As a social worker connecting residents to public assistance programs in Marin County, Amy Gramajo frequently helps families apply for free or low-cost child care.
Those families typically qualify for subsidized child care, but they wind up waiting for months, or even years before they land an open spot at a child care program.
The shortage of affordable child care in one of the most expensive counties in the Bay Area is weighing heavily on Gramajo. A center where she sends her 5- and 8-year-old daughters for child care is at risk of closing after losing its lease last month, putting dozens of working parents like her on edge about whether they’ll be able to find alternative care.
“I don’t have any close family nearby to help me. If the center closes I don’t think I can maintain a full-time job or continue paying for an apartment here,” she said.
For five decades, the Fairfax-San Anselmo Children’s Center has played a vital role in the lives of hundreds of lower-income families who rely on its early education and after-school programs. It’s one of just a few subsidized child care centers in Marin. Parents and students cherish the close-knit community and the fact that it’s located in a county park at the foot of Mount Tamalpais, giving children ample space to play outside.
“We’re surrounded by all these amazing trees and hiking trails, just being so close to nature is such an important part of any human’s development,” said Vesta Torres, 29, one of several teachers who started coming to the center as babies and who now work there to raise the next generation of kids.
For single or working parents with school-age kids, the center crucially fills in the gap during the afternoon hours or periods when school is out. Eva Polony said the center helped her get through the pandemic by providing a place for her teenage sons to go. The center also supervised her sons’ online learning while she was at work.
“They are here for the essential workers and then some,” she said. “They’re just the foundation for families to keep working and to be able to feel secure. You know your kids’ needs are gonna be met.”
But the center’s future is uncertain.
Its aging buildings have structural issues that led the Ross Valley School District, which owns the campus, to terminate the center’s lease on Aug. 31. The school board president, Shelley Hamilton, said at a recent hearing that there were no immediate plans to evict the nonprofit organization that runs the center, but by operating without a lease, the group was exposing itself to increased safety and liability risks.
The center was holding out hope that the county Office of Education would buy the property and lease it back to the center. The office scrapped its plan, however, after a building inspection report concluded it might cost at least $14 million to bring the property up to current safety standards — an amount that John Carroll, the superintendent of Marin County schools, said his office doesn’t have.
Heidi Tomsky, the center’s executive director, disputes the findings of the report. She said inspectors were holding the buildings to more stringent standards reserved for schools, rather than for a licensed child care program like the Fairfax-San Anselmo Children’s Center.
Under state law, child care centers undergo random inspections by the Department of Social Services’ Community Care Licensing division to ensure they meet all health and safety requirements.
“We know that the buildings need renovations. I’m not quite sure or convinced yet that they’re unsafe to the standard that some people believe they are,” Tomsky said.
She added that closing the center would create a ripple effect for the parents who send their kids there, many of whom are gardeners, house cleaners and restaurant and grocery store workers in the area.
“Losing child care means likely that a family will lose their job, which will impact their housing, which will impact their food, which will impact their … whole entire economic security,” Tomsky said.
Marin County is already one of the most expensive places to live in California, so the cost of child care is just as high.
A recent report by the United Ways of California found that nearly a quarter of households in Marin don’t earn enough to meet basic needs, including housing, food, transportation and child care.
Over the last five years, the average price for preschool in Marin has gone up nearly 40% to $2,315 a month, and up to $2,600 per month for infant care, according to Aideen Gaidmore, executive director of the Marin Child Care Council.
The high cost of child care is why more than 900 children are on a waitlist her agency maintains for subsidized child care, Gaidmore said. That means they qualify for low-cost or free child care, but there’s no guarantee they’ll get it because of insufficient funding, staffing or facilities to serve them.
“There are families who are eligible, but will never be pulled off that list for whatever reason,” she said.
Increased state funding and federal pandemic aid for child care have helped her agency to serve hundreds more families in the last two years, Gaidmore said, but the number of available slots hasn’t kept pace with demand.
There have been attempts locally to boost access to early education for Marin’s underserved children.
In 2016, a proposal to raise the local sales tax by a quarter-cent to raise about $12 million per year for the cause received 63% of votes, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass. (A local taxpayer group argued in voters’ pamphlets that if the measure passed “many will flock to Marin for free child care.”)
Left with limited resources, local nonprofits such as the Marin Community Foundation instead focused on funding $1.5 million each year on financial assistance, particularly for single, working parents and training early educators in subsidized programs. The philanthropic organization will phase out the program so it can develop and implement a strategic plan to expand access to child care in Marin.
Gaidmore said her agency used federal pandemic aid to help family child care homes get properly licensed to increase the kind of facilities set up for infant care. It’s also administering a guaranteed income program for 21 entry-level early educators, giving them $8,000 in stipends per year over a three-year period.
“We wanted to focus on teachers who were just coming into the field and how we could encourage them to stay there,” Gaidmore said. “We know that they’re the lowest paid. So it made more sense to bring that in.”
As for the nearly 90 families enrolled at the Fairfax-San Anselmo Children’s Center, Gaidmore said she’s trying to secure funding to minimize potential child care disruption for them.
“Our concern is really supporting those families in any way we can, and obviously the teachers and staff of the center,” she said.
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