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Board affirms support for early care, celebrates Week of the Young Child and urges protection of Baby Prop C funding
Summary
Supervisors adopted a resolution recognizing Week of the Young Child, praised investments in early care and education and heard multiple speakers urging protection and expansion of Baby Prop C funds and supports for early educators.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on April 8 adopted a resolution celebrating Week of the Young Child (April 5–11) and reaffirming the city's commitment to expanding access to universal, inclusive early care and education.
Supervisor Vallie Melgar, who introduced the resolution, told colleagues that early care educators are "essential to our city" and urged protection of Baby Prop C funding amid a challenging budget season. Melgar noted the city's progress in workforce pay and program expansion and said the city has seen a 73% decrease in the wait list for some early care programs since 2018.
Why this matters: Several dozen public commenters — including early childhood providers, advocacy groups and nonprofit leaders — urged the board to preserve Prop C investments, expand slots for infants and children with special needs, increase compensation for predominantly female and Black early educators, and expand parent choice for childcare vouchers to cover nontraditional hours.
Speakers from the Children's Council of San Francisco, the San Francisco Early Care and Education Advocacy Coalition, the Low Income Investment Fund and multiple local provider networks thanked the board for recent investments and pressed for continued funding. Alan Wong of the Children's Council said supervisors would soon receive invitations to visit childcare sites in their districts; Liz Winograd of the Low Income Investment Fund said the city would invest "almost $15,000,000 into new sites and quality improvements" this year, a figure she attributed to Prop C and related programs.
Advocates representing the Black Early Educator Policy Council and family child care providers called for targeted funds for Black educators, fair compensation, facility upgrades and homeownership pathways for family child care providers. "Support those who take care of our future," Chanel Brown of the Black Early Educator Policy Council told the board.
The board adopted the resolution "same house, same call" without objection. Supervisors noted that they will host and accept site visits to early care programs in the coming weeks and reiterated an expressed intention to defend Baby Prop C allocations in the upcoming budget cycle.
Votes: The resolution (item 35) was adopted without objection; the meeting record shows the board approved the item unanimously with 10 supervisors voting in favor.
