Can SF afford a ‘Day Without Child Care’?

Oscar Tang and his family operate six in-home day-care facilities throughout The City.

His employees care for about 10 kids at each site, with locations in Mission Bay, SoMa and Portola. If all of them closed or shut down, Tang estimated that more than 100 San Francisco residents would be unable to go to work.

“But throughout the state, there are over 26,000 [day-care centers],” he said. “That’s 260,000 employees who wouldn’t make it to work” if they close.

On Monday, parents called off work as child-care centers closed across the United States. More than a dozen Bay Area child-care providers met at Children’s Fairyland in Oakland to call for affordable child care for parents and equitable pay for workers as part of the annual Day Without Child Care event.

Most parents would probably agree that day-care costs, especially in San Francisco, are exorbitant . According to the Children’s Council, parents pay on average $29,000 a year for infant care , making it the second-biggest expense for families after housing.

But the costs to run a day care add up — including rent, licensing and liability insurance — and the average annual salary for a child-care worker in The City is around $47,000 , according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The workers are also pushing back against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to pause an expansion of subsidized child-care slots. A family of three earning up to $142,650 can qualify for free or reduced-cost day care, according to the San Francisco Department of Early Childhood.

While there was a lot of attention placed on Mayor London Breed’s proposed budget last year, “[it] eliminated no programming for child care, and in fact continued to expand it,” Breed’s Communications Director Jeff Cretan said in an email. In the past five years, Cretan said, Breed’s initiatives with The City have distributed more than 50,000 child-care subsidies.

“But if you don’t qualify for that, you’re on your own, you have to pay everything out of pocket,” Tang said.

His day cares serve “a diverse group of parents,” he told The Examiner, many of whom are above that threshold.

“We know the challenges across different income groups,” he said. “The City has invested so much in lower income [levels], but it’s the middle income that needs help right now.”

Tang said his families work across many fields, including technology, biotech and medicine — three of The City’s largest employment sectors. Tang, a Chinese immigrant, is bilingual and serves the needs of families speaking Cantonese, the second most-spoken language in San Francisco behind English.

Closing permanently is not an option for Tang, but he said he wants to see improvements at the state and local level, which is why he joined the day-care providers Monday.

Parent Voices California, which helped organize the event, is fighting to increase funding for child care at the state level. Executive Director Mary Ignatious said the governor will have to make tough choices regarding child care after announcing his May budget revision that delays the expansion of subsidized child care.

“But [those choices are] nothing compared to the financial stress that our families and child-care workers face every day,” she said.

“Our families have to go to budget hearings and spend seven, eight hours begging for the services that they need,” she added. “We’re calling on the state legislature to put revenues on the table before they propose to pause child care expansion indefinitely.”

Families can’t “indefinitely” wait for child care, she said, and lawmakers need to backtrack on voucher delays so “child-care workers can do what they love.”

Tang said he has worked in child care since he was a child himself, helping his mother — who also operated in-home day-care facilities in San Francisco — with paperwork and other housekeeping duties. Today, he and his wife carry on a profession that he said he considers an integral part of The City’s economy.

“For me, being an immigrant, I don’t have too many family members in the United States,” he said. “[The kids] are also considered my extension of the family, so this is something I really treasure.”

Maria Luz Torre, a founding community organizer for Parent Voices San Francisco, said families’ needs have changed since she began connecting parents with child-care resources over 30 years ago.

When she started organizing in The City, child care was unattainable despite the fact that she had a law degree.

“I couldn’t afford to work at the time,” she said. “I had two college degrees, but I was a single mother. I couldn’t afford child care.”

She said she was lucky enough to have relatives look after her children while she searched for work.

“But so many [of our families] don’t have grandma or grandpa nearby,” she told The Examiner. “It’s common in San Francisco, especially now. And it’s expensive to live here. Both parents can work, and day care is still [unaffordable].”

That’s why she continues working to bring light to issues that affect day-care providers even though her children are now adults, she said.

Tang said that San Francisco, more than other counties in California, has “invested heavily” in making child care accessible. Early educators working in The City’s highest-need centers saw their salaries increase by 47% this year, and more than 1,600 early educators saw an average annual wage increase of $12,336 , according to the Department of Early Childhood.

While Cretan said these are significant investments, he said that “there is always more to do” — and many child care providers who participated in a Day Without Child Care might agree.

“People in San Francisco who pay for day care, because it can be so expensive, think we should be making a lot of money,” Tang said. “But that’s not the reality.”