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Updated: December 19, 2025 @ 6:07 am
The Carey School, a private school serving prekindergarten to fifth grade, recently proposed expanding its facility to start including students as young as 2 years old.
San Mateo may get another child care center soon, helping to alleviate the countywide shortage of early childhood schools.
The Carey School, a private school serving prekindergarten to fifth grade, recently proposed expanding its facility to start including students as young as 2 years old. The new building would be across the street from the current site at 1 Carey Lane and would replace its second, which is for pre-k students, on Alameda de las Pulgas.
The new building would comprise six classrooms, accommodating up to 75 children from 2 to 5 years old and 16 teachers.
Head of School Neely Norris said the new school would help alleviate the child care crisis the county is facing. According to county data, there are about 9,000 children who need but cannot access care, with thousands of families on waitlists.
“San Mateo County is currently only meeting 73% of the need for licensed child care,” Norris said.
The project also comes at a time when the county is ramping up discussions on potential ballot measures and policy changes that would expand child care subsidies for middle-income families, streamline the child care application process and boost wages for child care workers.
Currently, the vast majority of child care subsidies are state-funded and as such, only families making up to 85% of California’s median income — about $93,000 for a family of three — typically qualify. That hurts expensive counties like San Mateo County particularly hard, where the median annual cost of preschool-aged care costs about $25,000 per year, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor.
The new Carey School site would be fully donor-funded, freeing up city and county resources for other child care efforts, Norris added. It’s also in a unique position to offer financial assistance.
“Most private child care programs are not able to offer financial assistance where our model … allows us to have a financial aid program, and that’s something that we can start in our earliest grade,” she said.
While some nearby residents were concerned about traffic, Planning Commission Chair Seema Patel said congestion may actually lessen with the new project.
“Co-locating these two facilities will substantially decrease traffic in the neighborhood because you’re going to have 60% of your families no longer driving the 1.7 miles between the two sites on Alameda de las Pulgas which is so backed up in the morning,” Patel said.
The Planning Commission voted 4-0 to move forward with the plans. Norris said the school hopes to construct and open the new site by fall 2027.
(650) 344-5200 ext. 102
Daily Journal staff
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