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"title": "Bay Area Nature Camp Wins Key Approval for New Home After Fighting ‘Bureaucracy and NIMBYism’",
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"content": "\u003cp>Alameda County Supervisors have approved an outdoor education program’s plan to build a permanent campsite for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/bay-area\">Bay Area\u003c/a> school children in the rolling hills of Castro Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For 25 years, the Mosaic Project has been bringing tens of thousands of fourth and fifth graders from different backgrounds together for a week of learning in nature, renting land in Napa and Santa Cruz counties — locations that require long bus rides for the kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The organization spent $3 million and 10 years developing plans for a permanent home in Alameda County and hopes to serve up to 100 students per week, for about 130 days out of the year. It applied for a conditional land use permit to replace a former car storage building with cabins, a dining hall and staff residence on a piece of land off Cull Canyon Road.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School leaders and parents praise its mission of teaching the students to resolve conflicts peacefully, and numerous students inspired by the experience come back as youth leaders or counselors. But the Oakland-based nonprofit faced an uncertain future due to fierce opposition by a small, but influential group of Castro Valley residents over its plans to establish the camp near their rural properties. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We give kids the experience of living in a welcoming, inclusive and joyful community. We’re the only ones that we know of that are doing this, and we’re in danger of not existing because of bureaucracy and NIMBYism,” Lara Mendel, co-founder of the project, said ahead of Thursday’s vote. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Board members voted 3-1 to allow the project to move forward. The only ‘no’ vote came from Nate Miley, the longtime supervisor who represents Castro Valley, an unincorporated community of 66,000 wedged between suburban sprawl and picturesque open spaces. Supporters of the outdoor recreation facility had questioned whether he can vote independently given that he appointed members of a municipal advisory council that unanimously rejected county staff recommendations to approve the project last August. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080109\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1014px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12080109\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1014\" height=\"657\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-02-KQED.jpg 1014w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-02-KQED-160x104.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1014px) 100vw, 1014px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Mosaic Project’s proposed new facility would replace a former car storage building with cabins, a dining hall and staff residence on a piece of land off Cull Canyon Road in Castro Valley. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the Mosaic Project)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The MAC has, I would say, not very diverse appointments, and amplifies a Castro Valley that I don’t think is Castro Valley writ large,” said Michael Kusiak, a school board member who wants to provide local students convenient access to the program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said the appointees overwhelmingly represent “legacy voices” in the community who want to preserve the status quo in Castro Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those voices tend to get amplified a bit more than others, and that’s frustrating, particularly when you hear people make these comments that makes you go, ‘What are we really talking about here, people? Maybe you want to say what you really mean,’” he said. “I haven’t found the arguments against the project to be very credible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Miley also nominated the majority of a five-member zoning board that voted against the proposal in December.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://alamedacounty.granicus.com/player/clip/9984?view_id=3&redirect=true\">At that meeting\u003c/a>, members of the governing board said they were worried the facility would increase traffic and wildfire danger in the boxed canyon, as well as strain the local water supply, which depends on wells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Thursday’s board meeting, Miley said he wasn’t convinced by expert assessments that the project met fire safety requirements. He also worried about putting children close to a winery where alcohol consumption is permitted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To me it’s important that I put authenticity on the people who have lived in the canyon, who have experienced these issues and concerns, not academically, not by study, but by everyday existence,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teddy Seibert, vice-chair of the West County Board of Zoning Adjustments, recused herself from voting in the December meeting because she owns a winery that shares boundaries with the Mosaic Project’s property. But in a letter submitted to the board, she called the proposal “a thinly-veiled attempt at urban expansion.” Her husband, Keith Seibert, said in public comments that he feared losing the winery’s license to serve alcohol if a youth facility moved in next door.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080113\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12080113\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-06-KQED-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1706\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-06-KQED-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-06-KQED-2000x1333.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-06-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-06-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-06-KQED-2048x1365.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This rendering shows plans for the Mosaic Project’s proposed permanent home in Alameda County, which it hopes will serve up to 100 students per week, for about 130 days out of the year, at a proposed new permanent facility in Castro Valley. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the Mosaic Project)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Chuck Shipman, a resident of the Sequoians nudist club at the end of the road, said: “I would kind of feel concerned if somebody comes in there and says, ‘Well, I don’t want my kids around a nudist resort.’ That would affect our business also.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another resident worried about additional noise from “100 fourth and fifth graders at an evening campfire or tromping through the hills collecting forest products.” Several others sought to redefine the program as a school, which would violate Measure D, a 26-year-old initiative Miley championed to restrict urban development in rural parts of Alameda County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, the Mosaic Project’s land use attorney, David Smith, said an environmental review and scientific studies by outside consultants have addressed these concerns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said the facility, which would cover just two acres of the 37-acre property, will be built with fire-resistant materials that would create a break in the canyon in the event of a conflagration. Water tanks at the site would be reserved for fire suppression that everyone in the canyon can use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have put in exhaustive modeling from fire experts of all possible scenarios,” Smith said. “It’s undisputed that the wildfire risk for the canyon as a whole is materially improved with the project than without it.”[aside postID=news_12078183 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/031626_PINNACLESFORTHEDAY-_GH_040-KQED.jpg']Hydrologists also discovered a plentiful and drinkable water source on the site. As for the winery’s concern, Smith pointed out that a state law that refuses alcohol licenses for businesses near youth facilities doesn’t apply to those seeking a renewal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They herald [the Mosaic Project] but say it’s the wrong place for it, because a winery is the right place for parties but not for kids next door? That’s just hard to accept,” Smith said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Email messages seeking comments from the Seiberts, owners of the TwiningVine Estate Winery, have not been returned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Grace Russell, an eighth grade student at Oakland School of the Arts, said the long rides to the Santa Cruz Mountains created “a lot of anticipating” when she went on her first-ever overnight camp with the Mosaic Project four years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think having Mosaic closer to where most of the schools are [located] would make a big impact because not only is it easier to get there, but then on the first day there’s more time for doing ‘get to know you’ activities, and there’s time on the last day for people to say their goodbyes,” Russell said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Russell plans to return to Mosaic in the fall as a youth leader.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a little bit hard to understand why people don’t want Mosaic in their community, just because of how much it helps people,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mendel said the rental locations also create unsustainable commutes for the staff, who mostly live in the East Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We go away for six weeks, and people give up their life for this,” she said. “We’ve lost amazing staff because they fall in love and they want a family and they can’t be leaving for six, seven weeks a session.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A permanent location in Castro Valley would keep the program going in the long term, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Alameda County Supervisors have approved an outdoor education program’s plan to build a permanent campsite for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/bay-area\">Bay Area\u003c/a> school children in the rolling hills of Castro Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For 25 years, the Mosaic Project has been bringing tens of thousands of fourth and fifth graders from different backgrounds together for a week of learning in nature, renting land in Napa and Santa Cruz counties — locations that require long bus rides for the kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The organization spent $3 million and 10 years developing plans for a permanent home in Alameda County and hopes to serve up to 100 students per week, for about 130 days out of the year. It applied for a conditional land use permit to replace a former car storage building with cabins, a dining hall and staff residence on a piece of land off Cull Canyon Road.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School leaders and parents praise its mission of teaching the students to resolve conflicts peacefully, and numerous students inspired by the experience come back as youth leaders or counselors. But the Oakland-based nonprofit faced an uncertain future due to fierce opposition by a small, but influential group of Castro Valley residents over its plans to establish the camp near their rural properties. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We give kids the experience of living in a welcoming, inclusive and joyful community. We’re the only ones that we know of that are doing this, and we’re in danger of not existing because of bureaucracy and NIMBYism,” Lara Mendel, co-founder of the project, said ahead of Thursday’s vote. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Board members voted 3-1 to allow the project to move forward. The only ‘no’ vote came from Nate Miley, the longtime supervisor who represents Castro Valley, an unincorporated community of 66,000 wedged between suburban sprawl and picturesque open spaces. Supporters of the outdoor recreation facility had questioned whether he can vote independently given that he appointed members of a municipal advisory council that unanimously rejected county staff recommendations to approve the project last August. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080109\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1014px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12080109\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1014\" height=\"657\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-02-KQED.jpg 1014w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-02-KQED-160x104.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1014px) 100vw, 1014px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Mosaic Project’s proposed new facility would replace a former car storage building with cabins, a dining hall and staff residence on a piece of land off Cull Canyon Road in Castro Valley. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the Mosaic Project)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The MAC has, I would say, not very diverse appointments, and amplifies a Castro Valley that I don’t think is Castro Valley writ large,” said Michael Kusiak, a school board member who wants to provide local students convenient access to the program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said the appointees overwhelmingly represent “legacy voices” in the community who want to preserve the status quo in Castro Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those voices tend to get amplified a bit more than others, and that’s frustrating, particularly when you hear people make these comments that makes you go, ‘What are we really talking about here, people? Maybe you want to say what you really mean,’” he said. “I haven’t found the arguments against the project to be very credible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Miley also nominated the majority of a five-member zoning board that voted against the proposal in December.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://alamedacounty.granicus.com/player/clip/9984?view_id=3&redirect=true\">At that meeting\u003c/a>, members of the governing board said they were worried the facility would increase traffic and wildfire danger in the boxed canyon, as well as strain the local water supply, which depends on wells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Thursday’s board meeting, Miley said he wasn’t convinced by expert assessments that the project met fire safety requirements. He also worried about putting children close to a winery where alcohol consumption is permitted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To me it’s important that I put authenticity on the people who have lived in the canyon, who have experienced these issues and concerns, not academically, not by study, but by everyday existence,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teddy Seibert, vice-chair of the West County Board of Zoning Adjustments, recused herself from voting in the December meeting because she owns a winery that shares boundaries with the Mosaic Project’s property. But in a letter submitted to the board, she called the proposal “a thinly-veiled attempt at urban expansion.” Her husband, Keith Seibert, said in public comments that he feared losing the winery’s license to serve alcohol if a youth facility moved in next door.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080113\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12080113\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-06-KQED-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1706\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-06-KQED-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-06-KQED-2000x1333.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-06-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-06-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260415-Mosaic-Project-06-KQED-2048x1365.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This rendering shows plans for the Mosaic Project’s proposed permanent home in Alameda County, which it hopes will serve up to 100 students per week, for about 130 days out of the year, at a proposed new permanent facility in Castro Valley. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the Mosaic Project)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Chuck Shipman, a resident of the Sequoians nudist club at the end of the road, said: “I would kind of feel concerned if somebody comes in there and says, ‘Well, I don’t want my kids around a nudist resort.’ That would affect our business also.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another resident worried about additional noise from “100 fourth and fifth graders at an evening campfire or tromping through the hills collecting forest products.” Several others sought to redefine the program as a school, which would violate Measure D, a 26-year-old initiative Miley championed to restrict urban development in rural parts of Alameda County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, the Mosaic Project’s land use attorney, David Smith, said an environmental review and scientific studies by outside consultants have addressed these concerns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said the facility, which would cover just two acres of the 37-acre property, will be built with fire-resistant materials that would create a break in the canyon in the event of a conflagration. Water tanks at the site would be reserved for fire suppression that everyone in the canyon can use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have put in exhaustive modeling from fire experts of all possible scenarios,” Smith said. “It’s undisputed that the wildfire risk for the canyon as a whole is materially improved with the project than without it.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Hydrologists also discovered a plentiful and drinkable water source on the site. As for the winery’s concern, Smith pointed out that a state law that refuses alcohol licenses for businesses near youth facilities doesn’t apply to those seeking a renewal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They herald [the Mosaic Project] but say it’s the wrong place for it, because a winery is the right place for parties but not for kids next door? That’s just hard to accept,” Smith said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Email messages seeking comments from the Seiberts, owners of the TwiningVine Estate Winery, have not been returned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Grace Russell, an eighth grade student at Oakland School of the Arts, said the long rides to the Santa Cruz Mountains created “a lot of anticipating” when she went on her first-ever overnight camp with the Mosaic Project four years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think having Mosaic closer to where most of the schools are [located] would make a big impact because not only is it easier to get there, but then on the first day there’s more time for doing ‘get to know you’ activities, and there’s time on the last day for people to say their goodbyes,” Russell said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Russell plans to return to Mosaic in the fall as a youth leader.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a little bit hard to understand why people don’t want Mosaic in their community, just because of how much it helps people,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mendel said the rental locations also create unsustainable commutes for the staff, who mostly live in the East Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We go away for six weeks, and people give up their life for this,” she said. “We’ve lost amazing staff because they fall in love and they want a family and they can’t be leaving for six, seven weeks a session.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A permanent location in Castro Valley would keep the program going in the long term, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan data-slate-node=\"text\">\u003cspan class=\"sc-hHOBiw iVhMEe\" data-slate-leaf=\"true\">Rising child care prices leave many Bay Area parents with little choice but to turn down career opportunities, cut back hours, or even quit. As part of \u003c/span>\u003c/span>\u003ca class=\"e-10223-text-link e-10223-overflow-wrap-anywhere encore-internal-color-text-announcement e-10223-text-link--use-focus sc-kzqdkY fnwgHd\" href=\"https://www.kqed.org/affordability\" data-encore-id=\"textLink\" data-slate-node=\"element\" data-slate-inline=\"true\">\u003cspan data-slate-node=\"text\">\u003cspan class=\"sc-hHOBiw iVhMEe\" data-slate-leaf=\"true\">\u003cu>KQED’s new series on affordability,\u003c/u>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan data-slate-node=\"text\" data-slate-fragment=\"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\">\u003cspan class=\"sc-hHOBiw iVhMEe\" data-slate-leaf=\"true\"> early childhood education reporter Daisy Nguyen introduces us to one mother who left her job as a teacher after the birth of her third child.\u003c/span>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC3027698464&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Links:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12075761/when-child-care-costs-half-a-paycheck-bay-area-parents-must-choose-kids-or-career\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Child Care Costs Half a Paycheck, Bay Area Parents Must Choose: Kids or Career | KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/affordability\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How We Get By | KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Episode transcript\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"\" title=\"\">\u003ci>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:00:00] I’m Alan Montecillo, in for Ericka Cruz Guevarra, and welcome to The Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. A few years ago, Annie Malekzadeh was shopping at a Joanne Fabrics in Concord.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:00:16] And I had my, I think I was pregnant with my second kiddo at that time and had my older son in the shopping cart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:00:25] While she was waiting for her fabric to get cut, she struck up a conversation with an older woman who was also waiting. But then the woman said something to Annie that stung her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:00:36] She said something along the lines of, I don’t know why you would want more than two. It’s basically impossible in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:00:44] Annie and her husband now have three children, ages eight, six, and three.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:00:50] I think back on that a lot because at the time I was like, how dare she? But now I’m like, oh, that was right. It’s really hard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:01:03] Child care in America has gotten even more expensive. Between 2020 and 2024, prices shot up almost 30%. Here in the Bay Area, child care costs are higher than almost anywhere else in the country. For families with multiple young kids, it can cost more than a parent’s entire salary, which means that many mothers, like Annie, have a painful choice to make. Keep pursuing your career or take care of your child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:01:35] I never ever planned to be a stay-at-home mom. I thought coming into motherhood that you could do it all, and that hasn’t been my experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:01:49] As part of KQED’s new series on affordability, we meet one mom in the East Bay who had to choose between her job and childcare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:02:06] Next to housing, child care is one of the biggest expenses for families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:02:11] Daisy Nguyen covers early childhood education for KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:02:15] Almost everywhere, but in the Bay Area, prices are just really high. And there are a couple of different reasons for that. Child care is labor-intensive. Little babies need constant care, and if you want good, high-quality care, you need to have trained workers. You need a safe space where children receive the care. Insurance, utilities, food, maybe supplies to, you know, to provide proper care. And that’s, and you know those costs have gone up too. So they’ve had to raise their tuition. What it means is that the cost to provide care is more than what parents can afford.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:03:09] So for this story, you talk to a few different parents who are navigating this world of expensive childcare, having to make trade-offs. One of them is a woman named Annie. Tell me a bit about her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:03:27] I went to Diablo Valley College and I met Annie Malekzadeh because I wanted to talk to her about how she, as a parent, is making things work with child care in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:03:39] Making friends with other moms is essential. If you’re going to be five minutes late to pick up, like you have to have someone else that you can text be like, can you grab my kid for me real quick? I’ll be a couple minutes late, but I’ll be there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:03:53] She lives in Pleasant Hill and she’s a mom of three kids under the age of eight. They’re about two and a half years apart, her kids. She’s a part-time student at Diablo Valley College. She’s pursuing a master’s degree in math and before that she was a middle school math teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:04:11] That was my plan and I didn’t ever expect to deviate from that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:04:16] She really enjoys being a teacher. She’s from a family of teachers. Her grandparents were teachers. She really saw that was her career. When she had two kids, child care costs were still manageable. She was still working part time. And with her husband’s income as a psychiatrist, child care cost were manageable. But when she had her third child, that’s when everything changed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:04:43] I feel very fortunate that I, you know, got through having our second kid and didn’t feel done. And instead of living with the potential of like regretting it for the rest of my life, I was able to say, hey, can we have another one? Can we like, work that into the budget?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:05:01] The total amount shot up to $56,000 a year. She was earning $32,000 dollars a year with her part-time job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:05:11] We wanted to find a child care location that was licensed. If your baby is going to spend the majority of their day with a caregiver, you want to make sure that that caregiver is trained and able to do a really great job and that unfortunately costs more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:05:32] And that was like double her part-time salary because she was only working like 25 hours per week. It was just particularly painful to see how much she was paying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:05:42] When we ran the numbers for the child care for all three of them for before and after care and preschool and my youngest would have still been in infant care it was still $1,182 per week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:05:57] Yeah, and I imagine, I mean, it’s not like it was breaking news to her that child care is expensive, but with her first two children, it seems like she was able to make it work with working part-time and a career she’s passionate about, but it seems with this, even with her husband’s salary, it just didn’t seem sustainable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:06:14] Yeah, she said it was just causing them a lot of stress. So yeah, that led to her just deciding at the end of the school year to quit her job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:06:24] I loved it. I hate leaving. My grandparents were both educators. My grandfather was an art teacher and my grandma was an elementary school teacher in Ventura. They were beloved by their community and they were really excited when I chose to become a teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:06:41] There are lots of trade-offs. I mean, besides the biggest one that Annie is making, other trade-off, she said that she’s just really had to take a close look at her budget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:06:55] My husband was like really hanging on to the cable and I was like we don’t watch it we can’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:07:01] She shops at Costco because the grocery shopping is quite expensive. Buying in bulk is usually cheaper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:07:09] I started tutoring on the side so that helps just a little bit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:07:13] And she’s cutting out whatever she can to trim her budget each month to make it work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:07:41] How typical is a story like this? Have you heard similar things from other families?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:07:47] Yeah, like a couple of months ago, we did this survey, and we got at least 40 responses from many families. Usually these are couples who said that it’s one person in the partnership had to take a step back from the career, give up career opportunities, or just work less or quit so that they could afford child care. Statewide I think it’s also an issue like the Stanford Center on Early Childhood had conducted a survey of California parents with children under the age of six and they found that three and four families with young children reported difficulty meeting one or more basic needs so child care health care housing food utilities like three and four that’s a significant number.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:08:43] So it sounds like Annie’s story is part of a broader trend, but within a partnership, who tends to be the most impacted by this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:08:52] In Annie’s situation, she made it clear that her husband made way more money than her. And so the default went to her, the mom, because she needed to have more flexibility to be there for her children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:09:06] A lot of parenting default goes to mom a lot of the time. Not all the time, but a lot at the time!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:09:15] In a lot of the partnerships, it’s the women who earn less. And so they’re usually the ones who have to make some sort of sacrifice with their career. Most experts say that when women take time away from the workforce, it means they’ll have to work longer into their retirement to make up for their time away. I cited in my story a study by KPMG, the financial firm, which found that after the pandemic. There was a spike in the number of college-educated women with young children who left the workforce. Whereas for dads of young children, their workforce participation continued to increase.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:10:05] And that accelerated post-COVID because of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:10:07] A couple of reasons, there’s just an increasing shortage of available child care because the workforce has really suffered since the pandemic. The second reason is the return to office policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:10:21] Less flexibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:10:22] Less flexibility, correct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:10:24] I want to come back to Annie for a little bit, Daisy. So faced with the prospect of being $56,000 a year for childcare, she ultimately decides to leave her job as a teacher. So how did that decision affect her family?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:10:42] Right now it’s saving her $600 a month. As her kids have gotten older, like two of them are now in public elementary school. So that’s already as savings. And then her youngest is still in preschool. He’s now three. But having him in full-time preschool is giving her an opportunity to do something else. She decided to enroll in Diablo Valley College.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:11:11] I’m wanting to pursue a second master’s degree at this point. I’m hoping for a career in statistics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen\u003c/strong>[00:11:19] Hopefully she can find a higher paying job to make up for this time that she’s spending away from the labor market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:11:28] Daisy, this KQED series is about affordability, about the trade-offs that people all across the region make every single day to make it work. But policy-wise, is there any help on the way for people like Annie?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:11:41] A lot of states are, you know, recognizing this is an issue. New Mexico is offering free child care that the governor there said it might save families an average of $12,000 annually. Vermont passed a payroll tax to raise money to provide some financial assistance for child care. And cities like New York and San Francisco are expanding access to free or subsidized child care to income-eligible families. So what’s next in California is really trying to figure out how can the state increase access for infant to three-year-old care, because that’s really what’s–\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:12:24] That’s Annie’s situation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:12:25] Yeah, it’s definitely Annie’s situation You know, when parents have to take a step back or walk away from the workforce to take care of children, it has a ripple effect on the broader economy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:12:45] Both parents to be in the workforce, you know, something needs to happen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:12:51] She left the classroom. There were students who were relying on her to learn their math. So I think that we can think about the ripple effects in so many ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:13:05] Daisy, thank you so much.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan data-slate-node=\"text\">\u003cspan class=\"sc-hHOBiw iVhMEe\" data-slate-leaf=\"true\">Rising child care prices leave many Bay Area parents with little choice but to turn down career opportunities, cut back hours, or even quit. As part of \u003c/span>\u003c/span>\u003ca class=\"e-10223-text-link e-10223-overflow-wrap-anywhere encore-internal-color-text-announcement e-10223-text-link--use-focus sc-kzqdkY fnwgHd\" href=\"https://www.kqed.org/affordability\" data-encore-id=\"textLink\" data-slate-node=\"element\" data-slate-inline=\"true\">\u003cspan data-slate-node=\"text\">\u003cspan class=\"sc-hHOBiw iVhMEe\" data-slate-leaf=\"true\">\u003cu>KQED’s new series on affordability,\u003c/u>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan data-slate-node=\"text\" data-slate-fragment=\"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\">\u003cspan class=\"sc-hHOBiw iVhMEe\" data-slate-leaf=\"true\"> early childhood education reporter Daisy Nguyen introduces us to one mother who left her job as a teacher after the birth of her third child.\u003c/span>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC3027698464&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Links:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12075761/when-child-care-costs-half-a-paycheck-bay-area-parents-must-choose-kids-or-career\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Child Care Costs Half a Paycheck, Bay Area Parents Must Choose: Kids or Career | KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/affordability\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How We Get By | KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Episode transcript\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"\" title=\"\">\u003ci>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:00:00] I’m Alan Montecillo, in for Ericka Cruz Guevarra, and welcome to The Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. A few years ago, Annie Malekzadeh was shopping at a Joanne Fabrics in Concord.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:00:16] And I had my, I think I was pregnant with my second kiddo at that time and had my older son in the shopping cart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:00:25] While she was waiting for her fabric to get cut, she struck up a conversation with an older woman who was also waiting. But then the woman said something to Annie that stung her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:00:36] She said something along the lines of, I don’t know why you would want more than two. It’s basically impossible in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:00:44] Annie and her husband now have three children, ages eight, six, and three.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:00:50] I think back on that a lot because at the time I was like, how dare she? But now I’m like, oh, that was right. It’s really hard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:01:03] Child care in America has gotten even more expensive. Between 2020 and 2024, prices shot up almost 30%. Here in the Bay Area, child care costs are higher than almost anywhere else in the country. For families with multiple young kids, it can cost more than a parent’s entire salary, which means that many mothers, like Annie, have a painful choice to make. Keep pursuing your career or take care of your child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:01:35] I never ever planned to be a stay-at-home mom. I thought coming into motherhood that you could do it all, and that hasn’t been my experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:01:49] As part of KQED’s new series on affordability, we meet one mom in the East Bay who had to choose between her job and childcare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:02:06] Next to housing, child care is one of the biggest expenses for families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:02:11] Daisy Nguyen covers early childhood education for KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:02:15] Almost everywhere, but in the Bay Area, prices are just really high. And there are a couple of different reasons for that. Child care is labor-intensive. Little babies need constant care, and if you want good, high-quality care, you need to have trained workers. You need a safe space where children receive the care. Insurance, utilities, food, maybe supplies to, you know, to provide proper care. And that’s, and you know those costs have gone up too. So they’ve had to raise their tuition. What it means is that the cost to provide care is more than what parents can afford.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:03:09] So for this story, you talk to a few different parents who are navigating this world of expensive childcare, having to make trade-offs. One of them is a woman named Annie. Tell me a bit about her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:03:27] I went to Diablo Valley College and I met Annie Malekzadeh because I wanted to talk to her about how she, as a parent, is making things work with child care in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:03:39] Making friends with other moms is essential. If you’re going to be five minutes late to pick up, like you have to have someone else that you can text be like, can you grab my kid for me real quick? I’ll be a couple minutes late, but I’ll be there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:03:53] She lives in Pleasant Hill and she’s a mom of three kids under the age of eight. They’re about two and a half years apart, her kids. She’s a part-time student at Diablo Valley College. She’s pursuing a master’s degree in math and before that she was a middle school math teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:04:11] That was my plan and I didn’t ever expect to deviate from that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:04:16] She really enjoys being a teacher. She’s from a family of teachers. Her grandparents were teachers. She really saw that was her career. When she had two kids, child care costs were still manageable. She was still working part time. And with her husband’s income as a psychiatrist, child care cost were manageable. But when she had her third child, that’s when everything changed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:04:43] I feel very fortunate that I, you know, got through having our second kid and didn’t feel done. And instead of living with the potential of like regretting it for the rest of my life, I was able to say, hey, can we have another one? Can we like, work that into the budget?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:05:01] The total amount shot up to $56,000 a year. She was earning $32,000 dollars a year with her part-time job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:05:11] We wanted to find a child care location that was licensed. If your baby is going to spend the majority of their day with a caregiver, you want to make sure that that caregiver is trained and able to do a really great job and that unfortunately costs more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:05:32] And that was like double her part-time salary because she was only working like 25 hours per week. It was just particularly painful to see how much she was paying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:05:42] When we ran the numbers for the child care for all three of them for before and after care and preschool and my youngest would have still been in infant care it was still $1,182 per week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:05:57] Yeah, and I imagine, I mean, it’s not like it was breaking news to her that child care is expensive, but with her first two children, it seems like she was able to make it work with working part-time and a career she’s passionate about, but it seems with this, even with her husband’s salary, it just didn’t seem sustainable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:06:14] Yeah, she said it was just causing them a lot of stress. So yeah, that led to her just deciding at the end of the school year to quit her job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:06:24] I loved it. I hate leaving. My grandparents were both educators. My grandfather was an art teacher and my grandma was an elementary school teacher in Ventura. They were beloved by their community and they were really excited when I chose to become a teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:06:41] There are lots of trade-offs. I mean, besides the biggest one that Annie is making, other trade-off, she said that she’s just really had to take a close look at her budget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:06:55] My husband was like really hanging on to the cable and I was like we don’t watch it we can’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:07:01] She shops at Costco because the grocery shopping is quite expensive. Buying in bulk is usually cheaper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:07:09] I started tutoring on the side so that helps just a little bit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:07:13] And she’s cutting out whatever she can to trim her budget each month to make it work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:07:41] How typical is a story like this? Have you heard similar things from other families?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:07:47] Yeah, like a couple of months ago, we did this survey, and we got at least 40 responses from many families. Usually these are couples who said that it’s one person in the partnership had to take a step back from the career, give up career opportunities, or just work less or quit so that they could afford child care. Statewide I think it’s also an issue like the Stanford Center on Early Childhood had conducted a survey of California parents with children under the age of six and they found that three and four families with young children reported difficulty meeting one or more basic needs so child care health care housing food utilities like three and four that’s a significant number.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:08:43] So it sounds like Annie’s story is part of a broader trend, but within a partnership, who tends to be the most impacted by this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:08:52] In Annie’s situation, she made it clear that her husband made way more money than her. And so the default went to her, the mom, because she needed to have more flexibility to be there for her children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:09:06] A lot of parenting default goes to mom a lot of the time. Not all the time, but a lot at the time!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:09:15] In a lot of the partnerships, it’s the women who earn less. And so they’re usually the ones who have to make some sort of sacrifice with their career. Most experts say that when women take time away from the workforce, it means they’ll have to work longer into their retirement to make up for their time away. I cited in my story a study by KPMG, the financial firm, which found that after the pandemic. There was a spike in the number of college-educated women with young children who left the workforce. Whereas for dads of young children, their workforce participation continued to increase.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:10:05] And that accelerated post-COVID because of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:10:07] A couple of reasons, there’s just an increasing shortage of available child care because the workforce has really suffered since the pandemic. The second reason is the return to office policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:10:21] Less flexibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:10:22] Less flexibility, correct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:10:24] I want to come back to Annie for a little bit, Daisy. So faced with the prospect of being $56,000 a year for childcare, she ultimately decides to leave her job as a teacher. So how did that decision affect her family?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:10:42] Right now it’s saving her $600 a month. As her kids have gotten older, like two of them are now in public elementary school. So that’s already as savings. And then her youngest is still in preschool. He’s now three. But having him in full-time preschool is giving her an opportunity to do something else. She decided to enroll in Diablo Valley College.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:11:11] I’m wanting to pursue a second master’s degree at this point. I’m hoping for a career in statistics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen\u003c/strong>[00:11:19] Hopefully she can find a higher paying job to make up for this time that she’s spending away from the labor market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:11:28] Daisy, this KQED series is about affordability, about the trade-offs that people all across the region make every single day to make it work. But policy-wise, is there any help on the way for people like Annie?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:11:41] A lot of states are, you know, recognizing this is an issue. New Mexico is offering free child care that the governor there said it might save families an average of $12,000 annually. Vermont passed a payroll tax to raise money to provide some financial assistance for child care. And cities like New York and San Francisco are expanding access to free or subsidized child care to income-eligible families. So what’s next in California is really trying to figure out how can the state increase access for infant to three-year-old care, because that’s really what’s–\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:12:24] That’s Annie’s situation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:12:25] Yeah, it’s definitely Annie’s situation You know, when parents have to take a step back or walk away from the workforce to take care of children, it has a ripple effect on the broader economy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Annie Malekzadeh \u003c/strong>[00:12:45] Both parents to be in the workforce, you know, something needs to happen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daisy Nguyen \u003c/strong>[00:12:51] She left the classroom. There were students who were relying on her to learn their math. So I think that we can think about the ripple effects in so many ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:13:05] Daisy, thank you so much.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of \u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/affordability\">How We Get By\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>, a KQED series exploring how people are coping with rising costs in the Bay Area and California. Find the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/affordability\">full series here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Annie Malekzadeh was shopping at a Joanne Fabrics store in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/concord\">Concord\u003c/a> a couple of years ago when she had an encounter that stung her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An older woman who saw her pregnant while pushing her toddler son in a shopping cart, told her: “I don’t know why you would want more than two [children]. It’s basically impossible in the Bay Area.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At the time I was like, how dare she?” she said. “But now I’m like, oh, [she] was right. It’s really hard.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Malekzadeh wound up having another baby, and the decision to have three kids pushed her child care expenses to roughly $56,000 a year and ultimately changed the course of her career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12061802/how-are-child-care-costs-affecting-the-lives-of-bay-area-families-you-told-us\">Rising child care costs in the Bay Area\u003c/a> are forcing parents to make painful tradeoffs, either by passing up career opportunities, cutting back work hours, or quitting altogether. For families with multiple young children, these expenses can surpass a parent’s entire salary, disproportionately affecting mothers and shaping their long-term economic security.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Malekzadeh’s story is just one example of how the gap between what families can afford and the actual cost of care is pushing parents to find creative solutions — and prompting calls for systemic change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Child care has long been expensive for parents, but recently it’s been even more so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078461\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12078461\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-AFFORDABILITYCHILDCARE00035_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-AFFORDABILITYCHILDCARE00035_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-AFFORDABILITYCHILDCARE00035_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-AFFORDABILITYCHILDCARE00035_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Annie Malekzadeh, a mom who quit her teaching job to save on child care and is now pursuing her master’s degree in mathematics, studies at Pleasant Hill Library in Pleasant Hill on April 1, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Prices shot up almost 30% between 2020 and 2024, outpacing inflation by 7 percentage points, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.childcareaware.org/price-landscape24/\">a survey of child care resource and referral organizations \u003c/a>around the country. In just the last year, 40% of child care programs in California \u003ca href=\"https://www.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/user-174467/2026_survey_brief.pdf\">reported raising tuition \u003c/a>to offset rising operating costs like insurance and food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four years ago, Malekzadeh was a math teacher at a private middle school, earning roughly $32,000 annually and working 25 hours per week. At the time, her son was in kindergarten and her daughter in preschool. Her husband is a psychiatrist, she said, and because he earned more money and worked more hours, most of the parenting responsibilities went to her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With their joint income, the cost of preschool and before- and afterschool care was manageable for the Pleasant Hill couple. But when their baby boy came along in July 2022, and needed full-time infant care, the amount for all three kids’ care — about $4,700 per month — was almost double her teacher’s salary.[aside postID=news_12070762 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/240911-CHILDCARE-REAX-MD-01_qed.jpg']“It didn’t make sense,” she said. “My job wasn’t really making enough of a contribution to justify that kind of expense.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time the school year ended, Malekzadeh decided to quit, even though she didn’t want to leave a profession she loved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My grandparents were both educators,” she said. “They were beloved by their community, and they were really excited when I chose to become a teacher. So that was my plan, and I didn’t ever expect to deviate from that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The move is saving about $600 a week in child care. The older two are in public school, and the youngest is still in preschool. While he’s in care, Malekzadeh takes classes at Diablo Valley College as she pursues a master’s degree in math, which she hopes will ultimately lead to a higher-paying job to make up for time away from the labor market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you quit to stay home with your kids, it creates gaps in your resume that a lot of places don’t necessarily look nicely at,” Melakzadeh said. “You have to have some kind of explanation for that, which might translate into less pay.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Child care prices vary by region and depend on a child’s age and the type of provider. In California, full-time infant care in 2024 cost an average of $22,628, which is 16% of the average married couple’s income and 50% of a single parent’s. Bay Area families pay the highest child care prices \u003ca href=\"https://tootris.com/edu/blog/parents/cost-of-child-care-in-california-by-city-age-and-type-of-care-provider/?utm_source=chatgpt.com\">compared to other parts of California\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078462\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12078462 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-AFFORDABILITYCHILDCARE00228_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-AFFORDABILITYCHILDCARE00228_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-AFFORDABILITYCHILDCARE00228_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-AFFORDABILITYCHILDCARE00228_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Annie Malekzadeh plays a card game with her daughter as they wait for her older son to finish school at Valhalla Elementary School in Pleasant Hill on April 1, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The spike in prices came as companies began mandating employees return to work and \u003ca href=\"https://rapidsurveyproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/arpa-funding-factsheet-aug2023.pdf\">child care providers lost federal funds\u003c/a> meant to help them recover from the pandemic. Less flexibility and high costs led to a decline in labor force participation for moms of children under the age of 5, and college-educated moms in particular, according to\u003ca href=\"https://kpmg.com/us/en/articles/2025/october-2025-the-great-exit.html\"> an analysis by the financial firm KPMG.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their labor force participation declined by 2.3 percentage points, while the number of college-educated dads of young children who were working or seeking a job continued to increase.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Families are facing child care prices that are higher than the price of rent or mortgage. So this is a huge problem. It’s one of the biggest expenses in a family’s budgets,” said Julie Kashen, a researcher at The Century Foundation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078476\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12078476\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-04-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-04-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-04-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-04-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nolan Cruz eats oatmeal for breakfast in the morning on Oct. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The progressive think tank conducted an October survey of 1,400 voters about their affordability concerns. Kashen said that while all families are facing rising costs, it’s women who experience a greater threat to their economic security.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Women are faring worse in terms of taking on debt to cover their basics, borrowing from friends and families to pay the bills,” she said. “So when you add child care on top of that, I think it’s incredibly challenging.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those challenges led Amy Cruz to walk away from a six-figure nursing job to freelance as a dance teacher and care for her 3-year-old son, Nolan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078474\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12078474\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1346\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-02-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-02-KQED-160x108.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-02-KQED-1536x1034.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brandon and Nolan Cruz cook oatmeal for breakfast on Oct. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Until he was about two years old, Cruz paid $3,000 per month to share a nanny with another family for just four days a week of child care (on the fifth day, she leaned on family members to look after him). While child care wasn’t the only reason she left her job, it was a significant factor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Essentially, half of my monthly income was going to child care,” Cruz said. “Watching that much money leave our account every month was tough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once Nolan was old enough to start preschool, she enrolled him in a three-day program near her Berkeley home, which cut her child care costs in half. When he’s there, she teaches dance — something she did professionally before going to nursing school — to afford his tuition. With a second baby on the way, she also figured that it was “worth it to make a little less money but be able to be with my kids more.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078475\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12078475\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-03-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-03-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Amy Cruz picks raspberries for her son Nolan’s breakfast in the morning on Oct. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Economists call child care a broken market because the actual cost of providing care is a lot more than what families can afford to pay. In California, \u003ca href=\"https://rrnetwork.org/assets/general-files/California.pdf\">the demand for licensed infant care exceeds supply\u003c/a> because it’s the most expensive and labor-intensive. Babies need constant care, and California has strict rules limiting the number of children each adult can care for in a licensed child care home or center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, low pay and benefits have made it tough for child care providers to attract or retain early educators. In January, nearly half of providers said they didn’t have enough staff to enroll children at capacity, according to a survey by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For providers, energy costs, food, insurance have all gone up,” said Matthew Nestler, senior economist at KPMG. “They can’t necessarily raise their workers’ wages to the degree that they would like to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078473\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12078473\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-01-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-01-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(From left) Brandon, Amy and Nolan Cruz prepare breakfast and pack a lunch for Nolan in the morning on Oct. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The shortage can cause parents to weave in and out of the workforce. Malezadeh first left her job when her eldest child was born eight years ago, and she couldn’t find an open infant care slot when her maternity leave ended. She didn’t know she had to reserve months in advance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We didn’t actually find any kind of daycare spot for him until he was two, and by then, I was already expecting my second child,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Malekzadeh stayed out of teaching for four years and went back to work when her first two kids were a little older.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But after a year, the costs of infant care for her youngest, combined with her older children’s care, were too great, and she left her job again.[aside postID=news_12078480 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/AffordabilitySeriesIntro_Lede.jpg']Kashen, from The Century Foundation, said public investment can help close the gap between what parents like Malekzadeh and Cruz can afford and what it actually costs to provide child care. As an example, she pointed to New Mexico’s recent move to offer free child care for all residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When governments invest in child care, that is the biggest thing that we can do because right now what we have is essentially a DIY, do-it-yourself, system for families where everyone’s on their own,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month, Cruz gave birth to a daughter. During her pregnancy, she considered becoming a nanny so she could take care of her baby alongside someone else’s, allowing her to make some money. She also thought about continuing to teach dance part-time, and while she’s at work, trading child care responsibilities with other parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been thinking about it more and more, because I can make more money teaching dance than doing my own nanny share,” Cruz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Building a community with other parents has helped Malekzadeh get by when she’s in a child care pinch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you’re gonna be five minutes late to pick up, you have to have someone else that you can text, and be like, ‘Can you grab my kid for me real quick?’” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078901\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12078901\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-affordabilitychildcare00326_TV_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-affordabilitychildcare00326_TV_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-affordabilitychildcare00326_TV_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-affordabilitychildcare00326_TV_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Annie Malekzadeh walks her kids home after school in Pleasant Hill on April 1, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Malekzadeh tutors on the side to make some money and said she’s constantly revising the family budget as grocery and health insurance prices go up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m looking at where can we cut costs and what bundle can I use or coupon can I use to save money? I do most of our shopping at Costco now because buying in bulk is usually cheaper,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her family is also taking fewer trips, but Malezadeh said, despite these compromises, she’s grateful she has been able to afford raising three kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel very fortunate that I got through having our second kid and didn’t feel done,” she said. “Instead of living with the potential of regretting it for the rest of my life, I was able to say, ‘Hey, can we have another one? Can we work that into the budget?’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of \u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/affordability\">How We Get By\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>, a KQED series exploring how people are coping with rising costs in the Bay Area and California. Find the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/affordability\">full series here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Annie Malekzadeh was shopping at a Joanne Fabrics store in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/concord\">Concord\u003c/a> a couple of years ago when she had an encounter that stung her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An older woman who saw her pregnant while pushing her toddler son in a shopping cart, told her: “I don’t know why you would want more than two [children]. It’s basically impossible in the Bay Area.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At the time I was like, how dare she?” she said. “But now I’m like, oh, [she] was right. It’s really hard.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Malekzadeh wound up having another baby, and the decision to have three kids pushed her child care expenses to roughly $56,000 a year and ultimately changed the course of her career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12061802/how-are-child-care-costs-affecting-the-lives-of-bay-area-families-you-told-us\">Rising child care costs in the Bay Area\u003c/a> are forcing parents to make painful tradeoffs, either by passing up career opportunities, cutting back work hours, or quitting altogether. For families with multiple young children, these expenses can surpass a parent’s entire salary, disproportionately affecting mothers and shaping their long-term economic security.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Malekzadeh’s story is just one example of how the gap between what families can afford and the actual cost of care is pushing parents to find creative solutions — and prompting calls for systemic change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Child care has long been expensive for parents, but recently it’s been even more so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078461\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12078461\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-AFFORDABILITYCHILDCARE00035_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-AFFORDABILITYCHILDCARE00035_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-AFFORDABILITYCHILDCARE00035_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-AFFORDABILITYCHILDCARE00035_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Annie Malekzadeh, a mom who quit her teaching job to save on child care and is now pursuing her master’s degree in mathematics, studies at Pleasant Hill Library in Pleasant Hill on April 1, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Prices shot up almost 30% between 2020 and 2024, outpacing inflation by 7 percentage points, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.childcareaware.org/price-landscape24/\">a survey of child care resource and referral organizations \u003c/a>around the country. In just the last year, 40% of child care programs in California \u003ca href=\"https://www.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/user-174467/2026_survey_brief.pdf\">reported raising tuition \u003c/a>to offset rising operating costs like insurance and food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four years ago, Malekzadeh was a math teacher at a private middle school, earning roughly $32,000 annually and working 25 hours per week. At the time, her son was in kindergarten and her daughter in preschool. Her husband is a psychiatrist, she said, and because he earned more money and worked more hours, most of the parenting responsibilities went to her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With their joint income, the cost of preschool and before- and afterschool care was manageable for the Pleasant Hill couple. But when their baby boy came along in July 2022, and needed full-time infant care, the amount for all three kids’ care — about $4,700 per month — was almost double her teacher’s salary.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“It didn’t make sense,” she said. “My job wasn’t really making enough of a contribution to justify that kind of expense.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time the school year ended, Malekzadeh decided to quit, even though she didn’t want to leave a profession she loved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My grandparents were both educators,” she said. “They were beloved by their community, and they were really excited when I chose to become a teacher. So that was my plan, and I didn’t ever expect to deviate from that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The move is saving about $600 a week in child care. The older two are in public school, and the youngest is still in preschool. While he’s in care, Malekzadeh takes classes at Diablo Valley College as she pursues a master’s degree in math, which she hopes will ultimately lead to a higher-paying job to make up for time away from the labor market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you quit to stay home with your kids, it creates gaps in your resume that a lot of places don’t necessarily look nicely at,” Melakzadeh said. “You have to have some kind of explanation for that, which might translate into less pay.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Child care prices vary by region and depend on a child’s age and the type of provider. In California, full-time infant care in 2024 cost an average of $22,628, which is 16% of the average married couple’s income and 50% of a single parent’s. Bay Area families pay the highest child care prices \u003ca href=\"https://tootris.com/edu/blog/parents/cost-of-child-care-in-california-by-city-age-and-type-of-care-provider/?utm_source=chatgpt.com\">compared to other parts of California\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078462\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12078462 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-AFFORDABILITYCHILDCARE00228_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-AFFORDABILITYCHILDCARE00228_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-AFFORDABILITYCHILDCARE00228_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-AFFORDABILITYCHILDCARE00228_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Annie Malekzadeh plays a card game with her daughter as they wait for her older son to finish school at Valhalla Elementary School in Pleasant Hill on April 1, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The spike in prices came as companies began mandating employees return to work and \u003ca href=\"https://rapidsurveyproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/arpa-funding-factsheet-aug2023.pdf\">child care providers lost federal funds\u003c/a> meant to help them recover from the pandemic. Less flexibility and high costs led to a decline in labor force participation for moms of children under the age of 5, and college-educated moms in particular, according to\u003ca href=\"https://kpmg.com/us/en/articles/2025/october-2025-the-great-exit.html\"> an analysis by the financial firm KPMG.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their labor force participation declined by 2.3 percentage points, while the number of college-educated dads of young children who were working or seeking a job continued to increase.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Families are facing child care prices that are higher than the price of rent or mortgage. So this is a huge problem. It’s one of the biggest expenses in a family’s budgets,” said Julie Kashen, a researcher at The Century Foundation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078476\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12078476\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-04-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-04-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-04-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-04-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nolan Cruz eats oatmeal for breakfast in the morning on Oct. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The progressive think tank conducted an October survey of 1,400 voters about their affordability concerns. Kashen said that while all families are facing rising costs, it’s women who experience a greater threat to their economic security.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Women are faring worse in terms of taking on debt to cover their basics, borrowing from friends and families to pay the bills,” she said. “So when you add child care on top of that, I think it’s incredibly challenging.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those challenges led Amy Cruz to walk away from a six-figure nursing job to freelance as a dance teacher and care for her 3-year-old son, Nolan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078474\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12078474\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1346\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-02-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-02-KQED-160x108.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-02-KQED-1536x1034.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brandon and Nolan Cruz cook oatmeal for breakfast on Oct. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Until he was about two years old, Cruz paid $3,000 per month to share a nanny with another family for just four days a week of child care (on the fifth day, she leaned on family members to look after him). While child care wasn’t the only reason she left her job, it was a significant factor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Essentially, half of my monthly income was going to child care,” Cruz said. “Watching that much money leave our account every month was tough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once Nolan was old enough to start preschool, she enrolled him in a three-day program near her Berkeley home, which cut her child care costs in half. When he’s there, she teaches dance — something she did professionally before going to nursing school — to afford his tuition. With a second baby on the way, she also figured that it was “worth it to make a little less money but be able to be with my kids more.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078475\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12078475\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-03-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-03-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Amy Cruz picks raspberries for her son Nolan’s breakfast in the morning on Oct. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Economists call child care a broken market because the actual cost of providing care is a lot more than what families can afford to pay. In California, \u003ca href=\"https://rrnetwork.org/assets/general-files/California.pdf\">the demand for licensed infant care exceeds supply\u003c/a> because it’s the most expensive and labor-intensive. Babies need constant care, and California has strict rules limiting the number of children each adult can care for in a licensed child care home or center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, low pay and benefits have made it tough for child care providers to attract or retain early educators. In January, nearly half of providers said they didn’t have enough staff to enroll children at capacity, according to a survey by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For providers, energy costs, food, insurance have all gone up,” said Matthew Nestler, senior economist at KPMG. “They can’t necessarily raise their workers’ wages to the degree that they would like to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078473\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12078473\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-01-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-01-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(From left) Brandon, Amy and Nolan Cruz prepare breakfast and pack a lunch for Nolan in the morning on Oct. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The shortage can cause parents to weave in and out of the workforce. Malezadeh first left her job when her eldest child was born eight years ago, and she couldn’t find an open infant care slot when her maternity leave ended. She didn’t know she had to reserve months in advance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We didn’t actually find any kind of daycare spot for him until he was two, and by then, I was already expecting my second child,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Malekzadeh stayed out of teaching for four years and went back to work when her first two kids were a little older.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But after a year, the costs of infant care for her youngest, combined with her older children’s care, were too great, and she left her job again.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Kashen, from The Century Foundation, said public investment can help close the gap between what parents like Malekzadeh and Cruz can afford and what it actually costs to provide child care. As an example, she pointed to New Mexico’s recent move to offer free child care for all residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When governments invest in child care, that is the biggest thing that we can do because right now what we have is essentially a DIY, do-it-yourself, system for families where everyone’s on their own,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month, Cruz gave birth to a daughter. During her pregnancy, she considered becoming a nanny so she could take care of her baby alongside someone else’s, allowing her to make some money. She also thought about continuing to teach dance part-time, and while she’s at work, trading child care responsibilities with other parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been thinking about it more and more, because I can make more money teaching dance than doing my own nanny share,” Cruz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Building a community with other parents has helped Malekzadeh get by when she’s in a child care pinch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you’re gonna be five minutes late to pick up, you have to have someone else that you can text, and be like, ‘Can you grab my kid for me real quick?’” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078901\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12078901\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-affordabilitychildcare00326_TV_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-affordabilitychildcare00326_TV_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-affordabilitychildcare00326_TV_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260401-affordabilitychildcare00326_TV_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Annie Malekzadeh walks her kids home after school in Pleasant Hill on April 1, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Malekzadeh tutors on the side to make some money and said she’s constantly revising the family budget as grocery and health insurance prices go up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m looking at where can we cut costs and what bundle can I use or coupon can I use to save money? I do most of our shopping at Costco now because buying in bulk is usually cheaper,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her family is also taking fewer trips, but Malezadeh said, despite these compromises, she’s grateful she has been able to afford raising three kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel very fortunate that I got through having our second kid and didn’t feel done,” she said. “Instead of living with the potential of regretting it for the rest of my life, I was able to say, ‘Hey, can we have another one? Can we work that into the budget?’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "lack-of-approved-child-care-providers-may-slow-rollout-of-san-franciscos-expanded-subsidies",
"title": "Lack of Approved Child Care Providers May Slow Rollout of San Francisco’s Expanded Subsidies",
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"headTitle": "Lack of Approved Child Care Providers May Slow Rollout of San Francisco’s Expanded Subsidies | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>When Daniel Zimmerman heard that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> would offer free or low-cost child care to more families, he went online to make sure he and his wife qualify for a discount and started dreaming about having another baby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the last few years, the couple has been paying about $3,500 per month to send their children, ages 2 and 5, to a Spanish immersion preschool. Zimmerman said even though they earn six figures — he’s a nurse, and she’s a dietician — keeping up with the high cost of child care leaves them “basically in the red every month.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not saving money, but we figured, especially when they’re young, we’ll just weather the storm until they get into public school,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The prospect of getting financial aid made him think they could raise three kids in the city. But he may need to brace for some snags when he starts looking for child care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under guidelines set by the city Department of Early Childhood, income-eligible families can only select from nearly 600 child care programs within a pre-approved network. That might limit parents’ choices at a time when San Francisco is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12069711/san-francisco-expands-child-care-subsidies-to-tackle-affordability-issues\">expanding child care subsidies\u003c/a> to middle-income earners as part of a broader push to make the city affordable for families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month, Mayor Daniel Lurie announced that a family of four making less than $234,000 a year can get free child care, and starting in July, those earning up to $312,000 annually will qualify for a \u003ca href=\"https://provider.sfdec.org/wp-content/uploads/ELFA-Center-FCC-Rates-FY25-26.pdf\">50% discount\u003c/a>. The changes put San Francisco ahead of other major cities in offering nearly universal access to child care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071945\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071945\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00075_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00075_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00075_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00075_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Children play at an in-home child care business called Daycare Bumblebee in San Francisco on Jan. 30, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Up to 12,000 kids under age 5 will be eligible for the newly expanded subsidies — though fewer than half are expected to enroll — paid by \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11948690/business-tax-provides-crucial-funding-for-early-childhood-education-and-care-in-san-francisco\">funds from Baby Prop C, a 3.5% tax on commercial property leases\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of people are excited and have a lot of questions,” said Mark Ryle, CEO of Wu Yee Children’s Services, an agency contracted by the city to refer families who qualify for subsidies to child care providers with available spaces. “We’ve seen a pretty significant uptick in inquiries around the tuition credit program.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some families are discovering, though, that getting public funding for child care comes with a catch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>The early years matter. Tell us what you want to learn about early childhood education and care by \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/8658266/ChildhoodAudience\">\u003cstrong>\u003cem>clicking here\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>When Danielle Eichenbaum learned she qualified for the city’s subsidized child care, her toddler was already enrolled in Daycare Bumblebee in the West Portal neighborhood. She wanted him to stay — not only with the caregivers he already bonded with, but because they were teaching him Russian and exposing him to music, karate and other enriching activities.[aside postID=news_12069711 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00057_TV-KQED.jpg']But the day care wasn’t part of the city-funded network, called Early Learning for All, or ELFA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I cried when we left. It was such a wonderful program,” she said. “His program now is great, too, but I miss the other one.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bumblebee’s owner, Lyuba Schkolnik, decided to join ELFA to help Eichenbaum. But she soon discovered the process could take more than a year, requiring her to complete several early childhood education classes and undergo evaluations to determine if her program meets the city’s \u003ca href=\"https://provider.sfdec.org/wp-content/uploads/Quality-Standard_Updated_052125.pdf\">quality standards\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schkolnik, who left a marketing career to open her day care, didn’t mind taking the classes and hopes to get in. Joining the network comes with perks: Last year, in-home day care owners like her got $16,000 stipends to help them earn a living wage, and $12,000 to boost their assistants’ pay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But the fact it takes so long for someone to become a provider within the system is a little bit disheartening because the [expanded subsidies] are supposed to launch shortly, and we want to help families,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other parents expressed frustration over a policy that prohibits placing a deposit to hold space at their preferred day care, which is a standard practice in private-pay programs, where families often compete for scarce infant-care slots. Ryle said this assures fair access for everyone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eichenbaum said that while she understood the system’s equitable goals, she worries the high standards to join ELFA are making it too hard for providers like Schkolnik to participate in the system and for parents like her to get the child care that works for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071946\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071946\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00137_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00137_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00137_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00137_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lyuba Shkolnik teaches children how to bake muffins at her in-home child care business called Daycare Bumblebee in San Francisco on Jan. 30, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Their goals are so lofty that they don’t look at the real-world impact,” she said. “They are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside City Hall, two members of the Board of Supervisors want the early childhood department to speed things up for providers who want to join ELFA. They worry that when the subsidies expand, the waitlist for child care will grow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Do I want to go faster than they probably feel comfortable with? Of course I do,” Supervisor Stephen Sherrill said. “I think we can expand the system without sacrificing quality.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Supervisor Myrna Melgar said she’d like to see a simpler and more accessible system.[aside postID=news_12070762 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/240911-CHILDCARE-REAX-MD-01_qed.jpg']“There are multiple things that go into the decision to pick a provider. It’s how you feel. Sometimes it’s cultural and language competence, sometimes it is proximity to your home or work. And so on top of it, to layer a bunch of other things for eligibility, it makes it difficult and complicated,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ingrid Mezquita, director of the Department of Early Childhood, said the city is carefully building out the system, adding more ELFA sites and infant and toddler care slots in neighborhoods that need them most. Depending on their qualifications, she said, some providers can “easily whisk through in less than three months and some programs may take a little longer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need to have those kinds of quality assurances because, at the end of the day, our accountability and our responsibility is to that child and to that family and the programs that do come on board and do enroll in this public funding support also prescribe to that and have that shared accountability with us,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the past three years, the city used unspent funds that accrued when it was fighting a taxpayer group’s lawsuit over Baby Prop C to clear the waitlist for lower-income families who needed child care, boost wages for more than 3,000 early educators, who have historically been underpaid, and support their professional development. Those funds are expected to run out in six years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a result, the city-funded child care programs are serving more than 9,000 kids, have a lower staff turnover rate than the state average, and children’s kindergarten readiness has gone up, Mezquita said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071947\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071947\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00152_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00152_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00152_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00152_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shoes line a cubby at Daycare Bumblebee in San Francisco on Jan. 30, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>About 700 children are currently on the wait list for care, though there are about 1,000 available spaces. One reason for the discrepancy is that there aren’t enough infant- and toddler-care slots to meet demand, or the open slots don’t match families’ preferred schedule, location or language, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have expanded access, but the only thing that is a little bit of an art and a science — mostly art — to pinpoint is the preferences of families,” she said at a recent Board of Supervisors hearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Department of Early Childhood estimates that ongoing revenue from the commercial rent tax can pay for the expanded subsidies. But the department cautions that it may not cover the program’s full cost down the road if the commercial real estate market softens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mezquita said she’s hopeful San Francisco’s experiment will demonstrate that it can be scaled up and funded with state dollars. The city was first to offer free preschool for 4-year-olds in 2005, and this year, California expanded transitional kindergarten for all children who turn 4 by Sept. 1.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are building a universal system. How we’re designing it is also taking into account that eventually, yes, we also need the partnership with the state to be able to not only expand it, but also make it widely available,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When Daniel Zimmerman heard that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> would offer free or low-cost child care to more families, he went online to make sure he and his wife qualify for a discount and started dreaming about having another baby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the last few years, the couple has been paying about $3,500 per month to send their children, ages 2 and 5, to a Spanish immersion preschool. Zimmerman said even though they earn six figures — he’s a nurse, and she’s a dietician — keeping up with the high cost of child care leaves them “basically in the red every month.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not saving money, but we figured, especially when they’re young, we’ll just weather the storm until they get into public school,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The prospect of getting financial aid made him think they could raise three kids in the city. But he may need to brace for some snags when he starts looking for child care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under guidelines set by the city Department of Early Childhood, income-eligible families can only select from nearly 600 child care programs within a pre-approved network. That might limit parents’ choices at a time when San Francisco is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12069711/san-francisco-expands-child-care-subsidies-to-tackle-affordability-issues\">expanding child care subsidies\u003c/a> to middle-income earners as part of a broader push to make the city affordable for families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month, Mayor Daniel Lurie announced that a family of four making less than $234,000 a year can get free child care, and starting in July, those earning up to $312,000 annually will qualify for a \u003ca href=\"https://provider.sfdec.org/wp-content/uploads/ELFA-Center-FCC-Rates-FY25-26.pdf\">50% discount\u003c/a>. The changes put San Francisco ahead of other major cities in offering nearly universal access to child care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071945\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071945\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00075_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00075_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00075_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00075_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Children play at an in-home child care business called Daycare Bumblebee in San Francisco on Jan. 30, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Up to 12,000 kids under age 5 will be eligible for the newly expanded subsidies — though fewer than half are expected to enroll — paid by \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11948690/business-tax-provides-crucial-funding-for-early-childhood-education-and-care-in-san-francisco\">funds from Baby Prop C, a 3.5% tax on commercial property leases\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of people are excited and have a lot of questions,” said Mark Ryle, CEO of Wu Yee Children’s Services, an agency contracted by the city to refer families who qualify for subsidies to child care providers with available spaces. “We’ve seen a pretty significant uptick in inquiries around the tuition credit program.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some families are discovering, though, that getting public funding for child care comes with a catch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>The early years matter. Tell us what you want to learn about early childhood education and care by \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/8658266/ChildhoodAudience\">\u003cstrong>\u003cem>clicking here\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>When Danielle Eichenbaum learned she qualified for the city’s subsidized child care, her toddler was already enrolled in Daycare Bumblebee in the West Portal neighborhood. She wanted him to stay — not only with the caregivers he already bonded with, but because they were teaching him Russian and exposing him to music, karate and other enriching activities.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>But the day care wasn’t part of the city-funded network, called Early Learning for All, or ELFA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I cried when we left. It was such a wonderful program,” she said. “His program now is great, too, but I miss the other one.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bumblebee’s owner, Lyuba Schkolnik, decided to join ELFA to help Eichenbaum. But she soon discovered the process could take more than a year, requiring her to complete several early childhood education classes and undergo evaluations to determine if her program meets the city’s \u003ca href=\"https://provider.sfdec.org/wp-content/uploads/Quality-Standard_Updated_052125.pdf\">quality standards\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schkolnik, who left a marketing career to open her day care, didn’t mind taking the classes and hopes to get in. Joining the network comes with perks: Last year, in-home day care owners like her got $16,000 stipends to help them earn a living wage, and $12,000 to boost their assistants’ pay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But the fact it takes so long for someone to become a provider within the system is a little bit disheartening because the [expanded subsidies] are supposed to launch shortly, and we want to help families,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other parents expressed frustration over a policy that prohibits placing a deposit to hold space at their preferred day care, which is a standard practice in private-pay programs, where families often compete for scarce infant-care slots. Ryle said this assures fair access for everyone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eichenbaum said that while she understood the system’s equitable goals, she worries the high standards to join ELFA are making it too hard for providers like Schkolnik to participate in the system and for parents like her to get the child care that works for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071946\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071946\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00137_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00137_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00137_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00137_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lyuba Shkolnik teaches children how to bake muffins at her in-home child care business called Daycare Bumblebee in San Francisco on Jan. 30, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Their goals are so lofty that they don’t look at the real-world impact,” she said. “They are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside City Hall, two members of the Board of Supervisors want the early childhood department to speed things up for providers who want to join ELFA. They worry that when the subsidies expand, the waitlist for child care will grow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Do I want to go faster than they probably feel comfortable with? Of course I do,” Supervisor Stephen Sherrill said. “I think we can expand the system without sacrificing quality.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Supervisor Myrna Melgar said she’d like to see a simpler and more accessible system.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“There are multiple things that go into the decision to pick a provider. It’s how you feel. Sometimes it’s cultural and language competence, sometimes it is proximity to your home or work. And so on top of it, to layer a bunch of other things for eligibility, it makes it difficult and complicated,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ingrid Mezquita, director of the Department of Early Childhood, said the city is carefully building out the system, adding more ELFA sites and infant and toddler care slots in neighborhoods that need them most. Depending on their qualifications, she said, some providers can “easily whisk through in less than three months and some programs may take a little longer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need to have those kinds of quality assurances because, at the end of the day, our accountability and our responsibility is to that child and to that family and the programs that do come on board and do enroll in this public funding support also prescribe to that and have that shared accountability with us,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the past three years, the city used unspent funds that accrued when it was fighting a taxpayer group’s lawsuit over Baby Prop C to clear the waitlist for lower-income families who needed child care, boost wages for more than 3,000 early educators, who have historically been underpaid, and support their professional development. Those funds are expected to run out in six years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a result, the city-funded child care programs are serving more than 9,000 kids, have a lower staff turnover rate than the state average, and children’s kindergarten readiness has gone up, Mezquita said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071947\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071947\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00152_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00152_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00152_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260130-SFCHILDCAREACCESS00152_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shoes line a cubby at Daycare Bumblebee in San Francisco on Jan. 30, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>About 700 children are currently on the wait list for care, though there are about 1,000 available spaces. One reason for the discrepancy is that there aren’t enough infant- and toddler-care slots to meet demand, or the open slots don’t match families’ preferred schedule, location or language, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have expanded access, but the only thing that is a little bit of an art and a science — mostly art — to pinpoint is the preferences of families,” she said at a recent Board of Supervisors hearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Department of Early Childhood estimates that ongoing revenue from the commercial rent tax can pay for the expanded subsidies. But the department cautions that it may not cover the program’s full cost down the road if the commercial real estate market softens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mezquita said she’s hopeful San Francisco’s experiment will demonstrate that it can be scaled up and funded with state dollars. The city was first to offer free preschool for 4-year-olds in 2005, and this year, California expanded transitional kindergarten for all children who turn 4 by Sept. 1.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are building a universal system. How we’re designing it is also taking into account that eventually, yes, we also need the partnership with the state to be able to not only expand it, but also make it widely available,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "child-care-in-california-was-already-hard-to-find-the-immigration-crackdown-has-made-it-worse",
"title": "Child Care in California Was Already Hard to Find — the Immigration Crackdown Has Made It Worse",
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"headTitle": "Child Care in California Was Already Hard to Find — the Immigration Crackdown Has Made It Worse | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/\">CalMatters\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/subscribe-to-calmatters/\">Sign up\u003c/a> for their newsletters.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a recent weekday morning in Los Angeles, a young mother dropped off her 2-year-old and 4-year-old at a child care center located in a neighbor’s home. It was the 2-year-old’s birthday, so she also brought a treat for the staff and kids: a “Cars”-themed red velvet cake, the child’s favorite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then she went off to her job as an office cleaner. The child care provider never saw her again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She was picked up,” said the provider, Adriana, who asked to be identified only by her first name because although she is a legal resident of the U.S. she fears wrongful deportation. She also asked not to name the mother and children. “The kids were saying, ‘Where’s mommy? Where’s mommy?’ It was hard for us providers to explain. It was heartbreaking.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on immigrants has taken a particularly high toll on the child care industry – both for families and providers. In California, \u003ca href=\"https://cscce.berkeley.edu/publications/blog/nearly-half-a-million-early-childhood-educators-are-immigrants/\">almost 40%\u003c/a> of the workforce is foreign-born and more than a million parents — immigrant and otherwise — rely on child care providers so they can go to work.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Absenteeism and empty classrooms\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Several recent reports have found that since Trump beefed up immigration enforcement, child care centers have lost staff — immigrants who are afraid to come to work — as well as immigrant parents who are afraid to drop their children off for fear of being arrested and separated from their children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://cscce.berkeley.edu/publications/brief/immigration-policies-harm-ece/\">One study\u003c/a>, from the Center for Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley, found the effects to be wide-ranging.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071645\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071645\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A daycare worker hugs a child in a play room at her child care facility in San José on Oct. 2, 2023. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The administration’s policies targeting immigrant populations not only harm the immigrant (early childhood education) workforce, they also have the potential to destabilize the already-fragile ECE system that immigrant and nonimmigrant children, families, and ECE professionals rely on,” the authors wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The loss of staff and revenue has \u003ca href=\"https://d1y8sb8igg2f8e.cloudfront.net/documents/ICE_and_Child_Care__Media_1-Pager.pdf\">affected all families\u003c/a>, not just immigrants, because it means the already-tight child care market has shrunk even further, according to New America, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Aggressive immigration enforcement has already caused closures, empty classrooms, and absenteeism in day care centers in some communities,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/report/immigrant-workers-childcare-crisis/\">according to a report \u003c/a>by the American Immigration Council, a research and advocacy organization.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Bigger than we can imagine’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California is home to about 1.7 million babies and toddlers, the vast majority of whom spend at least some time in child care while their parents work. Some are enrolled in licensed day care centers, some have nannies, and others have informal arrangements with neighbors or family members.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The tightening of the child care industry has been an extra burden on families who are already juggling the demands of work and home life. Child care is \u003ca href=\"https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/californias-child-care-crisis-high-unmet-need-and-regional-disparities/\">expensive and hard to find\u003c/a> in California — the immigration crackdown has made it even harder.[aside postID=news_12070762 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/240911-CHILDCARE-REAX-MD-01_qed.jpg']“The impact, especially on women, is bigger than we can imagine,” said Patricia Lozano, executive director of Early Edge California, which advocates for early childhood education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s the children who might suffer the most, she said. Not only are some missing their regular child care providers, but those with immigrant parents may be experiencing stress at home and a disruption of their routine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Kids benefit from going to child care. That’s a healthy, safe place for them to be,” Lozano said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lozano’s group encourages immigrant families to make a plan for their children in case a parent is arrested, and inform the child care provider. The group also reminds child care providers they shouldn’t allow immigration enforcement officers into a child care center unless the agents have a signed judicial warrant. Early Edge California and other groups have published a website, \u003ca href=\"https://allinforhealth.org/safe-schools/\">All in for Safe Schools\u003c/a>, that offers guidance to schools and child care centers on how to help immigrant families and LGBTQ students. In addition, the Service Employees International Union, which represents more than 30,000 chid care providers in California, also provides resources for immigrants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Know your rights, have a plan, be prepared,” Lozano said. “And talk to your kids about it in a way they can understand.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Locked doors, pulled shades\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In Alameda County, where 34% of the population is foreign-born, the immigration crackdown has had a noticeable effect on families and child care providers, even though the county has not seen significant immigration enforcement compared to other regions, said Kym Johnson, chief executive officer of BANANAS, a nonprofit child care referral and family resource service in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some child care providers are avoiding public places, such as parks and playgrounds, while some immigrant families have dropped out of playgroups or kept their children home from day care when immigration agents are spotted in the neighborhood, Johnson said.[aside postID=news_12069711 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00057_TV-KQED.jpg']At one playgroup in East Oakland, organizers started locking the door and closing the blinds to make families feel safe. At another playgroup, located at a library, staff helped families create safety plans in case immigration agents arrived.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bananas used to hold monthly diaper give-aways in a parking lot that would regularly attract 200 families. Fewer people started showing up after Trump took office, Johnson said, so now the group holds the giveaways several times a month, attracting smaller crowds, and moved the event indoors, so families can’t be seen from the street.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People have been trying to stay under the radar when they can,” Johnson said. “We do what we can to help people, because so many of these families don’t have a voice. And the kiddos especially don’t have a voice.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘They’re targeting everyone’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Adriana, the child care provider in Los Angeles, has been in the child care business for 23 years. She tends to a dozen or so children in her home and is also raising her own four children. The day of the 2-year-old’s “Cars”-themed birthday, Adriana called the children’s grandmother after the mother didn’t arrive to pick them up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alarmed, the grandmother tried unsuccessfully to reach the children’s mother and then brought the children to her house. Eventually the family learned what happened: Both the children’s parents plus their uncle were arrested and deported to Colombia. After a few weeks, the grandmother and children moved to Colombia, as well, so the family could be united.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Adriana started bringing her passport everywhere she went. She also started locking both gates at her house, not opening the front door unless she knows who’s ringing the bell, and working with parents — even those with legal status — to create back-up plans in case they’re arrested.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m here legally, but they’re targeting everyone,” she said. “I’m just scared. What if my kids are in school and I can’t call? I try not to let it affect me, but it’s always in the back of my mind.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She often feels frustrated and helpless, but tries to create a safe, welcoming environment for the children in her care so they can focus on having fun — and find some relief from the anxiety they may be feeling at home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s sad. (Immigration agents) are targeting hard-working people, not criminals,” she said. “People who are just trying to make ends meet for their families. But my job is to take care of children. So we try not to put that fear onto the kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/education/2026/02/child-care-california-2/\">originally published on CalMatters\u003c/a> and was republished under the \u003ca href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives\u003c/a> license.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "In California, almost 40% of the workforce is foreign-born and more than a million parents — immigrant and otherwise — rely on child care providers so they can go to work.\r\n\r\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/\">CalMatters\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/subscribe-to-calmatters/\">Sign up\u003c/a> for their newsletters.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a recent weekday morning in Los Angeles, a young mother dropped off her 2-year-old and 4-year-old at a child care center located in a neighbor’s home. It was the 2-year-old’s birthday, so she also brought a treat for the staff and kids: a “Cars”-themed red velvet cake, the child’s favorite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then she went off to her job as an office cleaner. The child care provider never saw her again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She was picked up,” said the provider, Adriana, who asked to be identified only by her first name because although she is a legal resident of the U.S. she fears wrongful deportation. She also asked not to name the mother and children. “The kids were saying, ‘Where’s mommy? Where’s mommy?’ It was hard for us providers to explain. It was heartbreaking.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on immigrants has taken a particularly high toll on the child care industry – both for families and providers. In California, \u003ca href=\"https://cscce.berkeley.edu/publications/blog/nearly-half-a-million-early-childhood-educators-are-immigrants/\">almost 40%\u003c/a> of the workforce is foreign-born and more than a million parents — immigrant and otherwise — rely on child care providers so they can go to work.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Absenteeism and empty classrooms\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Several recent reports have found that since Trump beefed up immigration enforcement, child care centers have lost staff — immigrants who are afraid to come to work — as well as immigrant parents who are afraid to drop their children off for fear of being arrested and separated from their children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://cscce.berkeley.edu/publications/brief/immigration-policies-harm-ece/\">One study\u003c/a>, from the Center for Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley, found the effects to be wide-ranging.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071645\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071645\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A daycare worker hugs a child in a play room at her child care facility in San José on Oct. 2, 2023. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The administration’s policies targeting immigrant populations not only harm the immigrant (early childhood education) workforce, they also have the potential to destabilize the already-fragile ECE system that immigrant and nonimmigrant children, families, and ECE professionals rely on,” the authors wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The loss of staff and revenue has \u003ca href=\"https://d1y8sb8igg2f8e.cloudfront.net/documents/ICE_and_Child_Care__Media_1-Pager.pdf\">affected all families\u003c/a>, not just immigrants, because it means the already-tight child care market has shrunk even further, according to New America, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Aggressive immigration enforcement has already caused closures, empty classrooms, and absenteeism in day care centers in some communities,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/report/immigrant-workers-childcare-crisis/\">according to a report \u003c/a>by the American Immigration Council, a research and advocacy organization.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Bigger than we can imagine’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California is home to about 1.7 million babies and toddlers, the vast majority of whom spend at least some time in child care while their parents work. Some are enrolled in licensed day care centers, some have nannies, and others have informal arrangements with neighbors or family members.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The tightening of the child care industry has been an extra burden on families who are already juggling the demands of work and home life. Child care is \u003ca href=\"https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/californias-child-care-crisis-high-unmet-need-and-regional-disparities/\">expensive and hard to find\u003c/a> in California — the immigration crackdown has made it even harder.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“The impact, especially on women, is bigger than we can imagine,” said Patricia Lozano, executive director of Early Edge California, which advocates for early childhood education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s the children who might suffer the most, she said. Not only are some missing their regular child care providers, but those with immigrant parents may be experiencing stress at home and a disruption of their routine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Kids benefit from going to child care. That’s a healthy, safe place for them to be,” Lozano said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lozano’s group encourages immigrant families to make a plan for their children in case a parent is arrested, and inform the child care provider. The group also reminds child care providers they shouldn’t allow immigration enforcement officers into a child care center unless the agents have a signed judicial warrant. Early Edge California and other groups have published a website, \u003ca href=\"https://allinforhealth.org/safe-schools/\">All in for Safe Schools\u003c/a>, that offers guidance to schools and child care centers on how to help immigrant families and LGBTQ students. In addition, the Service Employees International Union, which represents more than 30,000 chid care providers in California, also provides resources for immigrants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Know your rights, have a plan, be prepared,” Lozano said. “And talk to your kids about it in a way they can understand.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Locked doors, pulled shades\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In Alameda County, where 34% of the population is foreign-born, the immigration crackdown has had a noticeable effect on families and child care providers, even though the county has not seen significant immigration enforcement compared to other regions, said Kym Johnson, chief executive officer of BANANAS, a nonprofit child care referral and family resource service in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some child care providers are avoiding public places, such as parks and playgrounds, while some immigrant families have dropped out of playgroups or kept their children home from day care when immigration agents are spotted in the neighborhood, Johnson said.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>At one playgroup in East Oakland, organizers started locking the door and closing the blinds to make families feel safe. At another playgroup, located at a library, staff helped families create safety plans in case immigration agents arrived.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bananas used to hold monthly diaper give-aways in a parking lot that would regularly attract 200 families. Fewer people started showing up after Trump took office, Johnson said, so now the group holds the giveaways several times a month, attracting smaller crowds, and moved the event indoors, so families can’t be seen from the street.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People have been trying to stay under the radar when they can,” Johnson said. “We do what we can to help people, because so many of these families don’t have a voice. And the kiddos especially don’t have a voice.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘They’re targeting everyone’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Adriana, the child care provider in Los Angeles, has been in the child care business for 23 years. She tends to a dozen or so children in her home and is also raising her own four children. The day of the 2-year-old’s “Cars”-themed birthday, Adriana called the children’s grandmother after the mother didn’t arrive to pick them up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alarmed, the grandmother tried unsuccessfully to reach the children’s mother and then brought the children to her house. Eventually the family learned what happened: Both the children’s parents plus their uncle were arrested and deported to Colombia. After a few weeks, the grandmother and children moved to Colombia, as well, so the family could be united.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Adriana started bringing her passport everywhere she went. She also started locking both gates at her house, not opening the front door unless she knows who’s ringing the bell, and working with parents — even those with legal status — to create back-up plans in case they’re arrested.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m here legally, but they’re targeting everyone,” she said. “I’m just scared. What if my kids are in school and I can’t call? I try not to let it affect me, but it’s always in the back of my mind.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She often feels frustrated and helpless, but tries to create a safe, welcoming environment for the children in her care so they can focus on having fun — and find some relief from the anxiety they may be feeling at home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s sad. (Immigration agents) are targeting hard-working people, not criminals,” she said. “People who are just trying to make ends meet for their families. But my job is to take care of children. So we try not to put that fear onto the kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/education/2026/02/child-care-california-2/\">originally published on CalMatters\u003c/a> and was republished under the \u003ca href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives\u003c/a> license.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "universal-child-care-in-california-is-feasible-uc-and-stanford-experts-say",
"title": "Universal Child Care in California Is ‘Feasible,’ UC and Stanford Experts Say",
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"headTitle": "Universal Child Care in California Is ‘Feasible,’ UC and Stanford Experts Say | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>The soaring cost of child care has recently led states like New Mexico to offer universal child care and cities like New York and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12069711/san-francisco-expands-child-care-subsidies-to-tackle-affordability-issues\">San Francisco to expand\u003c/a> free and low-cost child care to income-eligible families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Could it be done in California?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In two papers published Friday, researchers say, in short: Yes. The state could build upon \u003ca href=\"https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/california-funding-trends-for-early-care-education-programs/\">its ongoing investments in child care\u003c/a> and work toward universal care for infants and toddlers, aged three and under.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cost could reach up to $21 billion per year to subsidize all families, but it would generate as much as $23 billion in economic output — essentially paying for itself — by allowing mothers of young children to rejoin the workforce, according to an analysis by the \u003ca href=\"https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/economics-market-early-childhood-care-and-education-california#15\">Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That is not considering the many other benefits that accrue to the children themselves, to families and to society from having a robust, high-quality, well-functioning early childhood care and education market,” said Chloe Gibbs, a policy fellow at the institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.childcareaware.org/price-landscape24/\">Child care prices went up 29%\u003c/a> across the country from 2020 to 2024, according to Child Care Aware of America, a national network of child care resource and referral agencies. The prices outpaced overall inflation as increased demand for care collided with a worsening shortage of child care workers, \u003ca href=\"https://kpmg.com/us/en/articles/2025/october-2025-the-great-exit.html\">according to the business firm KPMG\u003c/a>, which noted that women with young children are increasingly working part-time, missing work or \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12061802/how-are-child-care-costs-affecting-the-lives-of-bay-area-families-you-told-us\">leaving the labor force entirely\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071641\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1998px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071641\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251008-CHILDCARE-DISCRIMINATION-MD-05_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1998\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251008-CHILDCARE-DISCRIMINATION-MD-05_qed.jpg 1998w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251008-CHILDCARE-DISCRIMINATION-MD-05_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251008-CHILDCARE-DISCRIMINATION-MD-05_qed-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1998px) 100vw, 1998px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A child care business owner holds one of the younger children attending her home daycare in Manteca on Oct. 8, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Affordability concerns are front and center for American households, and that also means there is a political and policy window of opportunity to take strides,” said Neale Mahoney, an economics professor and director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Economists call child care an example of a market failure because the cost of providing care exceeds what families can afford to pay, resulting in an imbalance between supply and demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Child care for infants and toddlers is harder to come by and costs the most because babies require constant attention. Providers must maintain a low caregiver-to-child ratio, which limits capacity, but have a hard time retaining workers. Policy experts say subsidies can help close the gap between what parents can afford and what it actually costs to provide high-quality care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Specifically, Stanford economists estimate that California could subsidize infant and toddler care for low- and middle-income earners at a cost of between $4 billion to $8 billion per year, or between $12 billion to $21 billion to scale the subsidies to all families.[aside postID=news_12069711 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00057_TV-KQED.jpg']A universal “zero to three” child care program could allow more than 100,000 mothers of young children to join the workforce, they said. Stanford coordinated the publication of its policy brief with another by researchers at the University of California that outlines ways to build up the child care system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.cpip.uci.edu/files/briefs/zero-to-three.pdf\">paper by two early childhood policy experts\u003c/a> at UC Irvine and UC Berkeley lays out more than a dozen suggestions to build a child care system that works for families and child providers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They include consolidating more than a dozen funding streams for child care and simplifying eligibility rules to make it easier for child care providers to enroll families; making Head Start centers eligible for state funding so they can serve more children; cutting fees and easing zoning restrictions to get child care facilities up and running faster; and setting up a comprehensive online portal where families can find the kind of child care they need and providers can respond to market demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“\u003c/strong>We don’t have anybody that’s looking out across California [for child care needs] the way we look at where we should build schools or where we should put bus stops or post offices,” said Jade Jenkins, a professor at UC Irvine’s School of Education. “If we provide families information in this online marketplace to make finding child care as easy as it would be to register for yoga … we could meet families where they are at and draw providers in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said modernizing child care information is one of several low-cost fixes the state can undertake to prepare for expansion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas called California’s cost of living “the single biggest threat to our future” and set up a select committee to focus on child care costs. He said now that California has fully expanded transitional kindergarten, also known as TK, to offer a free year of schooling for all 4-year-olds, it’s time for the legislature to focus on helping families afford child care for the youngest kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071645\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071645\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A day care worker hugs a child in a playroom at her child care facility in San José on Oct. 2, 2023. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The committee held three hearings last year but has yet to propose any solution. At a hearing held in Los Angeles, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article312533574.html\">only one of 13 members of the committee showed up\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the most recent hearing in December, Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, who co-chairs the committee, told KQED that more time is needed to investigate which model of child care expansion works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been working on this ever since I came [to the legislature] in 2016, and I can see that we’ve got more work to do, but we got to do it right, and we just can’t be slapstick,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said the quick buildout of TK led to \u003ca href=\"https://laist.com/news/education/early-childhood-education-pre-k/transitional-kindergarten-public-preschool-affluent-income-report\">unintended consequences\u003c/a>, including the closure of private or nonprofit-based preschools that lost their 4-year-old students to publicly-funded schools and struggled to pivot to serving younger kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/8658266/dc85b370721c\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"900\" height=\"500\" style=\"overflow:hidden\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aguiar-Curry said New Mexico could offer universal child care because it has a smaller population and can draw on oil and gas profits to fund the initiative. That’s harder to do in a big state like California, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ll see how they roll that out,” she said. “I hope that they’re successful and I hope we can all learn from their lessons.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an email message Thursday, Aguiar-Curry said she looks forward to digging into the new reports. In the meantime, she said she’ll keep working with the legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom to follow through on promises to raise reimbursement rates for child care providers participating in the subsidy system and fund up to 200,000 subsidized child care slots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those steps will make a real difference for families across the state, and we’re going to keep pushing to bring costs down,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The soaring cost of child care has recently led states like New Mexico to offer universal child care and cities like New York and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12069711/san-francisco-expands-child-care-subsidies-to-tackle-affordability-issues\">San Francisco to expand\u003c/a> free and low-cost child care to income-eligible families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Could it be done in California?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In two papers published Friday, researchers say, in short: Yes. The state could build upon \u003ca href=\"https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/california-funding-trends-for-early-care-education-programs/\">its ongoing investments in child care\u003c/a> and work toward universal care for infants and toddlers, aged three and under.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cost could reach up to $21 billion per year to subsidize all families, but it would generate as much as $23 billion in economic output — essentially paying for itself — by allowing mothers of young children to rejoin the workforce, according to an analysis by the \u003ca href=\"https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/economics-market-early-childhood-care-and-education-california#15\">Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That is not considering the many other benefits that accrue to the children themselves, to families and to society from having a robust, high-quality, well-functioning early childhood care and education market,” said Chloe Gibbs, a policy fellow at the institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.childcareaware.org/price-landscape24/\">Child care prices went up 29%\u003c/a> across the country from 2020 to 2024, according to Child Care Aware of America, a national network of child care resource and referral agencies. The prices outpaced overall inflation as increased demand for care collided with a worsening shortage of child care workers, \u003ca href=\"https://kpmg.com/us/en/articles/2025/october-2025-the-great-exit.html\">according to the business firm KPMG\u003c/a>, which noted that women with young children are increasingly working part-time, missing work or \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12061802/how-are-child-care-costs-affecting-the-lives-of-bay-area-families-you-told-us\">leaving the labor force entirely\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071641\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1998px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071641\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251008-CHILDCARE-DISCRIMINATION-MD-05_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1998\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251008-CHILDCARE-DISCRIMINATION-MD-05_qed.jpg 1998w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251008-CHILDCARE-DISCRIMINATION-MD-05_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251008-CHILDCARE-DISCRIMINATION-MD-05_qed-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1998px) 100vw, 1998px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A child care business owner holds one of the younger children attending her home daycare in Manteca on Oct. 8, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Affordability concerns are front and center for American households, and that also means there is a political and policy window of opportunity to take strides,” said Neale Mahoney, an economics professor and director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Economists call child care an example of a market failure because the cost of providing care exceeds what families can afford to pay, resulting in an imbalance between supply and demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Child care for infants and toddlers is harder to come by and costs the most because babies require constant attention. Providers must maintain a low caregiver-to-child ratio, which limits capacity, but have a hard time retaining workers. Policy experts say subsidies can help close the gap between what parents can afford and what it actually costs to provide high-quality care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Specifically, Stanford economists estimate that California could subsidize infant and toddler care for low- and middle-income earners at a cost of between $4 billion to $8 billion per year, or between $12 billion to $21 billion to scale the subsidies to all families.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>A universal “zero to three” child care program could allow more than 100,000 mothers of young children to join the workforce, they said. Stanford coordinated the publication of its policy brief with another by researchers at the University of California that outlines ways to build up the child care system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.cpip.uci.edu/files/briefs/zero-to-three.pdf\">paper by two early childhood policy experts\u003c/a> at UC Irvine and UC Berkeley lays out more than a dozen suggestions to build a child care system that works for families and child providers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They include consolidating more than a dozen funding streams for child care and simplifying eligibility rules to make it easier for child care providers to enroll families; making Head Start centers eligible for state funding so they can serve more children; cutting fees and easing zoning restrictions to get child care facilities up and running faster; and setting up a comprehensive online portal where families can find the kind of child care they need and providers can respond to market demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“\u003c/strong>We don’t have anybody that’s looking out across California [for child care needs] the way we look at where we should build schools or where we should put bus stops or post offices,” said Jade Jenkins, a professor at UC Irvine’s School of Education. “If we provide families information in this online marketplace to make finding child care as easy as it would be to register for yoga … we could meet families where they are at and draw providers in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said modernizing child care information is one of several low-cost fixes the state can undertake to prepare for expansion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas called California’s cost of living “the single biggest threat to our future” and set up a select committee to focus on child care costs. He said now that California has fully expanded transitional kindergarten, also known as TK, to offer a free year of schooling for all 4-year-olds, it’s time for the legislature to focus on helping families afford child care for the youngest kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071645\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071645\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A day care worker hugs a child in a playroom at her child care facility in San José on Oct. 2, 2023. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The committee held three hearings last year but has yet to propose any solution. At a hearing held in Los Angeles, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article312533574.html\">only one of 13 members of the committee showed up\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the most recent hearing in December, Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, who co-chairs the committee, told KQED that more time is needed to investigate which model of child care expansion works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been working on this ever since I came [to the legislature] in 2016, and I can see that we’ve got more work to do, but we got to do it right, and we just can’t be slapstick,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said the quick buildout of TK led to \u003ca href=\"https://laist.com/news/education/early-childhood-education-pre-k/transitional-kindergarten-public-preschool-affluent-income-report\">unintended consequences\u003c/a>, including the closure of private or nonprofit-based preschools that lost their 4-year-old students to publicly-funded schools and struggled to pivot to serving younger kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/8658266/dc85b370721c\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"900\" height=\"500\" style=\"overflow:hidden\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aguiar-Curry said New Mexico could offer universal child care because it has a smaller population and can draw on oil and gas profits to fund the initiative. That’s harder to do in a big state like California, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ll see how they roll that out,” she said. “I hope that they’re successful and I hope we can all learn from their lessons.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an email message Thursday, Aguiar-Curry said she looks forward to digging into the new reports. In the meantime, she said she’ll keep working with the legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom to follow through on promises to raise reimbursement rates for child care providers participating in the subsidy system and fund up to 200,000 subsidized child care slots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those steps will make a real difference for families across the state, and we’re going to keep pushing to bring costs down,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>When her almost 3-year-old daughter started going to a Spanish-language preschool in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> this month, Sarah Klevan’s child care expenses doubled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just two afternoons per week of early learning costs $575 per month, but when tacked on to after-school programs, Klevan and her husband are already paying for their 6-year-old son, there was little room left in their budget for anything else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next to the mortgage, child care takes a big chunk of the couple’s monthly expenses, even when she and her husband earn six figures as a policy researcher and public school librarian, respectively.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re really lucky to have family nearby [to provide backup care],” she said. “I really don’t think it would not be feasible for us to live here otherwise.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco is trying to make life a little more affordable for middle- and upper-middle-income earners like them by expanding access to child care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12069997\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12069997\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00041_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00041_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00041_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00041_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sarah Klevan (right), a mother of two, gets her daughter Bea (left) ready to be picked up by her grandpa in San Francisco on Jan. 15, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Under a plan Mayor Daniel Lurie announced Wednesday, parents who earn up to $311,000 per year for a family of four, or 200% of the area median income, will qualify for 50% discount at \u003ca href=\"https://sfdec.org/early-learning-for-all/\">more than 500 city-funded early childhood education and care programs\u003c/a> starting in July.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And a family of four earning less than $233,000 per year, or up to 150% of the area median income, will immediately qualify for free child care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is going to remove a huge burden for working parents,” Lurie said Thursday at his state of the city speech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He acknowledged that a family of four needs to earn over $160,000 a year just to meet their basic needs, and vowed to make San Francisco the first major city in the nation to offer universal access to child care.[aside postID=news_12069608 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/019_KQED_RichmondHousing_08162022_qed.jpg']“Families are being forced to make impossible choices — delaying having children, sacrificing savings, or leaving the communities they call home,” he said. “I will not let that be the future of San Francisco.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The news offered relief for Klevan, who qualifies for child care subsidies under the new eligibility requirement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It would be a huge difference for our family,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The subsidies will help her pay for more hours of preschool for her daughter, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than $550 million in unspent money and ongoing funds from a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11948690/business-tax-provides-crucial-funding-for-early-childhood-education-and-care-in-san-francisco\">commercial real estate tax that voters approved in 2018\u003c/a> will pay for the expanded subsidies. The goal of the tax measure, dubbed Baby Prop C, was to provide early education and care for all children under 5 years old. But revenue from the measure was tied up by a lawsuit that was resolved in 2021.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The city began by first offering free child care to low-income families, then tuition assistance to families earning between 111% to 150% of the area median income.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plan also called for increasing the eligibility threshold to cover families making up to 200% of the area median income, but the city didn’t offer a timeline. That left some child care advocates \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/education/baby-prop-c-expansion-500-million/article_f77319e4-6693-44bb-a9b2-8b229d04910d.html\">frustrated by the pace of the city’s ambitious plan to offer universal child care.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Supervisor Stephen Sherill had previously requested a Feb. 4 hearing with the city’s Department of Early Childhood to ask whether the expansion could happen sooner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12069996\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12069996\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00006_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00006_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00006_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00006_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sarah Klevan (top left), and her husband Dylan Beighley (top right) finish up house chores before sending their children Emmett (bottom left) and Bea (bottom right) off to school in San Francisco on Jan. 15, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“One of the biggest expenses for young families is child care, some paying $3,000 a month per child in some cases,” he said Wednesday. “That is a crazy amount because that’s after taxes. That is a massive expense.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sherill also cited concerns about how the department is getting the word out to families about their eligibility for the subsidies. After San Francisco expanded them to families earning up to 150% of the area median income in May 2024, only about 200 families signed up, according to data provided by Wu Yee Children’s Services, which is responsible for enrolling eligible families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s a comically low number,” he said. “Does every pediatrician’s office know about this, and are they telling their patients? Does everyone who leaves the maternity ward in San Francisco get information about this? When a family signs up online for a slot, are they informed of this subsidy?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sherill asked, “If not enough people take advantage, then what is the point of this program?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Jan. 15, 2026, to correct Klevan’s monthly child care expenses and include additional quotes from Lurie. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "The city is using more than $550 million in unspent money and ongoing funds from a commercial real estate tax to pay for child care subsidies. Mayor Daniel Lurie on Thursday vowed to make San Francisco the first major U.S. city to make sure every family has access to child care.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When her almost 3-year-old daughter started going to a Spanish-language preschool in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> this month, Sarah Klevan’s child care expenses doubled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just two afternoons per week of early learning costs $575 per month, but when tacked on to after-school programs, Klevan and her husband are already paying for their 6-year-old son, there was little room left in their budget for anything else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next to the mortgage, child care takes a big chunk of the couple’s monthly expenses, even when she and her husband earn six figures as a policy researcher and public school librarian, respectively.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re really lucky to have family nearby [to provide backup care],” she said. “I really don’t think it would not be feasible for us to live here otherwise.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco is trying to make life a little more affordable for middle- and upper-middle-income earners like them by expanding access to child care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12069997\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12069997\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00041_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00041_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00041_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00041_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sarah Klevan (right), a mother of two, gets her daughter Bea (left) ready to be picked up by her grandpa in San Francisco on Jan. 15, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Under a plan Mayor Daniel Lurie announced Wednesday, parents who earn up to $311,000 per year for a family of four, or 200% of the area median income, will qualify for 50% discount at \u003ca href=\"https://sfdec.org/early-learning-for-all/\">more than 500 city-funded early childhood education and care programs\u003c/a> starting in July.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And a family of four earning less than $233,000 per year, or up to 150% of the area median income, will immediately qualify for free child care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is going to remove a huge burden for working parents,” Lurie said Thursday at his state of the city speech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He acknowledged that a family of four needs to earn over $160,000 a year just to meet their basic needs, and vowed to make San Francisco the first major city in the nation to offer universal access to child care.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Families are being forced to make impossible choices — delaying having children, sacrificing savings, or leaving the communities they call home,” he said. “I will not let that be the future of San Francisco.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The news offered relief for Klevan, who qualifies for child care subsidies under the new eligibility requirement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It would be a huge difference for our family,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The subsidies will help her pay for more hours of preschool for her daughter, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than $550 million in unspent money and ongoing funds from a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11948690/business-tax-provides-crucial-funding-for-early-childhood-education-and-care-in-san-francisco\">commercial real estate tax that voters approved in 2018\u003c/a> will pay for the expanded subsidies. The goal of the tax measure, dubbed Baby Prop C, was to provide early education and care for all children under 5 years old. But revenue from the measure was tied up by a lawsuit that was resolved in 2021.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The city began by first offering free child care to low-income families, then tuition assistance to families earning between 111% to 150% of the area median income.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plan also called for increasing the eligibility threshold to cover families making up to 200% of the area median income, but the city didn’t offer a timeline. That left some child care advocates \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/education/baby-prop-c-expansion-500-million/article_f77319e4-6693-44bb-a9b2-8b229d04910d.html\">frustrated by the pace of the city’s ambitious plan to offer universal child care.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Supervisor Stephen Sherill had previously requested a Feb. 4 hearing with the city’s Department of Early Childhood to ask whether the expansion could happen sooner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12069996\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12069996\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00006_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00006_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00006_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00006_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sarah Klevan (top left), and her husband Dylan Beighley (top right) finish up house chores before sending their children Emmett (bottom left) and Bea (bottom right) off to school in San Francisco on Jan. 15, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“One of the biggest expenses for young families is child care, some paying $3,000 a month per child in some cases,” he said Wednesday. “That is a crazy amount because that’s after taxes. That is a massive expense.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sherill also cited concerns about how the department is getting the word out to families about their eligibility for the subsidies. After San Francisco expanded them to families earning up to 150% of the area median income in May 2024, only about 200 families signed up, according to data provided by Wu Yee Children’s Services, which is responsible for enrolling eligible families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s a comically low number,” he said. “Does every pediatrician’s office know about this, and are they telling their patients? Does everyone who leaves the maternity ward in San Francisco get information about this? When a family signs up online for a slot, are they informed of this subsidy?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sherill asked, “If not enough people take advantage, then what is the point of this program?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Jan. 15, 2026, to correct Klevan’s monthly child care expenses and include additional quotes from Lurie. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "californias-cost-of-living-keeps-climbing-how-are-you-coping",
"title": "California’s Cost of Living Keeps Climbing — How Are You Coping?",
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"content": "\u003cp>Californians are no strangers to compromise. Living here has long meant paying more for rent, mortgages, utilities, gas, child care — even groceries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In exchange, we’ve been rewarded with breathtaking natural beauty, a robust economy and a vibrant cultural scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as costs continue to rise, the payoff hasn’t proven to be enough for a growing number of people. Since 2016, in every year except one, more people have \u003ca href=\"https://dof.ca.gov/forecasting/demographics/estimates/E-2/#:~:text=Net%20domestic%20migration%20from%20California,loss%20of%20over%2089%2C000%20residents.\">moved out of California\u003c/a> than moved in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Are you feeling the pinch? Share your story with KQED by leaving us a voicemail at 415-553-2115 or \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe5v6Atf-zIWjJr8ZXgyOmDSRVu2kSdv4_RdPTIWLdBmnVoXg/viewform?usp=header\">\u003cstrong>\u003cem>clicking here\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For those who have stayed in California, many expenses have only gotten worse. Monthly payments for a newly purchased mid-tier home have climbed a whopping 74% from just under $3,200 in Jan. 2020 to more than $5,500 in Sept. 2025, according to the \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/793\">state’s Legislative Analysts’ Office\u003c/a>.[aside postID=science_1999400 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2025/11/20251105_HIGH-ELECTRICITY-BILLS_GH-17-KQED.jpg']Meanwhile, rents in California continue to outpace the nation, with real estate listings website Zillow reporting that a median one-bedroom goes for around $2,100 a month, 40% higher than the national average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These high costs are increasingly forcing painful trade-offs. Kenya Brown, who lives in Bay Point, sent her four youngest kids to spend time at her oldest son’s apartment because she was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1999400/bay-area-electricity-bills-are-some-of-the-highest-where-does-your-money-go\">unable to pay\u003c/a> her utility bills. Davis resident Carin Lenk Sloane is considering leaving the country due to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1999325/we-cant-afford-to-stay-californians-weigh-drastic-moves-as-health-premiums-rise\">rising health insurance\u003c/a> premiums.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12061802/how-are-child-care-costs-affecting-the-lives-of-bay-area-families-you-told-us\">KQED reader survey\u003c/a>, one parent said child care costs more than her mortgage, while another said her family was putting off buying a home altogether to afford day care for her infant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, tell us, what trade-offs are you making? Maybe you’ve taken on a side hustle or two. Perhaps you’re leaning on your community more or eating out less. Big or small, we want to know how you’re making your life more affordable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe5v6Atf-zIWjJr8ZXgyOmDSRVu2kSdv4_RdPTIWLdBmnVoXg/viewform?usp=header\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Californians are no strangers to compromise. Living here has long meant paying more for rent, mortgages, utilities, gas, child care — even groceries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In exchange, we’ve been rewarded with breathtaking natural beauty, a robust economy and a vibrant cultural scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as costs continue to rise, the payoff hasn’t proven to be enough for a growing number of people. Since 2016, in every year except one, more people have \u003ca href=\"https://dof.ca.gov/forecasting/demographics/estimates/E-2/#:~:text=Net%20domestic%20migration%20from%20California,loss%20of%20over%2089%2C000%20residents.\">moved out of California\u003c/a> than moved in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Are you feeling the pinch? Share your story with KQED by leaving us a voicemail at 415-553-2115 or \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe5v6Atf-zIWjJr8ZXgyOmDSRVu2kSdv4_RdPTIWLdBmnVoXg/viewform?usp=header\">\u003cstrong>\u003cem>clicking here\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For those who have stayed in California, many expenses have only gotten worse. Monthly payments for a newly purchased mid-tier home have climbed a whopping 74% from just under $3,200 in Jan. 2020 to more than $5,500 in Sept. 2025, according to the \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/793\">state’s Legislative Analysts’ Office\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Meanwhile, rents in California continue to outpace the nation, with real estate listings website Zillow reporting that a median one-bedroom goes for around $2,100 a month, 40% higher than the national average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These high costs are increasingly forcing painful trade-offs. Kenya Brown, who lives in Bay Point, sent her four youngest kids to spend time at her oldest son’s apartment because she was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1999400/bay-area-electricity-bills-are-some-of-the-highest-where-does-your-money-go\">unable to pay\u003c/a> her utility bills. Davis resident Carin Lenk Sloane is considering leaving the country due to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1999325/we-cant-afford-to-stay-californians-weigh-drastic-moves-as-health-premiums-rise\">rising health insurance\u003c/a> premiums.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12061802/how-are-child-care-costs-affecting-the-lives-of-bay-area-families-you-told-us\">KQED reader survey\u003c/a>, one parent said child care costs more than her mortgage, while another said her family was putting off buying a home altogether to afford day care for her infant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, tell us, what trade-offs are you making? Maybe you’ve taken on a side hustle or two. Perhaps you’re leaning on your community more or eating out less. Big or small, we want to know how you’re making your life more affordable.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cdiv class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__shortcodes__shortcodeWrapper'>\n \u003ciframe\n src='https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe5v6Atf-zIWjJr8ZXgyOmDSRVu2kSdv4_RdPTIWLdBmnVoXg/viewform?usp=header?embedded=true'\n title='https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe5v6Atf-zIWjJr8ZXgyOmDSRVu2kSdv4_RdPTIWLdBmnVoXg/viewform?usp=header'\n width='760' height='500'\n frameborder='0'\n marginheight='0' marginwidth='0'>\u003c/iframe>\u003c/div>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12068953/trump-pauses-funding-to-child-care-calworks-in-california-over-alleged-fraud\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">freezing more than $10 billion\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in child care and welfare funding for California and four other states led by Democratic governors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The decision came a day after the states sued to stop the administration’s decision to \u003ca href=\"https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/hhs-freezes-child-care-family-assistance-grants-five-states-fraud-concerns.html\">freeze three funds\u003c/a> — \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the Child Care and Development Fund, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Social Services Block Grant \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">—\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> which provide cash assistance, child care subsidies and other social services to lower-income households. About $5 billion of those funds go to California.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Attorney General Rob Bonta, along with the top lawyers for New York, Minnesota, Illinois and Colorado argued that freezing the money would jeopardize some of their states’ most critical anti-poverty programs and that they were already experiencing delays in accessing it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The federal Administration for Children and Families told the states on Tuesday it would restrict access to these funds because it “has reason to believe” the money was fraudulently going to noncitizens. The department gave the states two weeks to submit documentation, like attendance records at child care programs, to justify their spending before they can access the money. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The funding freeze stems from a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/01/01/nx-s1-5661705/trump-administration-freezes-child-care-funds-in-minnesota-after-claims-of-fraud\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">video from a conservative influencer \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">claiming without evidence that child care centers operated by Somali residents in Minnesota committed fraud. The allegation prompted the ACF to suggest \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://acf.gov/media/press/2026/hhs-close-biden-era-loophole-child-care\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">tightening rules around how federal child care funds get distributed\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, like paying child care programs based on attendance instead of enrollment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“This is about nothing more than a president seeking to punish democratic-led states that have taken a stand against his bluster, his bullying, and his blatant and brazen lawlessness,” Bonta said Friday. “This is about a president and administration crying fraud without even attempting to provide any proof to back up the claims.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The temporary restraining order also blocks the Trump administration’s request for documents. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">California uses the funds to provide temporary cash assistance to families in need, and to support foster care and child welfare services. The state also uses the Child Care and Development fund to provide subsidized child care for lower-income families.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12068953/trump-pauses-funding-to-child-care-calworks-in-california-over-alleged-fraud\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">freezing more than $10 billion\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in child care and welfare funding for California and four other states led by Democratic governors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The decision came a day after the states sued to stop the administration’s decision to \u003ca href=\"https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/hhs-freezes-child-care-family-assistance-grants-five-states-fraud-concerns.html\">freeze three funds\u003c/a> — \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the Child Care and Development Fund, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Social Services Block Grant \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">—\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> which provide cash assistance, child care subsidies and other social services to lower-income households. About $5 billion of those funds go to California.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Attorney General Rob Bonta, along with the top lawyers for New York, Minnesota, Illinois and Colorado argued that freezing the money would jeopardize some of their states’ most critical anti-poverty programs and that they were already experiencing delays in accessing it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The federal Administration for Children and Families told the states on Tuesday it would restrict access to these funds because it “has reason to believe” the money was fraudulently going to noncitizens. The department gave the states two weeks to submit documentation, like attendance records at child care programs, to justify their spending before they can access the money. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The funding freeze stems from a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/01/01/nx-s1-5661705/trump-administration-freezes-child-care-funds-in-minnesota-after-claims-of-fraud\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">video from a conservative influencer \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">claiming without evidence that child care centers operated by Somali residents in Minnesota committed fraud. The allegation prompted the ACF to suggest \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://acf.gov/media/press/2026/hhs-close-biden-era-loophole-child-care\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">tightening rules around how federal child care funds get distributed\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, like paying child care programs based on attendance instead of enrollment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“This is about nothing more than a president seeking to punish democratic-led states that have taken a stand against his bluster, his bullying, and his blatant and brazen lawlessness,” Bonta said Friday. “This is about a president and administration crying fraud without even attempting to provide any proof to back up the claims.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The temporary restraining order also blocks the Trump administration’s request for documents. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">California uses the funds to provide temporary cash assistance to families in need, and to support foster care and child welfare services. The state also uses the Child Care and Development fund to provide subsidized child care for lower-income families.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "trump-pauses-funding-to-child-care-calworks-in-california-over-alleged-fraud",
"title": "Trump Pauses Funding to Child Care, CalWORKS in California Over Alleged Fraud",
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"headTitle": "Trump Pauses Funding to Child Care, CalWORKS in California Over Alleged Fraud | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>The Trump administration said \u003ca href=\"https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/hhs-freezes-child-care-family-assistance-grants-five-states-fraud-concerns.html\">it’s freezing more than $10 billion in federal funds\u003c/a> for child care subsidies, social services and cash aid for low-income families in California and four other blue states until tighter restrictions are met.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In letters sent late Tuesday to Gov. Gavin Newsom and the leaders of Minnesota, New York, Illinois and Colorado, officials from the Administration for Children and Families said the department would restrict access to three funds — including one that helps pay for CalWORKs, California’s welfare program for families — because it “has reason to believe” the benefits were fraudulently going to noncitizens. The letters did not outline evidence of fraud.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The administration demanded that the states submit documentation, like attendance records at child care programs, and justify their spending before they could access the funds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It may take some time to see any potential impact because the funds are rolled out incrementally, and California outmatches federal dollars to pay for its child care programs. In the current state budget, $2.2 billion in federal dollars go towards California’s $7.3-billion spending on child care, according to H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Finance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, representatives from the California Department of Social Services said the funds are critical lifelines to low-income parents to help them afford safe, reliable child care so they can go to work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The state of California aggressively investigates and prosecutes fraud,” department spokesman Jason Montiel said. “Using unsupported allegations to withhold child care funding only from states that didn’t vote for the president doesn’t stop fraud — it harms struggling moms and dads, President Trump claims to be fighting for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12069031\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12069031\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/020_SanFrancisco_AlexPadillaMissionKids_06012021_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/020_SanFrancisco_AlexPadillaMissionKids_06012021_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/020_SanFrancisco_AlexPadillaMissionKids_06012021_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/020_SanFrancisco_AlexPadillaMissionKids_06012021_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Children at Mission Kids Preschool in San Francisco raise their hands to ask Senator Alex Padilla a question on June 1, 2021. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Max Arias, leader of a union representing some 70,000 in-home child care providers in California, said he feared any loss of funding could hobble an already unstable child care system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sudden changes to child care access caused by freezes have the potential to ravage our economy and force employers to face unpredictable workforce shortages,” Arias, chairperson of Child Care Providers United, said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The funding freeze stems from a \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/01/01/nx-s1-5661705/trump-administration-freezes-child-care-funds-in-minnesota-after-claims-of-fraud\">video from a conservative influencer \u003c/a>claiming without evidence that child care centers operated by Somali residents in Minnesota committed fraud. The allegation prompted the ACF to suggest \u003ca href=\"https://acf.gov/media/press/2026/hhs-close-biden-era-loophole-child-care\">tightening rules around how federal child care funds get distributed\u003c/a>, like paying child care programs based on attendance instead of enrollment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12027906/local-head-start-program-scrambles-to-keep-supporting-kids-amid-trumps-funding-freezes\">a similar funding freeze to Head Start grantees\u003c/a> caused payment delays to dozens of local programs.[aside postID=news_12065196 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251120-FAMILIESFINANCIALINSECURITY-23-BL-KQED.jpg']Advocates said they were alarmed that the federal administration would pause funding to programs that assist children and families over an unsubstantiated video.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We do not believe this is a responsible way to govern, and we expect California leaders to stand up for our kids, families and providers,” said Stacy Lee, a child care policy expert at Children Now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the leader of a Bay Area nonprofit that provides subsidized child care to about 4,000 low-income families in the Bay Area said he won’t let the funding freeze disrupt services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our families can rely on us, our staff can rely on us to be there,” Scott Moore, CEO of Kidango, told KQED in a phone interview on Tuesday. He mentioned that state workers were just in his office to audit enrollment files as part of their routine inspections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is one way that the state ensures that we’re following all the regulations,” he said, adding that Kidango has a staff dedicated to meeting enrollment and attendance standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While we always put children first, we also ensure that the public money that goes to supporting low-income, working families is well spent and it’s protected,” Moore said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, to reflect additional information provided by California’s Department of Finance.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The Trump administration said \u003ca href=\"https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/hhs-freezes-child-care-family-assistance-grants-five-states-fraud-concerns.html\">it’s freezing more than $10 billion in federal funds\u003c/a> for child care subsidies, social services and cash aid for low-income families in California and four other blue states until tighter restrictions are met.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In letters sent late Tuesday to Gov. Gavin Newsom and the leaders of Minnesota, New York, Illinois and Colorado, officials from the Administration for Children and Families said the department would restrict access to three funds — including one that helps pay for CalWORKs, California’s welfare program for families — because it “has reason to believe” the benefits were fraudulently going to noncitizens. The letters did not outline evidence of fraud.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The administration demanded that the states submit documentation, like attendance records at child care programs, and justify their spending before they could access the funds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It may take some time to see any potential impact because the funds are rolled out incrementally, and California outmatches federal dollars to pay for its child care programs. In the current state budget, $2.2 billion in federal dollars go towards California’s $7.3-billion spending on child care, according to H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Finance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, representatives from the California Department of Social Services said the funds are critical lifelines to low-income parents to help them afford safe, reliable child care so they can go to work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The state of California aggressively investigates and prosecutes fraud,” department spokesman Jason Montiel said. “Using unsupported allegations to withhold child care funding only from states that didn’t vote for the president doesn’t stop fraud — it harms struggling moms and dads, President Trump claims to be fighting for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12069031\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12069031\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/020_SanFrancisco_AlexPadillaMissionKids_06012021_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/020_SanFrancisco_AlexPadillaMissionKids_06012021_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/020_SanFrancisco_AlexPadillaMissionKids_06012021_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/020_SanFrancisco_AlexPadillaMissionKids_06012021_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Children at Mission Kids Preschool in San Francisco raise their hands to ask Senator Alex Padilla a question on June 1, 2021. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Max Arias, leader of a union representing some 70,000 in-home child care providers in California, said he feared any loss of funding could hobble an already unstable child care system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sudden changes to child care access caused by freezes have the potential to ravage our economy and force employers to face unpredictable workforce shortages,” Arias, chairperson of Child Care Providers United, said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The funding freeze stems from a \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/01/01/nx-s1-5661705/trump-administration-freezes-child-care-funds-in-minnesota-after-claims-of-fraud\">video from a conservative influencer \u003c/a>claiming without evidence that child care centers operated by Somali residents in Minnesota committed fraud. The allegation prompted the ACF to suggest \u003ca href=\"https://acf.gov/media/press/2026/hhs-close-biden-era-loophole-child-care\">tightening rules around how federal child care funds get distributed\u003c/a>, like paying child care programs based on attendance instead of enrollment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12027906/local-head-start-program-scrambles-to-keep-supporting-kids-amid-trumps-funding-freezes\">a similar funding freeze to Head Start grantees\u003c/a> caused payment delays to dozens of local programs.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Advocates said they were alarmed that the federal administration would pause funding to programs that assist children and families over an unsubstantiated video.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We do not believe this is a responsible way to govern, and we expect California leaders to stand up for our kids, families and providers,” said Stacy Lee, a child care policy expert at Children Now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the leader of a Bay Area nonprofit that provides subsidized child care to about 4,000 low-income families in the Bay Area said he won’t let the funding freeze disrupt services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our families can rely on us, our staff can rely on us to be there,” Scott Moore, CEO of Kidango, told KQED in a phone interview on Tuesday. He mentioned that state workers were just in his office to audit enrollment files as part of their routine inspections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is one way that the state ensures that we’re following all the regulations,” he said, adding that Kidango has a staff dedicated to meeting enrollment and attendance standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While we always put children first, we also ensure that the public money that goes to supporting low-income, working families is well spent and it’s protected,” Moore said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, to reflect additional information provided by California’s Department of Finance.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Santa Cruz County Head Start to be Run by New Agency, Following Shutdown Crisis",
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"content": "\u003cp>The agency that operates the only \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/head-start\">Head Start\u003c/a> program in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/santa-cruz\">Santa Cruz\u003c/a> County is stepping away, paving the way for a federal contractor to take over and reopen classrooms for more than 200 families who have been without child care for a month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Encompass Community Services \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12063796/government-reopens-but-santa-cruz-head-start-families-still-face-child-care-crisis\">shuttered classrooms and laid off 95 teachers and staffers\u003c/a> on Oct. 31 after running low on cash. The agency was due to receive a fresh batch of funds on Nov. 1, but the 43-day federal government shutdown delayed the payments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In response to the extended federal shutdown, the delayed funding decisions, and the urgent need for stability for the families we serve, we concluded that stepping away from this grant now is the most responsible way to ensure that Head Start services resume as quickly as possible,” the agency’s interim CEO, Kim Morrison, wrote in a letter to parents on Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said when the government reopened, the federal Office of Head Start gave Encompass 72 hours to meet “a set of unrealistic requirements” in order to receive payments. They include a new operational plan and budget to provide care for more than 400 children. Morrison said Encompass was serving under 250 children before the shutdown and didn’t have enough staff to safely meet that demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Encompass was initially awarded $10 million to serve about 420 children, but since the pandemic, it and other Head Start programs have seen a decline in enrollment and struggled with staff turnover.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12044135\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12044135\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/250610-HEADSTARTPROGRAMS-01-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/250610-HEADSTARTPROGRAMS-01-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/250610-HEADSTARTPROGRAMS-01-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/250610-HEADSTARTPROGRAMS-01-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students play on the playground outside a Head Start in Hollister, California, on June 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“This is not the outcome we wanted; however, this decision is a painful but necessary step to ensure that early education services continue in our community,” she wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Office of Head Start appointed the nonprofit Community Development Institute to temporarily run Head Start services in Santa Cruz County until it conducts a bidding process for a new grant. The contractor plans to announce a timeline for reopening next week, Morrison said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Email messages to the institute and the Office of Head Start were not immediately returned on Tuesday.[aside postID=news_12063796 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-1-KQED.jpg']The union representing the laid-off staff said they haven’t heard from them either, but they’ll work closely with the Office of Head Start to ensure a smooth transition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our focus is restoring high-quality early childhood education as quickly as possible and ensuring SEIU 521 members can return to the work they love,” the union said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Local nonprofits, community action agencies or school districts typically operate Head Start programs. The Office of Head Start administers grant funding and provides oversight to the local operators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Morrison said that by walking away, Encompass can compete for a new grant to operate Head Start programs in the county again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Santa Cruz County Office of Education, which gave some money to help keep the Head Start program operating through the month of October, is looking into bidding for the grant, Faris Sabbah, the county Superintendent of Schools, said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s important for us to know that the programs are gonna be in the right hands,” he said. “I do have to say, though, that this is part of a pattern of our federal government to strip away our safety net systems by making it more difficult for us to provide services to our most vulnerable communities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The agency that operates the only \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/head-start\">Head Start\u003c/a> program in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/santa-cruz\">Santa Cruz\u003c/a> County is stepping away, paving the way for a federal contractor to take over and reopen classrooms for more than 200 families who have been without child care for a month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Encompass Community Services \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12063796/government-reopens-but-santa-cruz-head-start-families-still-face-child-care-crisis\">shuttered classrooms and laid off 95 teachers and staffers\u003c/a> on Oct. 31 after running low on cash. The agency was due to receive a fresh batch of funds on Nov. 1, but the 43-day federal government shutdown delayed the payments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In response to the extended federal shutdown, the delayed funding decisions, and the urgent need for stability for the families we serve, we concluded that stepping away from this grant now is the most responsible way to ensure that Head Start services resume as quickly as possible,” the agency’s interim CEO, Kim Morrison, wrote in a letter to parents on Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said when the government reopened, the federal Office of Head Start gave Encompass 72 hours to meet “a set of unrealistic requirements” in order to receive payments. They include a new operational plan and budget to provide care for more than 400 children. Morrison said Encompass was serving under 250 children before the shutdown and didn’t have enough staff to safely meet that demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Encompass was initially awarded $10 million to serve about 420 children, but since the pandemic, it and other Head Start programs have seen a decline in enrollment and struggled with staff turnover.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12044135\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12044135\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/250610-HEADSTARTPROGRAMS-01-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/250610-HEADSTARTPROGRAMS-01-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/250610-HEADSTARTPROGRAMS-01-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/06/250610-HEADSTARTPROGRAMS-01-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students play on the playground outside a Head Start in Hollister, California, on June 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“This is not the outcome we wanted; however, this decision is a painful but necessary step to ensure that early education services continue in our community,” she wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Office of Head Start appointed the nonprofit Community Development Institute to temporarily run Head Start services in Santa Cruz County until it conducts a bidding process for a new grant. The contractor plans to announce a timeline for reopening next week, Morrison said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Email messages to the institute and the Office of Head Start were not immediately returned on Tuesday.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The union representing the laid-off staff said they haven’t heard from them either, but they’ll work closely with the Office of Head Start to ensure a smooth transition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our focus is restoring high-quality early childhood education as quickly as possible and ensuring SEIU 521 members can return to the work they love,” the union said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Local nonprofits, community action agencies or school districts typically operate Head Start programs. The Office of Head Start administers grant funding and provides oversight to the local operators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Morrison said that by walking away, Encompass can compete for a new grant to operate Head Start programs in the county again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Santa Cruz County Office of Education, which gave some money to help keep the Head Start program operating through the month of October, is looking into bidding for the grant, Faris Sabbah, the county Superintendent of Schools, said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s important for us to know that the programs are gonna be in the right hands,” he said. “I do have to say, though, that this is part of a pattern of our federal government to strip away our safety net systems by making it more difficult for us to provide services to our most vulnerable communities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "government-reopens-but-santa-cruz-head-start-families-still-face-child-care-crisis",
"title": "Government Reopens, but Santa Cruz Head Start Families Still Face Child Care Crisis",
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"content": "\u003cp>Iracema Torres was starting a new job as a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/santa-cruz\">Santa Cruz\u003c/a> County public health worker when her daughter’s Head Start center closed more than two weeks ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The job was promising: She liked the benefits, hours and coworkers and felt good about helping single parents like herself recover from substance abuse, domestic violence and other life struggles. The center’s closure, however, meant she had to take an unpaid leave to care for her 2-year-old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I am just stuck because I don’t have anyone to help me with child care,” Torres said. “It’s been super hard.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The government was starting to reopen on Thursday, but the fallout of the longest shutdown in U.S. history will last longer for more than 200 low-income families who send their children to a Head Start program run by Encompass Community Services, the largest nonprofit in Santa Cruz County, and 95 teachers and staffers who were laid off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Encompass was the only Head Start grantee in California to close its classrooms during the shutdown after running low on government dollars. The agency was due to receive its annual funding on Nov. 1, but staff at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services were furloughed and couldn’t process payments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those federal workers are back at work, but it was unclear when Encompass will get funding to restart its program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12064105\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12064105\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Daisy1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Daisy1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Daisy1-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Daisy1-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A shuttered Head Start center. \u003ccite>(Daisy Nguyen/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We’re preparing to reopen, but we don’t know when that’s going to be,” said Kim Morrison, the agency’s chief financial officer and interim CEO.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She didn’t know the timeline because about 140 other Head Start programs around the country are also awaiting new funding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When KQED asked a spokesperson for the federal Administration for Children and Families how long it may take for money to flow to Head Start grantees, they acknowledged the inquiry but did not have an immediate answer.[aside postID=news_12061802 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251027-CHILD-CARE-PRICES-MD-05-1-KQED.jpg']Adding to the uncertainty is that Congress approved a spending package that funds the government only through January. It’s unclear whether programs like Encompass will be fully or partially funded, said Melanee Cottrill, executive director of Head Start California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s also a possibility at the end of January that we’ll be facing down another shutdown, which would be devastating,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Encompass leadership tried to minimize the impact by partnering with the Pajaro Valley Unified District in Watsonville to temporarily care for Head Start children starting this week. The district held a job fair to try to bring Encompass employees on board. So far, about 20 families have opted in, Morrison said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But laid-off teachers like Christina Mesta worry the partnership puts the agency’s federal grant at risk. The school district leases classrooms to Encompass to operate the program, and Mesta asserts that the materials and equipment in those classrooms hold federal interest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without getting government approval of the partnership, she said, “they may take away the grant entirely, which would put the staff without jobs and families without services.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a lot at stake because of this,” Mesta said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12064015\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12064015\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-9-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-9-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-9-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-9-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Iracema Torres plays with her daughter, Cataleya, at their Santa Cruz home on Nov. 12, 2025. The family is among more than 250 affected by the temporary closure of Head Start classrooms during the federal shutdown. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Morrison said the agency notified the Office of Head Start of the partnership and worked to ensure the arrangement is temporary, and that families and teachers who choose to go to those classrooms can come back to Head Start.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are comfortable that we are not violating any kind of regulations that Head Start has in doing this,” Morrison said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The uncertainty weighs on Torres. She has less than a month to find another child care arrangement before returning to work. She said she has looked for openings at private child care centers, but the $1,900 to $2,200 monthly costs for full-time care is as much as her rent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12064017\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12064017\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-14-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-14-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-14-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-14-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gavriel Smith and his 5-year-old son, Timothy, outside the closed Natural Bridges Head Start Center in Santa Cruz on Nov. 12, 2025. The center was forced to close after Encompass Community Services’ Nov. 1 grant renewal was left unprocessed during the federal shutdown. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“If I don’t have child care, then I don’t have work,” she said. “If I don’t have work, I don’t have money to pay my bills.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other laid-off workers, like Gavriel Smith, who handles maintenance at the Head Start centers, said they’re praying funding comes through soon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith said he has filed for unemployment, applied for food stamps and is picking up handyman jobs to support himself and his 5-year-old son.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m doing my due diligence for now,” he said. “But going into the holidays, I know it’s going to be tough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Iracema Torres was starting a new job as a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/santa-cruz\">Santa Cruz\u003c/a> County public health worker when her daughter’s Head Start center closed more than two weeks ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The job was promising: She liked the benefits, hours and coworkers and felt good about helping single parents like herself recover from substance abuse, domestic violence and other life struggles. The center’s closure, however, meant she had to take an unpaid leave to care for her 2-year-old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I am just stuck because I don’t have anyone to help me with child care,” Torres said. “It’s been super hard.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The government was starting to reopen on Thursday, but the fallout of the longest shutdown in U.S. history will last longer for more than 200 low-income families who send their children to a Head Start program run by Encompass Community Services, the largest nonprofit in Santa Cruz County, and 95 teachers and staffers who were laid off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Encompass was the only Head Start grantee in California to close its classrooms during the shutdown after running low on government dollars. The agency was due to receive its annual funding on Nov. 1, but staff at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services were furloughed and couldn’t process payments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those federal workers are back at work, but it was unclear when Encompass will get funding to restart its program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12064105\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12064105\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Daisy1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Daisy1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Daisy1-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/Daisy1-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A shuttered Head Start center. \u003ccite>(Daisy Nguyen/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We’re preparing to reopen, but we don’t know when that’s going to be,” said Kim Morrison, the agency’s chief financial officer and interim CEO.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She didn’t know the timeline because about 140 other Head Start programs around the country are also awaiting new funding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When KQED asked a spokesperson for the federal Administration for Children and Families how long it may take for money to flow to Head Start grantees, they acknowledged the inquiry but did not have an immediate answer.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Adding to the uncertainty is that Congress approved a spending package that funds the government only through January. It’s unclear whether programs like Encompass will be fully or partially funded, said Melanee Cottrill, executive director of Head Start California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s also a possibility at the end of January that we’ll be facing down another shutdown, which would be devastating,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Encompass leadership tried to minimize the impact by partnering with the Pajaro Valley Unified District in Watsonville to temporarily care for Head Start children starting this week. The district held a job fair to try to bring Encompass employees on board. So far, about 20 families have opted in, Morrison said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But laid-off teachers like Christina Mesta worry the partnership puts the agency’s federal grant at risk. The school district leases classrooms to Encompass to operate the program, and Mesta asserts that the materials and equipment in those classrooms hold federal interest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without getting government approval of the partnership, she said, “they may take away the grant entirely, which would put the staff without jobs and families without services.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a lot at stake because of this,” Mesta said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12064015\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12064015\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-9-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-9-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-9-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-9-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Iracema Torres plays with her daughter, Cataleya, at their Santa Cruz home on Nov. 12, 2025. The family is among more than 250 affected by the temporary closure of Head Start classrooms during the federal shutdown. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Morrison said the agency notified the Office of Head Start of the partnership and worked to ensure the arrangement is temporary, and that families and teachers who choose to go to those classrooms can come back to Head Start.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are comfortable that we are not violating any kind of regulations that Head Start has in doing this,” Morrison said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The uncertainty weighs on Torres. She has less than a month to find another child care arrangement before returning to work. She said she has looked for openings at private child care centers, but the $1,900 to $2,200 monthly costs for full-time care is as much as her rent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12064017\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12064017\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-14-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-14-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-14-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251112_HEADSTART_SANTACRUZ_GH-14-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gavriel Smith and his 5-year-old son, Timothy, outside the closed Natural Bridges Head Start Center in Santa Cruz on Nov. 12, 2025. The center was forced to close after Encompass Community Services’ Nov. 1 grant renewal was left unprocessed during the federal shutdown. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“If I don’t have child care, then I don’t have work,” she said. “If I don’t have work, I don’t have money to pay my bills.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other laid-off workers, like Gavriel Smith, who handles maintenance at the Head Start centers, said they’re praying funding comes through soon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith said he has filed for unemployment, applied for food stamps and is picking up handyman jobs to support himself and his 5-year-old son.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m doing my due diligence for now,” he said. “But going into the holidays, I know it’s going to be tough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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},
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"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
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"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
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"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
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"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
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"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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},
"hidden-brain": {
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
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"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
"title": "PBS NewsHour",
"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/",
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"source": "pbs"
},
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