The Board of Supervisors tentatively approved emergency funding from Measure C, a 2020 tax initiative for early childhood education and pediatric health.
Five years after Alameda County voters approved the Measure C sales tax for early childhood education and health care, child care providers across the county are expecting the first influx of cash — bolstering a section of the care economy that was decimated by the pandemic.
Preschools and child care centers are slated to receive nearly $166 million from Alameda County after the Board of Supervisors tentatively approved a batch of emergency stabilization funding from Measure C. Once the county legal counsel approves it, the money will be distributed.
It’s the last step in a legal battle that has prevented the money from being allocated, though the county has collected nearly $500 million for the measure since July 2021. Measure C is a 20-year, half-cent sales tax that is expected to raise around $150 million per year. While it was approved by 65% of voters, a lawsuit by the Alameda County Taxpayers’ Association froze the funds until last April, when the state Supreme Court upheld the measure.
“The community, parents, providers, and our babies have had to wait four and a half years while this money was litigated to get the services they desperately need. In that time, people were losing jobs, child care centers and in-home day cares were closing, and parents were having to miss job opportunities,” said Clarissa Doutherd, the executive director of Parent Voices Oakland, an advocacy group that helped to organize support for Measure C.
Of the $165.8 million in emergency funding, about $85 million will be distributed as one-time grants to child care providers to cover operating expenses and staff; $25 million would be allocated for family support in the form of grants to family resource centers and caregivers; $20 million for facilities grants; and about $11 million for data and evaluation, according to a report by First 5 Alameda County, the organization administering Measure C funding. Twenty-four million dollars will be set aside for administrative costs.
“Some of these providers are on the verge of closing their doors. This will help prevent that from happening and show folks that our budget reflects the priorities of our community,” said Priya Jagannathan, the codirector of Oakland Starting Smart and Strong, a citywide collaboration to strengthen support for children in their first five years. “We hope this emergency stabilization fund can help providers get through this stage until the rest of the Measure C funds can flow.”
The remainder of the money will be distributed in accordance with a five-year plan developed with the Measure C Community Advisory Committee.
Care for children younger than 5 takes several forms in Alameda County: family child care centers run out of personal homes, privately owned child care centers, and publicly funded programs like Head Start or school district-operated preschools. Some centers receive subsidies for families who meet income thresholds, but for many child care providers, the subsidies are late and don’t always cover the full costs of care.
The pandemic and changes in the early childhood landscape have led to a shrinking child care industry in Alameda County in the last five years. Scores of child care providers closed during the pandemic — 21 licensed child care centers and 270 family child care businesses, where children are in a private home, shuttered in Alameda County between 2019 and 2021. For Carolyn Carpenter, who runs a preschool in Glenview, the pandemic forced her to downsize the number of children she cared for and increased her costs as she had to buy air purifiers, masks, and other PPE.
“I was underenrolled for almost two years intentionally to keep everyone safe. I borrowed a significant amount of money to keep everything running because my income went down about four kids’ worth,” Carpenter told The Oaklandside. “I and many other providers were thinking, once the pandemic is over, we’ll start paying some of this back. But we haven’t recovered.”
Because of the statewide expansion of transitional kindergarten, a public school grade before kindergarten for 4-year-olds, child care centers like Carpenter’s face losing more enrollment as parents opt for the free transitional kindergarten option over pricier preschools.
At the same time, wages for child care workers remain low. In California, the median hourly wage in 2022 for those in the early childhood education workforce was $15.66. That’s $10 lower than the median hourly wage for all workers in the state, according to the Center for the Study of Childcare Employment at UC Berkeley. The poverty rate in the early childhood education workforce is twice that of all occupations and nearly five times that of elementary and middle school teachers. Low wages mean fewer and fewer people want to join the early childhood education workforce, which is primarily women of color, said Kym Johnson, the CEO of Bananas, a child care resource center in Alameda County.
“There are providers who have to receive safety net programs, who don’t have health care, who don’t have retirement. Of course this has an impact on the quality of the care that our children receive, their safety, the safety of the workers, and these spaces remaining open and maintained so that children can access the care,” Johnson told The Oaklandside. “We have two crises: We have a workforce issue, and we have the expense on families.”
Measure C funding will establish a wage floor for child care workers in Alameda County and enable more child care facilities to add more subsidized slots for low-income families, Johnson said.
While the tax measure dollars are long-awaited, fears abound that state and federal funds could still be slashed in the future.
“We’re always worried that when there are challenges and pressures on funding that we don’t end up on the chopping block. [Measure C] is a supplement, not a replacement,” Johnson said. “It’s really important to give this sector the economic resources that it needs for us to be successful in educating our youngest learners so they can be prepared for school and have good outcomes.”
In its lawsuit, the Alameda County Taxpayers’ Association had argued that the measure was put on the ballot by legislators and therefore required a two-thirds majority approval by voters. The county contended that it was a citizen-led initiative, which requires only a simple majority. Sixty-four percent of voters approved Measure C. Last year, the state Supreme Court left in place a lower court’s ruling that upheld Measure C as valid.
At last week’s Board of Supervisors meeting, an attorney for the taxpayers’ association called into the meeting warning the board not to approve the emergency funding without a five-year plan in place. Wanting to avoid more lawsuits, the board voted that the emergency funding would be released once it receives a positive legal review from the county’s general counsel.