join the Early Learning for All program.
“I think it would be inauthentic to say we know exactly how we’re going to support every child that’s going to come through in expanded capacity,” he said. But his staff is determined, because “we can’t afford to lose a single minute of a child’s life in that regard.”
There are 700 families on the city’s waitlist for childcare providers, though there are roughly 1,000 slots for children available. The discrepancy is partially due to there being a higher demand for infant-age daycare, yet more open slots available to toddlers. But the disconnect also comes from another problem my wife and I encountered – parents don’t always like the location or the vibe of the daycares with open slots.
Mayor Daniel Lurie’s State of the City speech last week touted childcare subsidies as part of his new affordability agenda. | Source: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/The Standard
We want Xio close to home, and so we gravitated toward a daycare just around the corner, in Cayuga Terrace, which also offers Spanish-language immersion. But there’s a catch: that daycare won’t be available until at least June. She may attend another daycare further away while we wait. Now imagine this same scenario scaling to the expected 1,000-plus families that will qualify for the new subsidies in the coming years. The competition for slots could make SFUSD’s school-lottery scramble look calm and orderly.
Lurie’s subsidy will last Xio until she hits pre-k. Then, in 2032, it will dry up. Prop. C wasn’t disbursing dollars while it was mired in a legal challenge, one that was ultimately (opens in new tab)rejected. That allowed the city to save up a pot of $500 million, a one-time windfall that bolstered the proposition’s annual tax take-in. But when that pot is empty, the city doesn’t have a plan for what comes next.
After his State of the City speech last Wednesday, Lurie was vague when answering a reporter’s question about where the next funding stream will come from, raising the possibility of a state subsidy. Similarly, the Department of Early Childhood didn’t have an answer.
The speech leaned heavily on the childcare expansion as a central plank of the mayor’s new affordability agenda. As he spoke, I listened among the crowd at Rossi Park and thought of all the advantages I could now afford for Xio — more college savings, help with school if she lagged behind, and even a palpable release of stress over affording the basics.
“This is going to remove a huge burden for working parents,” Lurie told the crowd. “And we’re not going to take four years to roll this out—we’re going to be the first major city in the nation to actually get it done.”
Ryle, from Wu Yee, hopes private donors like the Haas Foundation, Tipping Point, or Crankstart will chip in by the time the funding expires in six years. Maybe the Board of Supervisors or Lurie will propose a new tax. Or maybe, this dream of universal childhood will vanish as quickly as it appeared.
Here’s hoping our little Xiomara won’t be among the last San Franciscans to enjoy the benefit.