For Advocates

We encourage advocates to use needs assessment data from the Child Care Partnership Council to talk about supply gaps. Profiles for each city in San Mateo County can be found here:

• Child Care and Early Learning Needs Assessment 2017

1. San Mateo County has a tremendous shortage of early learning facilities for all ages and income levels that impacts families, children, and the county’s economic prosperity.
2. Build Up seeks to alleviate the child care shortage through a four-part approach, informed by the recommendations of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s cross-sector Task Force: reuse of existing available space, inclusion of child care in new developments, partnerships with large employers, and generating new capital funds.
3. Build Up staff and partners/volunteers can work with cities, developers, employers, school districts, and FBOs on solutions for including child care.
4. Child care is a solution to workforce issues such as work-life balance, absenteeism, employee retention, and productivity.
5. Having high quality child care, preschool and after school care available makes a community more friendly and sustainable and improves the quality of life for people who live and work in the community.
6. Child care availability is an important piece of community infrastructure that is interrelated with housing and transit, because child care sited near housing, jobs and transit reduces traffic congestion and commute times, allows families to live and work in the same community, and complement a city’s business development and retention strategies.

SAMCEDA provides a helpful matrix of all the property developments in San Mateo County:

• San Mateo County Development Matrix

The Heckman Equation provides excellent tools for advocates to talk about the importance and impact of high quality early experiences for children. The tools and resources, including Share Graphics, Videos, Research Summaries, Academic Papers, Presentations, and more, can all be found at:

• The Heckman Equation

The Association for Career and Technical Education has compiled tips for providing writen and oral comments that can be found here:

• Testifying Before Policymakers