F5SMC Child Care Facilities

In December 2024, the Commission updated its Strategic Plan for 2025-2030, which will guide the Commission’s priorities and investments. The 2025-2030 Strategic Plan is consistent with the focus and intent of the Children and Families Act, building on what has been learned and accomplished locally and providing a framework for the Commission and the community for how Proposition 10 funds will be strategically invested over the next five years. Central to the success of these investments is a strong foundation that adequately prioritizes early childhood systems and services in San Mateo County.

As outlined in its 2025-2030 Strategic Plan, First 5 San Mateo County is prioritizing partnerships with entities that are achieving both direct impact and positive systemic change. This approach fosters sustainable improvement within agencies and systems, and allows families beyond the direct service reach to benefit. Many of our investments serve present needs as well as examining and improving the underlying systems.

Through this RFA for Child Care Facilities F5SMC welcomes proposals from qualified entities with direct experience leading childcare facilities preservation, enhancements, and development. Qualified applicants may include fiscally sponsored initiatives, community- based (501)(c)(3) organizations, coalitions, and collaboratives. F5SMC is interested in applicants who exhibit expertise in providing services and will work collaboratively with F5SMC.

Desired Outcomes

Successful applicants in response to this RFA will demonstrate how they would help F5SMC achieve the relevant desired outcomes in the strategic plan:

1. Communities provide a safe and healthy environment for young children.
2. Children have timely and affordable access to high-quality early care and education settings.

In service of these larger strategic outcomes, F5SMC anticipates that funding this work will positively impact population- and participant-level indicators such as:

• The available supply of infant and toddler care relative to the need in San Mateo County.
• The number of early learning facilities maintained, expanded, or in the pipeline for San Mateo County.

Service Strategies & Domains

In particular, this RFA is intended to identify applicants to: 1) advance policy, advocacy and resources 2) weave partnerships and initiatives to grow and preserve child care spaces and improve children’s access to quality care environments and 3) maintain data on the number of child care spaces grown, preserved, and maintained and other metrics of the applicant with the aim of supporting quality care and education and local systems change.

Areas of Interest

• Data collection and tracking of child care facility preservation, enhancing or new sites/developments including city, the county, and municipalities’ contributions and policy approaches.
• Improvement or expansion of indoor and outdoor spaces including Climate Action strategies
• Fund development planning, leveraging and or securing funding for capital projects.

Target Populations

• Infant & Toddler Spaces
• Family Child Care Homes
• Priority zip codes and/or communities based on the Child Care Partnership Council 2025 Supply & Demand Analysis Report.
• Settings accepting vouchers (subsidies) and/or sliding scale fees for families.

Funding Amount and Available Term

First 5 SMC has allocated a maximum of $300,000 over 3 fiscal years (2025-26, 2026-27, 2027-28) to meet the goals and objectives detailed in this RFA term August 1 ^{s t} , 2025-through June 30, 2028 (FY 2025-26, FY 2026-27, FY 2027-28) .

Early learning settings—including infant and toddler care, family child care homes, and center-based preschool programs—play a critical role in nurturing children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development and are an essential component of any strategy to promote school readiness and success in all aspects of children’s lives. In San Mateo County, 71% of children ages 0-5 live in families with working parents, ^[1] but in 2021 there were only enough licensed childcare spaces available for 33% of these children. ^[2] According to the Child Care Partnership Council (CCPC), there are 24% fewer Family Child Care sites (FCCs) today in SM than there were in 2017. “FCCs are significant providers of infant care in the County, providing 40% of the formal child care spaces for this age group” Concurrently, 88% of families eligible for subsidized child care spaces for infants and toddlers 0-2 needs are not being met, a deficit of 8065 spaces. This is a slight improvement over the CCPC 2022 needs assessment, with the percentage of the need being met for all age groups In 2022, 96% of infants, 48% of preschoolers, and 79% of school age children were not served. Some of the reasons for improvement include expanded eligibility criteria for CSPP, expansion of Transitional Kindergarten, and new Expanded Learning Opportunities Program. (Child Care Demand and Supply Analysis -The Child Care Partnership Council 2025, Sarah Kinahan Consulting). While local and statewide efforts, such as the expansion of Universal Transitional Kindergarten, may offset some of these shortages for preschool age children, access for infants and toddlers continues remains a significant challenge.

Since inception 25 years ago, the F5SMC Commission has been committed to increasing and improving access to high quality early education experiences for all children in the county. This effort has taken in various initiatives and projects over the years, a through line is early childhood quality, inclusion and improvement including facilities preservation, maintenance and expansion. Critical to high-quality early learning settings are safe, accessible, and developmentally appropriate spaces indoor and outside. In 2016, when San Mateo County was forced to return approximately $1million in state preschool funding due to a lack of space for programs, F5SMC, San Mateo County Office of Education and Silicon Valley Community Foundation commissioned a taskforce and survey of child care and preschool providers to understand barriers to program development and/or expansion. ^[3] The top two barriers that the Task Force found were “lack of funding” and “difficulty finding an available site.” This taskforce helped to create the foundation for Build Up SMC.

This initiative launched in 2017, financially seeded the first three years by F5SMC, Jacques M. Littlefield Foundation, and Heising-Simons Foundation, Build Up San Mateo County, takes a multi-sector, coalition-building approach to fund, expand and sustain child care facilities in the county. A continued multi-sector strategy is required to address the adequate of early learning spaces for families at all income levels as well as the need for more subsidized child care in formal and informal care. Build Up SMC’s implementation model inspired Build Up CA and it’s work within CA and nationwide.