Santa Clara County is poised to invest millions in child care services and workforce development in an attempt to stave off an ongoing crisis.
The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will consider spending $20 million to help fund three programs run by FIRST 5 and establish a grant program to help reopen day care facilities that shuttered over the COVID-19 pandemic. The funding comes from the American Rescue Plan Act, a sweeping $1.9 trillion coronavirus-relief package signed into law in 2021. Santa Clara County received $374 million from the package.
FIRST 5, an organization that supports the healthy development of children from prenatal through age 5, would receive $5 million to continue initiatives to help grow the local workforce.
County officials also hope to help bring back services decimated during the pandemic through the $15 million grant initiative. The county will prioritize facilities serving low-income families and those looking to increase services for infants and toddlers. Grants would cover the costs of construction and renovation of child care facilities and help pay operational expenses.
“The urgency is now,” Supervisor Susan Ellenberg told San José Spotlight. “Our economy cannot recover from a worldwide pandemic unless we start to work from the premise that universal access to child care is good for the entire economy.”
Ellenberg, who has vowed to make child care one of her priorities, said the investment lays the groundwork for Santa Clara County to eventually establish universal child care programs.
“This is huge,” Ellenberg told San José Spotlight. “Public funding is essential to prop up this industry and to fill the gap between what child care actually costs and what families can afford to pay.”
To address the crisis, the county launched a pilot program to help its employees pay for child care and created a new agency dedicated to children and family services. Elected officials voted last year to give FIRST 5 a $5 million contract to jumpstart three new programs to foster and support early education workers. The efforts include an apprenticeship where college students could gain work experience while still in school, a support system for family child care home providers and a program to train more transitional kindergarten teachers.
Both of the education initiatives have a 100% success rate so far, FIRST 5 officials told San José Spotlight. The new $5 million contract would help expand these programs.
“The workforce issues are paramount, because even as you open up new child care spaces, if you don’t have teachers in those classrooms, then you have empty classrooms,” Heidi Emberling, interim chief program officer of FIRST 5, told San José Spotlight. “We’re building a pipeline that hasn’t existed.”
The one-time fund comes as Santa Clara County struggles with a severe shortage of child care facilities and workers. Roughly 700 local day care facilities have closed over the past decade, with roughly 300 closing over the pandemic, according to officials. Local child care providers Go Kids and Choices for Children have more than 1,700 families on their waitlists as of last December because facilities are struggling to find workers. Many child care educators are fleeing their jobs for other work with higher pay, such as fast food and retail jobs, county officials said. Others have left the area completely due to the high costs of living.
Families in the region continue to struggle with the high cost of child care, which has risen twice as quickly as regional inflation since 2010, according to a 2023 Joint Venture Silicon Valley report. As of 2022, a family living in Silicon Valley pays an average of $26,450 per year for infant care and $21,900 for preschool child care, according to data from a report commissioned by Ellenberg’s office.
At the same time, approximately 46% of children in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties live in households that don’t earn enough money to cover basic needs. More than two-thirds of children who need care in Santa Clara County don’t have access to services, state data shows.
The high cost of child care has become an additional barrier to entering the workforce.
“You can’t go back to work if you don’t have quality and safe child care,” Supervisor Cindy Chavez told San José Spotlight. “We see this (investment) both as a really great opportunity to give children a great start and to give their parents an opportunity to go back to work, if they choose to.”
The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors meets Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. Learn how to watch and participate.
The story will be updated.
Contact Tran Nguyen at [email protected] or follow @nguyenntrann on Twitter.
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