SFCCPA September 2018 Events & Updates
Photo by Parent Voices and Children's Council
Greetings!

In accord with the SFCCPA’s mission — to build unity with families and community allies to access needed resources to provide the highest quality early care and education for all of San Francisco’s children — we worked hard to make sure Prop. C passed in June. This initiative will bring an estimated $100-150M in needed revenue to early care & education programs by taxing commercial property owners earning over $1M.

Now, a lawsuit has been filed by Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association, Building Owners and Management Association (BOMA), California Business Roundtable, and California Business Properties Association to block not only this child care initiative — but our ability to raise needed resources for our community. We are dedicated to our mission and ready and proud to join with Parent Voices and ECE community allies to protect the funding voters passed, and our ability to continue to raise needed resources.

Thanks to all the educators who stepped up with Parent Voices last Tuesday at our community press conference. See more details in the links below on the lawsuit and our community response.

What can you do?
  • Sign the Parent Voices petition.
  • Help us keep the news buzzing – post & repost in social media.
  • Join us at our monthly SFCCPA meeting on September 24 for an update on our actions to support Prop C, and educators and allies role in the continued advocacy for the ECE funding our community voted for!


Sincerely,
Sara Hicks-Kilday, Director
San Francisco Child Care Providers' Association
SFCCPA Monthly Meeting

Monday, September 24
6:15 – 8:30 PM
Children's Council, Room 120
445 Church Street, San Francisco
Focus: Community response to defend ECE funds

SFCCPA meetings focus on networking, policy & program updates, professional development, and event & action planning to build a strong community of early care educators.

Bring a friend, and grow an active & engaged early care and education community!
Prop C in Jeopardy: Lawsuit Threatens to Take Away Historic Win for Children & Families in San Francisco

This past June, thousands of child care champions in San Francisco went to the voting booth and passed Proposition C: the single largest investment any U.S. city has made for childcare.

But instead of celebrating this historic win, San Francisco’s largest corporate landlords, represented by the Building Owners Management Association (BOMA), have filed suit and are ready to spend millions in a lawsuit to take away this historic win AND our vote .

Re-post all the links below to social media. Create our own buzz!

Child Care Advocates Call “Foul” on Corporate Landlords Lawsuit Against Voter-Approved Prop C

Parent Voices and thousands of community members have spent decades advocating for more investments in our child care system. We have partnered with economists, business voices, foundations, lawmakers and countless citizens to demand for a more equitable system for families and early educators.

So when big businesses and anti-tax groups file a lawsuit against the City, claiming that the idea to invest in Early Care and Education was orchestrated by local government, ignoring decades of efforts that we have put into this system, we call “Foul.”  We are calling on them to drop their lawsuit and choose children, not corporate interests.
Press Coverage
SF Examiner: Early childcare workers, advocates rally against business groups seeking to block new law

Advocates rallied Tuesday against a lawsuit threatening to slow down — and potentially invalidate — an initiative that will subsidize early childcare and raise the wages of workers in the field.

Proposition C, or the Universal Child Care for all Act, which would raise taxes on commercial real estate rents by 3.5 percent, passed in June with 50.87 percent of the vote. It was challenged in a lawsuit filed last month by pro-business organizations.

“The very people who have benefited from 40 years of corporate property tax loopholes under Proposition 13, who benefit the most from …. Bush and Trump tax cuts and who [face] the lowest commercial property rent taxes in the nation are denying our youngest children the same quality of life to meet their full potential that their children would benefit from,” said Mary Ignatius of San Francisco Parent Voices.
The Pacifica Evening News

Tune in at the 49 minute mark to hear the piece on the Proposition C lawsuit.
SF Chronicle: Local report by Heather Knight

Note: Portion on Prop C begins halfway through the article titled "Candidate Nick Josefowitz spending much more …"

California’s Constitution requires a simple majority for tax measures that raise money for general purposes and two-thirds voter approval for tax measures that raise funds for a specific cause — like early child care or homeless shelters. But the state Supreme Court in a ruling last year said that if tax measures for specific purposes are placed on the ballot through a voter signature drive rather than by government officials, a simple majority could be enough.

The ruling wasn’t crystal clear, and the plaintiffs in the lawsuit argue that the June Prop. C was “an attempt to exploit media-fueled speculation” surrounding the decision. Media-fueled speculation? Well, I never!

The city attorney’s office, no stranger to lawsuits in our perennially boundary-testing city, is determined to preserve June’s Prop. C.
Video: Why Do Parents Spend So Much On Child Care, Yet Early Childhood Educators Earn So Little?

The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley and Child Care Aware of America teamed up to create a new video. It shows why parents cannot afford to pay and educators cannot afford to stay. We need public investment to support children, their families, and early educators.