Report Highlights Gaps, Improvements In Child Care In This Bay Area County

SAN MATEO COUNTY, CA — A recent analysis on local child care supply and demand in San Mateo County found encouraging progress and persistent challenges in 2025.

The state-mandated local Child Care Partnership Council conducted the last countywide child care assessment in 2022 and found San Mateo County was experiencing a child care shortage but expected it to grow over the next 10 years.

Before the next mandated report in 2027, the council contracted Sarah Kinahan Consulting to conduct an updated analysis.

“The report provides important information to determine how to meet families’ current child care needs and expand access to high-quality, affordable child care,” Nancy Magee, San Mateo County Superintendent of Schools, told Patch.

The new report found a 6% increase in the number of formal child care spaces, with the total of licensed spaces now up to 44,903. There has also been a 12% growth in center-based sites, which is close to what the number was at pre-pandemic.

The county credits the increase partly due to investments in preschool capacity and the state’s expansion of transitional kindergarten, before and after school programs and expanded eligibility criteria for the California State Preschool Program.

But with the gains, the report also identified gaps in access to infant and school-age care for families who qualify for child-care subsidies. Fifty-five percent of eligible children still lack access to funded spaces. Since 2017, there are now 153 fewer family child-care homes, which is a 24.3% decrease.

“We know that the access and cost of childcare is at a breaking point in San Mateo County,” Jackie Speier, a San Mateo County supervisor who co-chairs the council with Magee, told Patch. “It’s hard to find, prohibitively expensive and causes many parents to leave the workforce or the county. This report provides some data points that will help us identify and fix this problem. I firmly believe that we can’t fix our high cost of living issue without fixing childcare.”