Raising a family becomes ever more costly, from soaring gas prices to rising health premiums, as President Trump nudges prices higher, forgetting his promise to lift middle-class households.
Closer to home, progressive local leaders stumble as well — after promising to ease the astronomical cost of child care, a key to raising a family in San Diego.
Gov. Gavin Newsom — buoyed by Assemblymember David Alvarez — pledged to deliver a two-step fix back in 2021, starting with free pre-K for all 4-year-old children. Now, distracted by his presidential campaign, Newsom stands by while hundreds of nonprofit pre-K’s shutter their classrooms across San Diego County, at the very moment that parents desperately search for affordable options.
Once his signature issue, Newsom has grown transitional kindergarten, a new grade level in public schools. So-called TK now reaches 9,000 additional 4-year-olds across the county each year, relative to enrollments prior to COVID. Newsom’s notable achievement — classrooms built-out by local educators — saves parents upward of $18,000 yearly, families who once paid through the nose for pricey pre-K.
But the collateral promise by Alvarez and Newsom seems long forgotten: Pivoting San Diego’s nearly 1,000 nonprofit pre-K’s to serve toddlers and 3-year-olds, after losing their 4-year-olds to TK. Less than one-third of parents raising a 3-year-old can find a pre-K spot, no matter how expensive, half the enrollment rate enjoyed by New York families.
Scores of community-rooted preschools in San Diego, unable to swivel to toddlers and younger kids, continue to go belly-up, shedding more than 7,000 pre-K slots since 2019, according to a new University of California study.
The steady demise of nonprofit pre-K’s means fewer affordable options for working parents. Children attending TK must be fetched early afternoon from schools, impossible for parents laboring full time. In contrast, nonprofit pre-K’s have run for decades from early morning to evening, along with summers and school holidays.
Alvarez — chairing the Assembly committee that oversees pre-K spending — has endeavored to backstop community pre-K’s, boosting spending on 2- and 3-year-olds and extending eligibility for free preschool to households earning less than $135,000 per year.
But these fresh options for middle-class families remain little known outside the state capitol, as few parents or nonprofits have become aware of new funding for kids, zero to 3 years of age. Even when attempting to score this new financing, community pre-K’s face a bureaucratic maze of procedures in Sacramento.
As this year’s budget negotiations get underway with Newsom, Alvarez can right this lurching ship. Modest new investments in advertising for parents, along with coaching for small pre-K’s, could widen access for families. To ease teacher shortages, policy makers can support training in infant and toddler development. Lawmakers could simplify how families qualify for public pre-K, rather than asking parents to complete a mountain of forms.
The state education department is rightfully requesting $123 million to ease these barriers to family access and bolster the capacity of nonprofits to invite in additional families. Yet, Alvarez voted last year to end pandemic-era aid to nonprofit pre-K’s, a move that will hurry their demise across the county.
It’s a tight budget year in Sacramento. But revenues earmarked for education are rising, stoked by ballooning tech stocks and taxes on capital gains. Lawmakers could house new pre-K’s in schools emptied by the declining enrollment of older children, as pursued by Los Angeles school board this month.
It’s crazy for schools and nonprofits to compete for a shrinking count of young children. Instead, inventive agencies, like San Diego nonprofit Education Enrichment Systems, operates toddler and pre-K classrooms on Vista Unified school sites in North County. It’s a win-win for both agencies: inviting families with young children into the public schools and generating fresh financing for educators and nonprofits.
The collapse of nonprofit pre-K’s will accelerate until lawmakers recall their promise to broaden access to preschool for a wider rainbow of families. Then, they must needle the governor’s slumbering bureaucracy to lower entry hurdles for parents and foster the shift of small programs to serve younger children. Economically stretched parents can ill-afford Sacramento’s languishing momentum.
Bruce Fuller, a UC Berkeley sociologist, is author of Debating Childhood and Preschool.
