The early educators assembled on Zoom commiserated about the kinds of abashed emails that had become all too familiar: The family just loved their program, but they were sorry to say that their little one would soon be switching to TK.<\/p>\n
The child-care dilemma<\/p>\n
California\u2019s child-care costs are among the highest in the nation; care for a 4-year-old averages<\/a> $13,000 a year in the state. In a market this expensive, Powell said the addition of TK as a broadly available, publicly funded option is a boon to parents.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately,\u201d she added, \u201cthis is an ecosystem where everything is connected. And by dramatically changing care for one group of children, it\u2019s destabilizing the rest of this sector.\u201d<\/p>\n Center for the Study of Child Care Employment<\/p>\n A child-care provider she interviewed put it more bluntly: \u201cTK has killed my business.\u201d<\/p>\n In an Aug. 12 report<\/a>, Powell and other researchers from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment<\/a> at Berkeley spell out how the popular<\/a> universal TK program has impacted early child-care workers \u2014 drawing their conclusions from enrollment data and focus groups with the early educators themselves. The dilemma facing these educators, Powell said, boils down to, \u201cWhat do you do when all of a sudden you have to redevelop your entire business model in the span of just a few years?\u201d So far, they aren\u2019t getting enough support, the researchers found.<\/p>\n Like New York City and the Canadian province of Quebec, both of which have instituted universal TK, Powell said that California is facing \u201cpredictable growing pains\u201d as it rolls the program out. Her team\u2019s analysis found that in 2025, TK enrollment accounted for 31% of the market share of care for 4-year-olds in the state. At the same time, non-TK early child-care centers saw the proportion of 4-year-olds enrolled in their programs \u2014 relative to younger children \u2014 drop. For example, only 57% of licensed family child-care providers, meaning educators who base their child-care businesses in homes, reported caring for any 4-year-olds.<\/p>\n Ilene Perlman\/Center for the Study of Child Care Employment<\/p>\n Fewer 4-year-old pupils was a consequence everyone expected. But while researchers had anticipated seeing increased enrollment of 3-year-olds in those freed-up slots, they instead saw that number plateau, while the enrollment of even younger toddlers rose slightly. Overall, that demographic shake-up presents a large adjustment for caretakers. Because they\u2019re at a less independent stage of development, younger children require a lower caretaker-to-child ratio \u2014 meaning more employees on payroll \u2014 in addition to specialized training and a different physical setup, like removing climbing structures best suited for older children.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019ve effectively done is told an entire occupation that they\u2019re going to be relearning that occupation and doing a slightly different one,\u201d Powell said. But, she continued, that initial \u201coversight\u201d doesn\u2019t mean the government can\u2019t act now to help the rest of the child-care sector adjust. Her paper, written with colleagues Wanzi Muruvi and Abby Copeman Petig, concludes with recommended actions for state and local legislators. \u201cWe need that parallel investment to come in as soon as possible,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n How government can help<\/p>\n For the state, which Powell calls the \u201cultimate arbiter\u201d of the child-care system, suggestions include expanding existing subsidies for parents to enroll children in non-TK care and grants for facility changes to adapt spaces for toddlers. The report also calls for faster bureaucratic turnaround for centers seeking to update their age-range licensing and incentives for school districts to better collaborate with other providers for extended-day care.<\/p>\n The brief says county governments can help smooth the transition by offering professional development or college courses focused on care for children ages 0 to 3, facility-conversion grants, assistance advertising the increased availability of slots for younger children, and opportunities for child-care workers to share strategies around these shifts.<\/p>\n Ana Fox-Hodess\/Center for the Study of Child Care Employment<\/p>\n Powell pointed out that these changes would benefit parents of young children too, who ideally would be able to choose between many subsidized options to find one whose curriculum, cultural fit, hours and location best work for their families. It would also ensure that the state doesn\u2019t leave behind the often-underappreciated workforce who staff these non-TK child-care centers, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEarly educators are predominantly women of color in California, and they\u2019re often treated as babysitters, not the professionals with the skills, the years of experience, and quite frankly, the grit that it takes to do this job,\u201d Powell said. By offering more resources as these workers pivot their business models to younger attendees, she said, California can help early educators adapt: \u201cThat way they don\u2019t burn out or walk away from this field they\u2019re invested in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last spring, UC Berkeley researcher Anna Powell sat in on a Zoom call as a number of Bay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[7,174401,7897,15,143,145,144],"class_list":["post-439776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-california","tag-center-for-the-study-of-child-care-employment","tag-childcare","tag-education","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Anna-Powell-Image-2-IMG_3863-4-1024x1024.jpg\")
Anna Powell, associate director of research and policy at the Center for Child Care Employment<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Sept16-135-1024x670.jpg\")
An early childhood educator with younger children, the clientele such businesses will need to rely on more now that 4-year-olds are enrolling in TK.<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_2034-1024x683.jpg\")
Younger children like these require different physical spaces and more adults supervising them than older, more independent children.<\/p>\n