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Supervisors Hear Early Childhood Plan as Community Urges Protection of Baby Prop C Funds
Summary
At an April 24 Budget & Appropriations hearing, the Department of Early Childhood said it expects no service cuts and described plans to expand infant/toddler care and workforce pay funded by voter-approved 'Baby Prop C'; community speakers urged restoring family resource center grants and resisting cuts.
Supervisor Connie Chan, chair of the Budget and Appropriation Committee, convened the April 24 hearing on the city’s caregiving and workforce supports and asked departments to present budget plans.
Ingrid Mosquito, executive director of the Department of Early Childhood, told the committee the newly formed department expects no service cuts next fiscal year and described the implementation of Baby Prop C, the voter-approved child-care funding measure. Mosquito said the department has added “over 6,000 new slots” for early care and education, raised subsidy eligibility to 110% of area median income, and continues to fund wage enhancements for early educators. She summarized the department’s expenditure profile as roughly 75% directed to early learning, smaller shares for wraparound supports, and about 14% for administration.
Mosquito said the department is pursuing a multi‑year strategy to expand infant and toddler care and to deepen supports for children with special needs, including care coordination and improved screening timelines. She emphasized workforce compensation as a retention and recruitment tool and cited more than 352 grants awarded to expand or renovate child-care facilities.
The department also described a new five‑year procurement cycle for Family Resource Centers. Mosquito said the $1.8 million in so‑called enhancement grants that some speakers described as “cuts” has been folded into the new RFP baseline rather than eliminated; the department provided a new annual baseline figure of $18.2 million for the next contract cycle compared with $15.5 million five years earlier.
Community organizations, parents and early-education advocates urged supervisors to protect Baby Prop C and to restore the enhancement grants where applicable. June Bug, identifying herself as a parent leader with San Francisco Parent Voices, said the delayed release of funds and pandemic impacts had left many children waiting for care and stressed the need for funding to hire staff, retrofit toddler sites, and expand inclusion services for children with special needs.
Speakers from the Children’s Council, the Family Child Care Association and labor‑aligned and neighborhood groups described local impacts: lost seats, delayed capital projects and harms to workforce pipelines if funds are cut. Alan Wong of the Children’s Council urged “full implementation of Baby Prop C” and expedited hiring and site refurbishment.
What happens next: the committee heard and filed the presentations after public comment; supervisors asked departments for more detailed multi‑year cost and staffing projections to align the Baby Prop C reserve and ongoing collections with the department’s strategic plan before June budget decisions.
