A man arrested May 2 in South San Francisco and charged with 108 counts of child molestation was back in court this week.

Leonardo Gonzalez, a 35-year-old plumber from South City, appeared at his preliminary hearing accompanied by defense attorney Steve Chase.

Find out what's happening in South San Franciscowith free real-time updates from Patch.

According to the San Mateo County District Attorney's Office, four prosecution witnesses testified at the preliminary hearing: Jeffrey Lee, Matthew McNichol, Andrea Wideman and Lupe Mejia. The defense presented no evidence and the court ordered Gonzalez to answer all charges.

The case was continued until 8:45 a.m. July 3 for arraignment in higher court.

Find out what's happening in South San Franciscowith free real-time updates from Patch.

According to police, Gonzalez was taken into custody in the 800 block of Baden Avenue after a months-long investigation revealed that Gonzalez had molested a child under the age of 10.

Additional information released by the prosecutor's office states that the victim was eight years old. A hospital laboratory that conducted a routine test on the girl showed signs of sexual abuse. Police were notified and arrested Gonzalez.

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Local leaders will gather in South San Francisco next week to discuss ending child poverty as part of the first summit held by the Jackie Speier Foundation.

From 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, Aug. 18, San Mateo County leaders will participate in a summit titled “San Mateo County Rising: Ending Child Poverty,” at the South San Francisco Conference Center. The event is being hosted by the Jackie Speier Foundation, a new organization started by former U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier to address the poverty gap for women and children.

“I’m excited about the opportunity to do what has not been done before — guarantee that no child in our county goes to bed hungry, lives unsheltered in a car, or suffers from physical and emotional violence or trauma,” Speier said in a press release.

Kicking off the summit will be a keynote address by Dr. Matthew Desmond, a professor of sociology at Princeton University and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Evicted” and “Poverty, by America.” Emmy award-winning journalist Luz Peña will be the event’s master of ceremonies and opening addresses will also be given by Speier and Kathy Kwan, president of the Eustace-Kwan Family Foundation.

U.S. Rep. Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco; U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto; and county supervisors Ray Mueller and Noelia Corzo will also be featured speakers of the event with Mueller, Corzo and Speier expected to make a special initiative announcement.

The summit will also feature panel discussions on guaranteed income programs, child poverty and brain development and the effects of evictions on poverty before participants split into breakout groups to further explore eviction policies, youth mental health, local solutions to poverty and understanding a baby’s first year of life.

Additional speakers for those events will include Jim Higa, executive director of Philanthropic Ventures Foundation; Jim Pugh, co-director of the Universal Income Project; Dr. Greg Duncan, a professor at the University of California, Irvine; Dr. Kimberly Noble, professor of neuroscience and education at Columbia University; Dr. Lisa Chamberlain, a professor of pediatrics at the Stanford School of Medicine; Louise Rogers, San Mateo County chief of Health; Belinda Hernandez Arriaga, executive director of the nonprofit ALAS; Foster City Police Chief Tracy Avelar; County Attorney John Nibbelin; former Millbrae Mayor and Realtor Anne Oliva; and Chad Bojorquez, chief program officer of Destination Home.

State Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park; Redwood City Councilmember Alicia Aguirre; county Superintendent Nancy Magee; County Executive Officer Mike Callagy; Kitty Lopez, executive director of First Five San Mateo County; and Lenny Mendonca, the state’s former chief economic and business advisor, will lead breakout group discussions.

Co-sponsors of the event include the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the County of San Mateo, the Eustace-Kwan Family Foundation, Kaiser Permanente, Philanthropic Ventures Foundation and the San Mateo County Office of Education.

“It is unfathomable that in a county that is home to 22 billionaires and more than 5,000 people making over $4 million a year, 27,000 children live in poverty,” Speier said in the press release. “We will explore exciting strategies to raise children with the skills to fully thrive in our society.”

Visit jackiespeierfoundation.org/ for more information on the Jackie Speier Foundation and this month’s summit, “San Mateo County Rising: Ending Child Poverty.”

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Under the law, the state would require all facilities whose water exceeds the 5 ppb limit to reduce lead to as close to zero as possible.

Daycare standards are higher than those in elementary, middle, and high schools, where not every faucet needs to be tested, faucets replaced, or parents notified unless lead levels exceed 15 ppb.

Rep. Chris Holden, the author of AB 2370, introduced legislation this year that would require schools to meet the same standards as day care centers.

“By aligning lead testing standards in childcare and schools, we can protect children from the toxic effects of lead,” Holden said in a statement.

Day care centers had a two-year window to have their drinking water tested for lead contamination. But so far, months after the deadline, only about half of the 14,500 tests required have been reported, according to EWG’s analysis. It’s unclear how many daycares haven’t yet tested their water for lead, or if their results haven’t been reported by labs.

Little said she expects the number of facilities with harmful lead exposure to increase as more testing results become available.

“It seems like this is just the tip of the iceberg,” she said, pointing out that licensed family child care homes in California, which have more day care centers, aren’t even required to test their water for lead.

Little advises parents sending their children to family children’s homes to encourage their providers to install newer faucets and lead-removing filters.

Parents sending their children to a center can search the EWG’s database for lead level results (PDF) and urge them to test their water if results from that facility are missing.

If the facility is found to have an unsafe level of lead in water, Little recommends parents check with providers for details on what they have done to lower that level.

Kumiko Inui, principal at San Francisco’s ABC preschool, whose lead levels scored the fourth-highest in the study, said the result was due to an outdoor sink that hadn’t been used in years and has since been turned off. However, she said other facilities at the bilingual Japanese-English preschool were below 5 ppb and that the school uses a filter in its kitchen sink and provides bottled water for students.

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Rich Lowry

Opinion

From Rich Lowry

March 6, 2023 | 8:29 p.m

“By the age of ten I became a diligent little hind in the service of Murdstone and Grinby.”

This is what David Copperfield tells in Charles Dickens’ novel of the same name.

Of course, Dickens was a crusader against child exploitation. However, his fiction’s depictions of the heartless treatment of children are defused by the funny and memorable depictions of the wrongdoers; the upward trend in the lives of the likes of David Copperfield and Oliver Twist; and the knowledge that Dickens railed against is a thing of the past in the advanced world.

It takes a heart of stone not to smile at the name of David’s cruel stepfather Edward Murdstone (Mr. Murdstone to you) or the wine bottling factory where David is unfortunate to work, Murdstone and Grinby.

Orphan Oliver Twist had a tough time in a workhouse in the town of Mudfog. But at least Oliver avoids the dangerous fate of being apprenticed to the chimney sweep Mr. Gamfield, and eventually an unexpected inheritance and happy adoption awaits him.

All of this is relevant today because, as a major New York Times report pointed out, we have Dickensian border politics.

The Times describes how so-called unaccompanied minors end up “in some of the toughest jobs in the country.” The Times found “12-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Kids sawing planks of wood on night shifts in South Dakota.”

The Times reported that unaccompanied migrant children were found at forced labour.REUTERS/Adrees Latif

Needless to say, J.Crew and Walmart aren’t as charming as Murdstone and Grinby, and favorable twists are unlikely to be written in the stories of many children trapped in this maw of child labor. Most importantly, this has not happened in any other country more than 150 years ago.

The upshot of the Times article is that we’ve chosen to import a social issue—as if we didn’t have enough already.

The Times reports that child labor has “exploded” since 2021, which of course coincides with the advent of President Joe Biden’s lax border policies. A quarter million children have entered the United States in the past two years.

For no good reason, we have made it difficult for ourselves to quickly send home unaccompanied minors from non-contiguous countries, and so we have enabled a market for child smuggling and child labour.

As the Times puts it, “These are not children who snuck into the country undetected.” Officials interviewed by the newspaper estimate that two-thirds of all unaccompanied minors end up working full-time.

It’s bad for children, corrupt for the corporations that exploit them, and unhealthy for our society in general.

The Department of Health and Welfare is responsible for housing the minors upon arrival and for supervising them upon their release. It’s not doing a good job, but the king’s remedy would be better enforcement on the border and inland. In this way, children would not be sent across the border alone in the first place, on an arduous journey with perhaps a dangerous factory job at the destination. But nobody in charge ever seems to think about it.

There is still a lot to say about all of this.

NYT also reported that child labor has exploded since 2021.Go to Nakamura for NY Post

First, it should be remembered that migrants are meant to be asylum seekers fleeing persecution in their home countries; but almost every time the press reports extensively on the stories of individual migrants, they turn out to be economic migrants.

Second, it is hard to believe that the availability of cheap, easily exploited, illegal child labor would not put downward pressure on the wages of the low-skilled.

Third, not to sound like a child welfare nativist, but there are already many children in the United States who desperately need the attention of social workers.

Despite the Times story, the frontier madness will continue, and we can be sure it will not produce great literature.

Twitter: @RichLowry

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South San Francisco’s DD Policy addresses the need for universal early childhood care for families living or working in the city by imposing an annual tax on large commercial offices that generate approximately $55.9 million annually.

If passed, the measure will have 18 months to go into effect. Funds will accrue from commercial offices larger than 25,000 square feet at a rate of $2.50 per square foot of lot size.

Advocates including Councilor James Coleman and Margaret Brodkin, founder and director of Funding the Next Generation, who have helped collect signatures, have billed the measure as a way to fill gaps in existing subsidized childcare while they are in first line affects the richest companies in the city.

But opponents of the measure, Julie Waters, director of local government and community relations at California Life Sciences, and Deputy Mayor Buenaflor Nicolas, who takes the position of the majority of the city council, say it’s not that simple.

“A lot of companies have childcare plans, we work with the city. I don’t know what benefits there are that I really appreciate and it has nothing to do with the tax burden,” Waters said. “It’s the fact that despite the big, shiny names, most South San Francisco tenants are actually tenants, they’re owned by the development company, and they have specified in their leases that they will pass the new tax on to those tenants.”

There are more than 120 small companies — including startups — that are members of the California Life Sciences Group, Waters said.

“These startups aren’t making money yet, they have five to 10 employees, and their position is to take their lab and leave,” she said.

However, Coleman explained that the city’s popular preschool program, operated by the Parks and Recreation Department, has a waiting list of more than 700 families, which translates to about four years. This is forcing families to either have no child care and stay home with their children or pay for child care they may not be able to afford, Coleman said.

However, Nicolas is concerned that the plan does not take a holistic view of childcare.

“Money is just a tool and without the right plan and the infrastructure behind it, nothing really gets done because if you don’t plan it, you plan to fail,” Nicolas said.

The city’s study found that revenue generated – which is estimated at $55.9 million in the first year and will increase to $68.2 million in the coming years as projects in the development pipeline are completed – given the current demand would initially not be sufficient to provide the program, however the gap could be closed over time.

Caring for the 1,462 children who are expected to initially use the service would cost more than $61 million annually, $23.9 million for residents and $19.6 million for dollars for non-residents. The other $17.5 million would go toward increasing childcare workers’ salaries by 10%, which the measure also calls for.

According to the report, the average monthly cost of early childhood care in the city is currently $1,341 per month.

“The cost of pre-school and day care is exorbitant at the moment, my husband and I are lucky enough to be able to afford it, but once our daughter goes into foster care we will be paying more for childcare than our mortgage and more for that Childcare as our UC class when we were in college,” said resident Natalie Wheatfall Lum.

The City of South San Francisco covers all preschool and early childhood care costs without a means test, meaning families of significant means can continue to participate in the free child care service.

Coleman argues that the reason the measure lacks means testing is that a better educated society is a better society.

“If you’re very wealthy, you can choose your own private school or nanny, but the idea is everyone has the same resources,” Coleman said.

If the funds cannot cover everyone, there will be a means-testing system put in place by the city and the managing authority to ensure priority is given to people from lower-income families, he added.

“Additionally, there is another problem, our preschool teachers are not earning anywhere near a living wage that would allow them to live in South San Francisco. They currently make about $17 an hour and just for comparison, kindergarten teachers make $46 an hour,” said Coleman.

Add to that low wages and a higher turnover rate, which made it difficult for preschool teachers to develop skills in the profession, he added.

According to Yes on DD’s website, the service is offered to any child aged 2.5 to 5 whose family lives or works in the city.

However, Nicolas said that with $56 million, they will not be able to meet the city’s childcare needs.

“Childcare is at the center of our universe and, as you can see, it’s part of our overall plan,” Nicolas said. “We are the only city in San Mateo County that has developed a child care master plan.”

The City’s Children’s Master Plan identified the need for operational support for child care programs. She argues that childcare is needed not just from ages 2 1/2 to 5, but from birth to age 12. Additionally, she said non-traditional childcare is required for people who work graveyard shifts or nurses.

“Our [child master plan] is a very comprehensive plan. We need operational support for these programs, we know how to stabilize and secure facilities, and we are looking for financial resources to help families pay for this child care,” said Nicolas. “And the most important thing is to solve the staff shortage.”

Nicolas said she doesn’t want to be the guinea pig or the first to fail at universal citywide child care.

Funding the Next Generation’s Brodkin argues city officials will love the childcare program.

“It’s going to put South San Francisco on a map like nothing they’ve ever done, people are going to want to stay there, people are going to want to live there,” Brodkin said. “It’s going to be one of the most exciting things that’s happened in the kids space.”

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South San Francisco voted for affordable public housing, with Measure AA leading by 4,371 votes, or 57.5%, while Measure DD passed a new tax on large corporations to fund child care for all children between the ages of 2 1/2 and 5 for residents and employees is 3,338 votes in favor, or 43.61%, behind semi-official results from the San Mateo County Electoral Bureau as of 11 p.m. Tuesday.

If election results pass, South San Francisco’s AA measure authorizes the city to acquire, develop or construct up to 1% of the total number of existing housing units annually for eight years. The city will be able to use its $120 million in a special housing fund from commercial connection fees to build 1% of the total number of existing housing units in the city. This corresponds to around 250 units per year, a total of around 2,000 units over the next eight years. The measure would overrule Article 34, a 70-year-old state law that says additional affordable housing units can only be built with public funds if passed by a voter initiative.

Councilor James Coleman believes the passage of Measure AA bodes well for an eventual repeal of Article 34 nationwide.

“The results are very clear that residents want to see affordable housing and affordable city-owned or mixed-income public housing, and now it’s up to our city leaders to deliver what residents want,” Coleman said, adding that If this is the case, the city has more tools on its tool belt when it comes to building affordable housing faster.

“Over $100 million in impact fees for city-owned affordable housing. I look forward to seeing ways in which that could happen,” he said.

South San Francisco’s DD measure attempted to provide universal early childhood care for families who live or work in the city by imposing an annual tax on large commercial offices that generates approximately $55.9 million annually.

In other elections, the cities of San Mateo, Burlingame and Millbrae appeared to pass a variety of tax measures, while Redwood City voters appeared to have agreed to amend the city’s bylaws to allow the mayor a one-year term to allow more council members to serve According to the semi-official results, San Bruno appeared to be limiting the tenure of its city council and separately elected mayor.

Belmont and Millbrae both proposed a temporary occupancy tax, both of which appear to be passed. Measure K at Belmont required only a majority to pass and has 3,205 votes or 78.98%. If passed, the measure will authorize a 14 percent hotel guest tax in the city that is estimated to bring in $600,000 a year, which will cover a budget deficit and be a continuous tax until voters end it. Measure N in Millbrae has a significant lead of 2,660 votes or 78.93% and will seek to increase hotel guest occupancy tax from 12% to 14%, generating approximately $1.5 million annually in locally controlled funds, to address the service, including funding for police and fire departments.

Burlingame appears to have passed a measure taxing marijuana delivery companies, raising business license fees by a vote of 3,620, or 75.42%, according to the semi-official results.

Measure X would tax 5% of gross marijuana sales and generate $2 to $4 million per year. Corporate royalties would increase from $100 for all Burlingame companies to $200-$750 based on a tiered annual income, with only 7% of Burlingame companies having to pay the higher amount if they bring in more than $1 million . It would generate about $2.5 million annually and relieve the city, which has lost $20 million in temporary occupancy taxes from its hotels during the pandemic.

Measures P and Z in Redwood City amend the charter for the city to reduce the mayor’s term from two years to one year, allowing more council members to serve as mayors, and bring the city charter in line with state law. Both appear to have a staggering lead of 6,292 votes, or 62.95%, and 8,450 votes, or 85.76%, respectively, according to semi-official results from the San Mateo County Electoral Bureau as of 11 p.m. Tuesday.

Action BB in San Bruno has a clear lead with 4,690 votes or 82.72%. It limits the tenure of the city council and separately elected mayor to no more than 12 consecutive years, according to the semi-official results.

Measure CC has a significant lead with 9,655 votes, or 71.84%, in San Mateo and intends to increase the San Mateo real estate transfer tax from 0.5% to 1.5% on sales over $10 million. The transfer tax is expected to raise about $4.8 million, and the city said the funds would be used for road repairs, parking improvements, emergency services and reducing traffic congestion. It would affect less than 1% of all properties sold or transferred in the city.

All results correspond to the semi-official results for Tuesday, November 8th, which included votes received in the mail through Friday, November 4th and all ballots received at polling centers. Subsequent results will include votes received after Saturday, November 5th. Wednesday 16th November, Thursday 17th November, Friday 18th November, Monday 21st November and Wednesday 23rd November. The results will be confirmed on December 8th.

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There’s at least one place in California where even households making six figures can get help paying for child care: San Francisco, the state’s most expensive county when it comes to child care.

As providers across the state await reforms for their financially fraught industry, voters in San Francisco have gone ahead and created their own solution: a commercial tax that now generates $180 million in revenue a year for local child care.

“Why did we go after a revenue source? Because that’s the only way we’re going to get ourselves out of this problem,” said Mary Ignatius, an organizer with Parent Voices, a group that advocates for affordable child care and campaigned for the commercial tax.

Child care — crucial for children’s well-being and necessary for many families to work — has long been a market failure in America.

The real cost of child care

California’s child care aid reaches only a small fraction of the families who need it, and it’s stretching providers to the limit. Education reporter Kristen Taketa examines how the system is falling short, and who pays the price.

The inherently high cost of quality care causes a chain reaction of challenges for both consumers and providers: Parents can’t access child care because it’s too expensive, especially for infants and toddlers. And because quality care costs more than what parents can pay, providers are in constant financial stress and unable to pay their staff much — which in turn limits how many children they can serve.

The San Francisco tax, narrowly approved by voters in 2018, is that rare example in California of a dedicated, permanent funding source intended to solve those problems.

In the first year of its rollout, the measure has paid for 1,000 more children to enroll in subsidized care, increased wages for 2,500 early education teachers and made 10,000 more children eligible for subsidized care on top of the 15,000 who were before.

“I’m hoping that if people see San Francisco can do it, then why not somewhere else?” said retired San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Norman Yee, the main architect of the tax measure.

In 2018, after months of organizing from local officials, parents and child care workers, San Francisco voters passed the commercial tax with a measure dubbed “Baby Prop C” by a margin of less than one percentage point. A failed legal challenge by taxpayer and business groups delayed its implementation, but last year, funds collected under it began reaching the child care field in July.

As a result, families making up to 110 percent of San Francisco’s area median income — or up to $152,400 a year for a family of four — can now qualify for subsidized child care for their kids under age 4.

A child eats lunch on Pizza Friday at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Those income eligibility rules provide access to far more families than the state’s rules, which only allow subsidized care for families who make up to 85 percent of the state median income — or up to $95,289 annually for a similar family. Because it’s far more expensive to live in San Francisco than in California overall, some families who make even less than what it takes to get by there have not been able to qualify for state-subsidized care.

And unlike the state, which has required many families to chip in an income-based monthly fee toward their subsidized child care, San Francisco plans to charge no fees for city-funded care thanks to Proposition C funding, said Wei-min Wang, a director in the city’s early education department. That’s true even for moderate-income families who are newly eligible, he said.

“Now that we have Baby Prop C money, we don’t have to treat it like a scarce good we have to allocate and ration,” Wang said. “We don’t want high-quality early care and education to be so much a privilege as the right of every child, regardless of your background.”

Eventually, the city’s child care leaders expect to use Prop C to fund subsidized care for families making up to 200 percent of the area median income — as much as $277,100 for a family of four, according to current salary data. But the priority now is serving lower-income families, city officials said.

About half of Prop C revenue goes to expanding access to subsidized child care. But crucially, in an industry where low pay has often thwarted expansion of child care slots, the other half goes to pay raises for child care teachers, who in California are paid on average just $17 an hour. Many in San Francisco were making as little as $18 an hour — far shy of the $31 an hour it takes for a single person to get by there, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator.

Prop C was designed not only to pay early educators a living wage, but to build a salary structure to put them on par with their counterparts in K-12 education, where starting pay is generally significantly higher and teachers are paid better the more higher education they have.

Prop C is working toward a new minimum wage of $28 an hour for early educators serving at least half low-income children by providing them semi-annual stipends or raising their hourly rates. Advocates expect that will not only improve current teachers’ quality of life but also help draw more quality applicants to the field and thus enable providers to serve more children.

Teacher Matthew Sullivan drapes a blanket over a child during nap time at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco, Calif.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

It may be too early to judge Prop C’s success.

Still, San Francisco is further along than most of the state in advancing child care reforms. In 1991, San Francisco became what was believed to be the first city in the U.S. to establish a municipal fund exclusively for children’s services, including child care. Since 2004, it has worked toward establishing universal preschool, and since 2013 it has had a city office dedicated to early care and education.

And for more than a decade, the city has paid child care providers who serve low-income kids higher rates than what the state pays its subsidized care providers, knowing that the true cost of providing quality care has typically exceeded what the state pays.

“We now have this dedicated source of early childhood funding that is the first municipal source, where we can really draw from forever,” said Ingrid Mezquita, director of the city’s Department of Early Childhood, of Prop C. “It gives a level of stability that this sector hasn’t had in a very long time, or ever.”

The push for Prop C

Families shell out more for child care in San Francisco than in any other California county.

The vast majority of San Francisco families must pay as much as $2,700 a month — more than $32,000 a year — for full-time infant care, according to a 2021 statewide survey. That’s compared to a statewide average of about $1,600 a month.

Yet California’s income eligibility levels for subsidized care are set so low that many families can’t qualify for help paying for child care, and many families who make enough to get by in California are automatically disqualified from subsidized care because they make too much. In San Francisco, a family of four with two working parents needs to make $167,920 to get by, according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, which is more than $72,000 above the state’s income limit for subsidized child care.

Meanwhile, there has not been enough public funding or child care providers in California to accommodate all the children who already do qualify for subsidized care. In San Francisco, more than 2,400 children were on the city’s waiting list for subsidized child care at the time Prop C was being proposed to voters.

There were other reasons to go after a child care tax measure, advocates said. For one thing, child care teachers in city-funded programs were seeing staff turnover rates of 75 percent, according to the early education department, which didn’t bode well for the quality of children’s education.

A child leaps during an outdoor activity next to San Francisco’s Stern Grove at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Prop C was meant to be San Francisco’s answer to those problems.

The measure is largely the brainchild of Yee, the former board of supervisors president and a longtime child care and education advocate who had led one of San Francisco’s two child care referral agencies for 18 years before entering politics. He and fellow Supervisor Jane Kim led the effort to collect more than 9,400 voter signatures to put the initiative on the 2018 ballot.

Before, Yee and other advocates had to keep asking city leaders every year for one or two million or so dollars in the budget for child care. But those incremental, one-time amounts weren’t going to build a better child care system, which would require several reforms, he said.

Those reforms would need to address four areas, he said: giving more families access to subsidized care, expanding facilities to accommodate them, raising teachers’ pay and investing in their professional development to improve quality.

“Prop C is really a game-changer, because it provides the resources to do so many of the things that we wanted to do for our early education system,” Yee said in 2021, after Prop C survived the court challenge. “It gets us to close to universal child care access for everybody, including middle-income families, and it provides living wages for our early care educators.”

The real cost of child care

In this series, education reporter Kristen Taketa examines how California’s system of subsidized child care falls short — and who pays the price.

Before Prop C, commercial landlords in San Francisco generally paid a commercial rent tax rate of 0.3 percent.

Prop C now collects 3.5 percent from the rents of most commercial spaces and 1 percent from rents of warehouse spaces in San Francisco. Landlords paid less than $1 million annually in rental income and rents paid by government, nonprofit, arts and other tenants are exempt. Fifteen percent of the funds collected by Prop C goes to the city’s general fund, and the rest goes to child care.

It makes sense for large businesses to pay a tax for child care, advocates said, considering they possess some of the city’s greatest wealth and benefit from the availability of such care, since their employees need it to do their jobs. “Business is going to invest and support children in San Francisco so workers can go to work,” said Gina Fromer, CEO of the Children’s Council of San Francisco.

That was a key point supporters made during the 2018 campaign, volunteers said. Parents and providers held rallies, distributed flyers and did phone banking daily, targeting the people who would benefit most, said Maria Luz Torre, a Parent Voices organizer: women and low-income families.

“We even rallied at 555 California (Street). Trump is a co-owner of that building,” she said. “We rallied there to show these are the people who are paying for this, and not you.”

Isabel Daniels (left) and Pat Sullivan (right) run through activities with children at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Two months after Prop C passed, a coalition of landlord, business and taxpayer groups that had opposed the measure sued in an attempt to invalidate it. Those groups — the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, Building Owners and Managers Association of California, California Business Properties Association and California Business Roundtable — argued that Prop C actually needed a two-thirds majority to pass because a government official, Yee, had been heavily involved.

“Our issue had nothing to do with where the money was going, but rather that it was an illegal tax,” said Brooke Armour, vice president of the California Business Roundtable, in an email.

But in 2021, a state appeals judge sided with the city, saying that because the measure had been placed on the ballot as a voter initiative — and because Yee’s involvement did not change that — it needed only a simple majority to pass. Later that year, the state supreme court denied the plaintiffs’ request to review their appeal.

San Francisco is lucky, Luz Torre said, in that it has a wealthy tax base to draw from to fund child care. Other counties may have to get more creative, she said.

At least one other California county has also passed a tax to fund child care. In 2020, just across the San Francisco Bay, voters approved a half-percent sales tax in Alameda County to raise child care workers’ wages and offer more subsidized care slots, as well as fund pediatric health care.

That measure, Measure C, has been held up for more than two years by a similar lawsuit. Last July, a trial court judge ruled in the county’s favor. The decision is now being appealed.

Raising wages to raise quality

Prop C is not just about raising pay for teachers, child care leaders said. It’s about professionalizing and improving the quality of a field that has long been underpaid, has often been degraded as babysitting and has lacked greater access to higher education and training.

Teacher Sophia Lam (center) supervises an animal card game with children at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Many child care providers have faced obstacles to gaining higher education and professional development, such as language barriers and a lack of money and time. Thirteen percent of family child care providers in California speak only a language other than English, according to the UC Berkeley Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. About half of family child care providers and 20 percent of child care center teachers lack a college degree, according to the UC Berkeley center.

To address this, San Francisco officials have long made their child care funding contingent on providers meeting the city’s quality standards. They plan to use Prop C funds to improve early educators’ access to higher education and training. Some have suggested funding apprenticeships, tuition reimbursement and other programs to build a pipeline of workers that child care, unlike other education fields, has lacked.

The wage increases and stipends that come with Prop C are only available to teachers working for the 416 child care providers and agencies who have met the city’s quality standards and who are willing to serve low-income, subsidized children.

“That’s a foundational requirement for us, because part of the reason why we justify this investment in early childhood education is based on research that shows that high-quality care makes a big difference,” Wang said. “The goal of our department is to get all children to school readiness standards and to make sure that their families are able to have the resources necessary to raise their kids.”

Among those city-required quality standards: Providers must have low adult-to-student ratios, have a certain number of early childhood education college units, and use a developmentally, culturally and linguistically appropriate curriculum approved by the city early childhood department.

To be approved for city child care funding, providers must be visited by independent observers who look for quality interactions between teachers, note areas for improvement and decide whether the program passes a quality test.

Isabel Daniels (bottom) runs through activities with children at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The city department created a new standardized salary structure for early educators, similar to the kind that school districts make for K-12 teachers. The model rewards higher compensation to teachers who serve more subsidized children and who have more higher education or an early childhood teaching permit.

Stipends range from $8,000 annually for full-time assistant teachers who have few or no early childhood education units and serve fewer than 20 percent subsidized children to as high as $39,100 for family child care owners who serve at least 50 percent subsidized children.

By making the funding available only to providers willing to serve subsidized children and boosting pay for those who serve more of those children, the city means to focus Prop C funding on the highest-need programs first, Wang said.

That could also help incentivize more providers to serve low-income, subsidized children. Historically, providers say they have not had much financial incentive to do so, because the state’s subsidized payment rates have been low.

But as providers and advocates statewide have warned, just adding funding for more children to receive subsidized care doesn’t automatically mean more kids will be served. Child care providers have to expand their staffing and facility capacity to take in those additional kids, too.

So San Francisco is budgeting for $35 million of Prop C to be used for child care facilities projects next fiscal year, Wang said.

And the city department continues to encourage child care programs that are not enlisted in the city’s quality network to join. The department offers onsite coaching and funding to new members to improve their facilities and take professional development, Wang said.

There have been challenges in rolling out the Prop C funds.

For one thing, child care programs are still seeing under-enrollment, Wang said. That could be due to parents’ anxiety about spreading sickness, be it flu, RSV or COVID-19. Some families choose to stay with their kids at home or have relatives, friends or neighbors watch them, while others take them to private programs. And child care programs are facing growing competition from public schools, as more children enroll in free transitional kindergarten.

Some programs are also still struggling to hire enough staff. But Wang has heard anecdotally for the first time that they are seeing higher interest and better-qualified applicants for jobs after Prop C. “Staffing is always an issue, but with the wage improvements, it’ll hopefully be less of an issue,” he said.

Owner Pat Sullivan (middle) supervises a card game with children at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The pay increases have already helped Pat Sullivan, a family child care provider of 30 years who owns the Baby Steps Nature School.

Like many family providers who run small child cares out of their own homes, Sullivan had not been able to pay herself from her business. And since providers can’t charge families more than they can afford to pay — which is far less than the true cost of providing quality care — she was barely breaking even.

To get by, many family providers depend on a spouse’s income. Without one, Sullivan has worked two other jobs on nights and weekends, too, teaching at local colleges. She had been working as much as 80 hours a week between all three.

Prop C changed that.

She was recently able to hire one new full-time teacher and two part-time teachers. She can now pay her teachers $28 an hour, she said, when she previously struggled to pay them $20 an hour.

Now Sullivan has some more time to run her business, rather than just teach children. She still works a lot — but “not the same way, not with the desperation I used to work with,” she said. She’s down to 60-hour weeks.

And finally, Sullivan earns an income from her business.

This story was produced as part of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2022 National Fellowship.

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The new department is aiming to unify these resources and services. “Family [will] have access to the information that they need, not only around what’s available in their neighborhood or in the area that they’re looking for, but also what financing is available for their child care,” she said. This will allow families to see whether they are eligible for federal, state or local funding.

How will this new department work to ensure equity in the kinds of families that it serves?

“Our focus is always going to be families who are in greatest need,” Mezquita said. “We want to make sure that the services and supports are meaningful.”

Mezquita said their goal is to reduce or eliminate racial disparities. “We’re in this unique position where not only are we going to be funding child care, but we’re also looking at children in a holistic way,” she said. She said this will include looking at comprehensive services and ensuring there are no gaps or missing links to support children and their families.

When are you expecting expanded services to be available to families?

“We were just approved as a new department, so we’re building that infrastructure,” said Mezquita. “We’ve already expanded eligibility for families who are making up to 110% of area median income, meaning that if you’re making roughly around $120,000 or below, you may be eligible for child care financing through our department.”

How will families benefit from the merging of two separate departments?

Mezquita said the information will soon be in a centralized place, and the department will be able to provide families information in multiple languages, “not only for their child care, but also for their child’s well-being,” she added. “San Francisco has an array of services and supports for families. And one of the most difficult thing has been being able to find them.”

When can San Francisco families access the information?

Mezquita said she’s hoping it will be accessible in the next few months. “We already have a portal, which is where families can find child care: Early Learning San Francisco. You can easily find child care in your area. You can see what you’re eligible for in case you’re eligible for any financial assistance .”

How do I access the California State Preschool Program?

If your family is seeking access to the California State Preschool Program, you’re automatically eligible for the early education program if you’re already enrolled in Medi-Cal, CalFresh, WIC or Head Start.

Once your child is enrolled, the new law guarantees two years of care and education. Previously, families were granted only 12 months of service and had to reapply for an extension.

Where can I find affordable, quality child care elsewhere in California?

A new state-funded website helps match families struggling to find affordable, quality care with providers. Mychildcareplan.org launched on October 11, and lists every licensed provider in California and their safety record, including their history of inspections and any citations they may have received; their vacancies; the type of care they provide; and the language(s) spoken at their center.

The new website consolidates information from each of the state’s 58 local child care resource and referral agencies, connecting families to child care, financial aid and other services. It also aims to better serve parents and caregivers who may work in one county but live in another.

“You can enter your ZIP code, you could enter the city, and then it does radial search depending on … your filters,” said Linda Asato of the California Child Care Resource and Referral Network. “You’re no longer just bound by the information at that one agency.”

The website is free and does not charge a subscription fee for parents or providers. It can be used in English, Spanish, traditional Chinese and Vietnamese.

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South San Francisco’s Measure DD addresses the need for universal early child care for families who live or work in the city by imposing an annual tax on large commercial offices generating approximately $55.9 million annually.

If the measure passes, it will have 18 months until it goes into effect. Funds will be accrued from commercial offices larger than 25,000 square feet at a rate of $2.50 per square foot of parcel size.

Proponents, including Councilmember James Coleman and Margaret Brodkin, founder and director Funding the Next Generation, who helped gather signatures, have billed the measure as a way to address gaps in existing subsidized child care while affecting primarily the city’s wealthiest companies.

However, opponent for the measure, Julie Waters, director for Local Government and Community Relations, California Life Sciences, and Vice Mayor Buenaflor Nicolas, who represents the viewpoint of the City Council majority, explains that it isn’t that simple.

“A lot of the companies have child care plans that exist, we work in collaboration with the city. I don’t know what benefits there are that I truly recognize and it’s not related to the tax burden,” Waters said. “It’s the fact that most of the tenants in South San Francisco, you know despite the big shiny names, are actually renters, they are owned by the development company and they have in their leases that they will pass the new tax along to those tenants .”

There are more than 120 small businesses — including startups — that are members of the California Life Sciences group, Waters said.

“These startups aren’t making any money yet, they employ five to 10 employees and their position is to take their lab and leave,” she said.

Still, Coleman explained the city’s popular preschool program, run by the Parks and Recreation Department, has a waitlist of more than 700 long families, which equates to about four years. This forces families to either not have child care and stay at home with their children or pay for child care they may not be able to afford, Coleman said.

However, Nicolas is concerned the plan doesn’t look at child care holistically.

“Money is just a tool and without the proper plan and infrastructure behind it nothing really will be done because failing to plan it is planning to fail,” Nicolas said.

The city’s study found that revenue produced — estimated at $55.9 million in the first year, rising to $68.2 million in coming years as projects in the development pipeline are completed — would not initially be enough to provide the programming given current demand, however, the gap could be closed over time.

To provide for the 1,462 children expected to seek the service initially, it would cost north of $61 million annually, the study indicates $23.9 million for residents and $19.6 million for nonresidents. The other $17.5 million would go to increasing child care worker pay by 10%, something for which the measure also calls for.

Average monthly costs for early child care in the city are currently $1,341 per month, according to the report.

“The cost of preschool and day care right now is exorbitantly expensive, my husband and I are lucky enough to afford to pay but once our daughter goes into care we will be paying more for child care than our mortgage, and more for child care than our UC tuitions when we were in college,” resident Natalie Wheatfall Lum said.

The city of South San Francisco will cover all the costs of preschool and early care, without means testing, which means families with significant means can still participate in the free child care service.

Coleman argues that the rationale behind the lack of means testing for the measure is because a more educated society is a better society.

“If you are extremely wealthy, you can choose your own private school or your own nanny but the idea is the same resources are available to everyone,” Coleman said.

If the funds can’t cover everybody, there will be a system of means testing implemented by the city and administrative body guaranteeing that people of lower income families are prioritized, he added.

“In addition to this there’s another problem, our preschool teachers not making anywhere near a living wage, that would allow them to live in South San Francisco, currently they make around $17 per hour and just for comparison kindergarten teachers make $46 per hour,” said Coleman.

Adding to this issue is low working wages and higher turnover rate has made it difficult for preschool teachers to gain an expertise in the trade, he added.

The service will be provided for every child aged 2.5 to 5 years old whose family lives or works in the city, according to the Yes on DD website.

However, Nicolas said with $56 million they will not be able to provide the child care needs of the city.

“Child care is very much in the center of our universe and as you can see it is part of our general plan,” Nicolas said. “We are the only city in San Mateo County to come up with a child care master plan.”

The city’s child master plan found the need for operational support for child care programs. She argues that child care is not needed only from the ages of 2 1/2 to 5 but from childbirth to 12 years old. In addition, she said non-traditional child care is needed for people who work graveyard shifts or nurses.

“Ours [child master plan] is a very comprehensive plan. We need operational support for these programs, we know how to stabilize and secure facilities and we are looking for the financial resources to help the families pay for this child care,” Nicolas said. “And also most importantly is the solution to the staffing shortage.”

Nicolas said she doesn’t want to be the guinea pig or the first to fail at universal citywide child care.

Brodkin, of Funding the Next Generation, argues that the city officials will love the child care program.

“It will put South San Francisco on a map like nothing else they have ever done, people will want to stay there, people will want to live there,” Brodkin said. “It will be one of the most exciting things that’s happened in the children’s field.”

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South San Francisco voted in favor of affordable public housing with Measure AA leading with 4,371 votes, or 57.5%, while Measure DD, a new tax on large businesses to fund child care for all children between 2 1/2 and 5 for residents and employees is falling short with 3,338 votes in favor, or 43.61%, according to semiofficial results as of 11 pm Tuesday by the San Mateo County Elections Office.

If the election results hold, Measure AA in South San Francisco authorizes the city to acquire, develop or construct low-rent housing, up to 1% of the total number of existing units, annually for eight years. The city will be able to use its $120 million in a special housing fund from commercial linkage fees to build 1% of the total number of existing housing units in the city. That equates to approximately 250 units per year, totaling around 2,000 units in the next eight years. The measure would override Article 34, a 70-year-old state law that states additional affordable housing units can only be built with public funds if passed through a voter initiative.

Councilmember James Coleman believes Measure AA passing is a good sign for an eventual statewide repeat of Article 34.

“The results are very clear that the residents want to see affordable housing and city-owned affordable housing or mixed-income social housing and now it’s up to our city leaders to deliver what the residents want,” Coleman said, adding that it gives the city ​​more tools on the tool belt when it comes to building more affordable housing faster.

“Over $100 million in impact fees for city-owned affordable housing. I’m looking forward to seeing ways in which that could happen,” he said.

South San Francisco’s Measure DD sought to provide universal early child care for families who live or work in the city by imposing an annual tax on large commercial offices generating approximately $55.9 million annually.

In other elections, the cities of San Mateo, Burlingame and Millbrae appeared to pass a series of tax measures, while Redwood City voters appeared to agree to tweak the city’s charter to allow the mayor to serve one-year terms so more councilmembers could serve while San Bruno seemed to limit terms of its City Council and separately elected mayor, according to the semiofficial results.

Belmont and Millbrae both proposed a transient occupancy tax, both of which are appearing to pass. Measure K in Belmont needed only a majority to pass and has 3,205 votes, or 78.98%. If it holds up, the measure approves a 14% tax to hotel guests in the city that is estimated to raise $600,000 annually, that will cover a budget shortfall, and will be a continuous tax until ended by voters. Measure N in Millbrae has a commanding lead of 2,660 votes, or 78.93% and will look to raise the occupancy tax for hotel guests from 12% to 14%, generating approximately $1.5 million annually to locally controlled funds to address service including funding for police and fire departments.

Burlingame appears to have passed a measure taxing marijuana delivery companies and are raising business license fees with 3,620 votes, or 75.42%, according to the semiofficial results.

Measure X would tax 5% of gross marijuana sales, generating $2 million to $4 million a year. Business license fees would increase from $100 for all Burlingame businesses to $200 to $750, based on a tiered annual income, with only 7% of Burlingame businesses having to pay the higher amount if they gross more than 1$ million or more. It would generate about $2.5 million annually and would provide revenue relief for the city that lost $20 million in transient occupancy taxes from its hotels during the pandemic.

Measures P and Z in Redwood City amends the charter for the city to shorten the term of mayor from two years to one allowing more councilmembers to serve as mayor, and aligns the city charter with the state law. Both appear to have overwhelming leads of 6,292 votes, or 62.95%, and 8,450 votes, or 85.76%, respectively, according to the semiofficial results as of 11 pm on Tuesday by the San Mateo County Elections Office.

Measure BB in San Bruno has a commanding lead with 4,690 votes, or 82.72%. It limits the terms of the City Council and separately elected mayor to no more than 12 consecutive years, according to the semiofficial results.

Measure CC holds a commanding lead with 9,655 votes, or 71.84%, in San Mateo and looks to increase the property transfer tax in San Mateo from .5% to 1.5% for sales more than $10 million. The transfer tax is expected to generate about $4.8 million, and the city said the funds would be used for street repairs, park improvements, emergency services and reducing traffic congestion. It would affect less than 1% of all properties sold or transferred in the city.

All results are according to semiofficial results from Tuesday, Nov. 8, which included votes by mail received by Friday, Nov. 4, and all ballots received at voting centers. Later results will include votes received after Saturday, Nov. 5. Post-election results will be released before 4:30 pm on Thursday, Nov. 10, Friday, Nov. 11, Monday, Nov. 14, Tuesday, Nov. 15, Wednesday, Nov. 16, Thursday, Nov. 17, Friday, Nov. 18, Monday, Nov. 21 and Wednesday, Nov. 23. Results will be certified Dec. 8th.

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