Expanding Universal TK while enabling day cares to survive

Passed in 2021, Assembly Bill 22: Universal Transitional Kindergarten, authored by Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, seeks to significantly increase access to quality prekindergarten learning environments for all of the state’s 4-year-old children. 

Implementation is well under way to hit the 25-26 academic year full rollout target, even if 10 out of 17 elementary school districts in San Mateo County (as of the 2022-23 academic year) aren’t even getting access to any state funding to implement Universal TK due to being basic aid districts. 

In talking to educators in school districts across the county, there are many open questions as to how this very important program is going to be both funded and staffed in an already extremely resource constrained environment. The San Carlos School District has Bond Measure H on the 2024 ballot for $176 million which includes funding for “providing facilities needed for transitional kindergarten to all 4-year-olds by 2025 — required by new state mandates.”

AB 22 estimated that an additional 226,000 4-year-olds would have access to Universal TK once the plan was implemented. Given the average cost of day care for a toddler in California is just under $17,000 per year (San Mateo County is just under $19,000), this means that up to $3.8 billion in revenue is being lost by private women and minority owned child care facilities across the state. 

“Child care facilities are being forced to either find alternative business models to pay the bills or shut down,” said Sara Mauskopf, CEO and co-founder at one of the largest online child care marketplaces winnie.com. 

If we are talking downstream impacts here, it is critical to mention that when day cares close, access to infant and young toddler care also goes away. With nearly 70% of U.S. parents in dual/multi-income family structures and around 7,000 babies born in San Mateo County every year, this is an unintended consequence that merits spotlighting over and over again. 

“The child care crisis is real and isn’t going away. We have more than 20 years of exhaustive reports that have identified the problems. [Universal] TK alone savages child care providers providing care for 0-3, the most expensive care because the ratios are smaller,” said Jackie Speier, former U.S. representative and District 1 San Mateo County supervisor-elect.

So where do we go from here? 

A lot of smart people have been thinking about this since AB 22 passed, and there is a lot more work to be done. California is not the first state to roll out Universal TK, and it is not the first to deal with this exact challenge. What can we learn from others who have already been through this? 

“Some states have come up with successful models — Vermont and New Mexico for instance. Simply put — it has to be comprehensive,” Speier said, and plans to “convene a conference next year and develop a strategic plan for truly universal care.”

“New York has over the years successfully implemented a true mixed-delivery model that was born out of a deep public-private collaboration to significantly expand access to quality pre-K education in the state,” said Sanjay Gehani, a former member of the Foster City Council and partner at Building Kidz, who offers it as a potential model from which to learn.

Both you and I would be fools to think that there’s going to be an easy solution. But, I think we can all agree that we cannot cut off our community’s supply to full-day infant and young toddler care in an effort to beef up the year before kindergarten — on the backs of our community’s women and minority-owned businesses — with often partial workday programs that more than half of the county won’t receive funding to implement, and working parents likely will still need to find and pay for after school care anyway. 

It is one pipeline and all of it matters. 

Annie Tsai is chief operating officer at Interact (tryinteract.com), early stage investor and advisor with The House Fund (thehouse.fund), and a member of the San Mateo County Housing and Community Development Committee. Find Annie on Twitter @meannie.