But early childhood educators and providers reported in the survey that limited coordination and communications between these systems and underfunding of the services often result in delayed and unequal access to the therapies.

The report noted that Black and Latinx students, and children with special needs, scored the lowest in SFUSD’s kindergarten readiness evaluations.

Karla Ramos said her daughter, who has Down syndrome, lost access to therapies after turning three last Fall and had to wait months to restart them through the school district.

“Imagine a child who’s already struggling — she’s still in diapers, and she just learned to walk in October — still maneuvering and learning a lot of things,” Ramos said. “I felt that it’s a great disservice for children with needs.”

Some child care programs have taken it upon themselves to hire in-house early intervention specialists, but have a hard time recruiting and retaining them.

Mezquita said the city is also looking into “building the capacity” at early learning programs to provide the services to children.

Victoria Golobordko walks a child at Daycare Bumblebee in San Francisco on Jan. 30, 2026. San Francisco is expanding access to child care by offering 50% discounts to middle- and upper-middle-income earners in an effort to tackle affordability issues in one of the most expensive cities in the country. Daycare Bumblebee is trying to get approval to enter the city’s Early Learning For All system. (Tâm Vũ/KQED)

Besides calling for better coordination between child care providers, the school district, regional centers and health care providers, the task force also urged the city to fund the “true cost” of supporting children with disabilities, including smaller class sizes staffed with specialists.

Lamar said most of the people involved in caring for or providing early intervention services want to make improvements.

“There’s interest, there’s motivation, there is care,” she said. “There are also some feelings of being daunted by the huge workload it’s going to take to really make sure that no child is falling through the cracks.”