Childcare Platform
Childcare Platform
For working families in King County, child care isn’t optional — it’s the difference between staying afloat and falling behind. Parents are juggling impossible costs. Child care workers are stretched thin and underpaid. And too often, the system drops families right when they need help most — after parental leave ends, when kids are too young for school, or when the school day doesn’t match a work schedule.
Child care costs are breaking family budgets, and yet child care child care workers themselves earn poverty wages. How can both be true? Because our child care system is built almost entirely on hundreds of small, private businesses — many owned by immigrants and women — that are expected to deliver high-quality care without public support comparable to K–12 education.
We have chosen high standards for early learning, with low child-to-teacher ratios and strong curriculum — and that’s the right choice. But high quality is expensive. In kindergarten, one teacher serves roughly 25 students, and the cost is shared across the community. In child care, a family home may serve nine children leaving a handful of families to cover wages, benefits, rent, insurance, materials, and utilities. This is a broken market — and we need to name it.
Nearly 90 percent of child care in King County is delivered by small, privately owned businesses — family homes and centers built through years of personal investment, deep trust, and pride in serving their communities. Many child care workers are entrepreneurs who have created something of their own, often while navigating licensing, staffing, and compliance without meaningful public support. Any serious child care strategy must respect child care workers not only as workers, but as small business owners and community leaders.
Infant care in a center in Washington averages $16,380 per year, more than the $11,125 cost for in-state public college tuition. This high cost makes child care unaffordable for many families, particularly those with low incomes. This cost represents 13 percent of the median annual income of a married-couple family in Washington, while seven percent is considered affordable. Although Washington provides subsidies to help make child care more affordable through its Working Connections Child Care program, it is estimated that just nine percent of infants, 22 percent of toddlers, and 28 percent of preschoolers in eligible households receive subsidies.
Rebecca’s plan approaches this crisis head-on by focusing on affordable child care at every stage (infant, toddler, preschool, and school-age), and providing the wraparound services (like extended day and summer programs) that working parents need. She knows there is not currently enough money invested, but will lean on how the county can better partner with state, cities, employers and providers to leverage resources to limit unnecessary duplication, and build on each others’ strengths and expertises.
Rebecca has spent her career fighting for working families because she’s lived alongside them — organizing, listening, and building solutions rooted in community. Her child care platform reflects that experience. It’s practical, ambitious, and grounded in what families and child care workers actually need.
Rebecca deeply understands this campaign issue. Her son and daughter-in-law are both child care workers navigating how to meet their own financial and child care needs for her granddaughter. It’s an issue where she has followed and uplifted the leadership of the frontline child care workers and centered the children and families who depend on child care so they can work, go to school and provide for their families. Before serving in the State Senate, Rebecca helped advance affordable child care at the regional level. As Executive Director of Puget Sound Sage, she played a key role in Communities of Opportunity, a community-driven philanthropy initiative that helped lay the foundation for Best Starts for Kids, which has dramatically expanded child care access and improved child care workers wages across King County. She partnered with Speaker Chopp, Rep. Farrell and advocates to secure dedicated funding for critical child care facilities that would be part of Sound Transit 2. As a State Senator, she protected the Puget Sound Taxpayer Accountability fund to make sure it was dispersed to our local counties for its intended use.
Rebecca’s leadership showed what’s possible when King County partners with communities and invests at scale in children and families.
In Olympia, Rebecca built on that foundation. She helped shape and pass our nation-leading Paid Family & Medical Leave program and worked with child care and domestic workers to strengthen workplace protections. She also championed Fair Starts for Kids–an integrated approach to make child care and early learning more affordable for Washington families by expanding access, capping copays, and providing resources to support child care and early learning child care workers– by taxing capital gains.
She is a sponsor of the child care workforce standards board legislation and the prime sponsor for the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. Rebecca has championed progressive revenue so the wealthiest contribute to early learning and the essential services we all rely on. Her approach has always been the same: listen first, build coalitions, and deliver results.
Now, she’s running for King County Council to bring that leadership home — and to tackle the child care crisis head-on.
Families experience it as a daily reality — from infant care to preschool, from before- and after-school programs to summer care. When one piece fails, the whole system fails.
As a County Councilmember, Rebecca will work to ensure families can count on affordable, high-quality child care across the full continuum, including:
Infant and toddler care when parental leave ends
Preschool that prepares kids and supports working parents
Before- and after-school care, learning support, and summer and other engaging programs that align with real work schedules
This means treating child care as essential public infrastructure — just like transit or public education — and coordinating county investments so families aren’t forced to scramble every few years.
King County already knows how to lead when it chooses to. Best Starts for Kids proved that a coordinated, well-funded approach can change lives. In the Senate, Rebecca supported legislation that reduced barriers for child care at local levels, understanding that so much more can and must be done to support the development of the sector.
Rebecca will apply that same model and direction to child care at all age levels by:
Strengthening county coordination and accountability. That includes better alignment between county programs, cities, school districts, and community partners — and smarter use of county land, facilities, bond capacity and capital dollars to expand child care spaces in every district in the county, including in king county owned facilities.
Reforming and decreasing the significant regulatory and infrastructure requirements over facilities which are one of the biggest barriers to expanding, remodeling, or starting a child care business. With actions like these King County can act immediately by focusing on where child care happens— and one of the clearest levers the County controls.
Partnering in streamlining permitting, regulations, and requirements to build new facilities. The cost to start and operate a child care center is simply too high – our County must support a system for building new facilities so they actually pencil out and are profitable.
For example, model solutions on community lead early learning programs like El Centro de la Raza and REWA who have found ways to scale their quality care all along our transit centers.
Prioritizing using public resources to create more licensable child care spaces, including leveraging PASTAA funds Rebecca fought for, expanding access to child care in publicly-owned buildings, and working with cities to allow additional height or density for developments that include apartments that are designed to allow licensed in-home child care on-site.
When child care providers are able to operate in publicly-owned or subsidized space, reduced rent and overhead should translate into lower tuition for families and higher wages for workers. Streamlining the permitting process, and aligning county agencies around this goal can unlock child care capacity quickly — without sacrificing quality or safety.
Cutting red tape to access existing subsidy programs for child care workers and families, as well as adding county resources alongside state and local incentives to meet the need. In Washington, eligible residents can get access to child care assistance through subsidy programs. However, child care facilities must opt in to participating programs and often do not due to low reimbursement rates and administrative burdens.
Together, we must build a child care infrastructure that simultaneously guarantees widespread access via universal acceptance of subsidized care and delivers a simplified, revenue-positive process of accepting subsidized care for our child care workforce.
Creating more child care spaces must go hand-in-hand with supporting the small businesses that operate them. Rebecca will prioritize expanding proven shared-services and peer-mentorship models like Imagine U, which has a strong track record of helping child care workers enter the field, stay open, and deliver high-quality care — while strengthening small businesses and stabilizing the child care supply.
Rebecca will also work to expand shared-services hubs that help child care workers with administrative tasks like billing, licensing paperwork, and compliance, freeing them up to focus on what matters most: caring for children.
First, we must increase the amount of subsidies that child care facilities receive so that they are properly compensated for their services and time.
Next, the County must assist our child care facilities by hiring a robust pool of shared administrative staff who will be dedicated to efficiently processing applications and paperwork so that families and child care workers get care faster and facilities are freed up to focus on what matters.
The goal isn’t another pilot. It’s a system families can rely on.
None of this works without child care professionals — the workers, often women of color and immigrants, who care for our kids every day. Covid 19 brought to the forefront that child care work enables all other work to be possible. Child care workers are essential to our economy and our communities, yet too often they are underpaid, unsupported, and even targeted.
Rebecca is a lifelong organizer, and she knows that lasting child care reform requires power — not just policy. Child care workers see that K–12 teachers earn higher wages and stronger protections in part because they are organized. The scale of investment needed to make child care truly affordable and to pay child care workers living wages will not happen without a larger, more powerful movement of child care workers, families, and workers.
Rebecca will make sure county policy reflects the value of their work by:
Stabilizing community-based child care workers, especially small and culturally rooted programs. We can do this by building upon proven models in King County, the City of Seattle, and other jurisdictions that provide both direct support for care centers, and direct benefits to low-income and working families. At the state level Rebecca has worked to both expand access and dedicated funding for community-based care.
For example, the Childcare Health Program connects child care workers with public health nurses who meet with preschool teachers to assess and identify how to best support children’s developmental needs or address any health concerns. Rebecca would look to expand existing programs for families to provide mental and emotional health support.
Supporting fair pay, safe working conditions, and access to benefits for child care workers. The current Best Starts for Kids levy funds worker wages and stability, and the City of Seattle recently adopted similar provisions in their family support and education levy. Rebecca will build on these types of programs to expand worker support, training, and standards.
Standing up for child care workers facing harassment or scapegoating, including Somali-owned child care businesses and other immigrant-run programs. Attacks on child care workers– especially those owned by, and that serve, immigrant and vulnerable communities– are hateful, cruel, and must be stopped.
Rebecca stands with our Somali community as so many in the Somali community have stood up for justice and fairness. Our campaign joins our voices with SEIU 925 President and Child Care Aware of WA. In Council, Rebecca will continue working with child care workers and community leaders in targeted areas of District 2 and King County to ensure we provide legal protections and financial assistance to keep these centers open, and kids safe in their care.
Expanding training, technical assistance, and shared services so child care workers can spend less time navigating bureaucracy and more time caring for kids. Supporting small business owners and nonprofits that want to provide care, or expand care offerings, deserve our help. We want to maintain high standards, from background checks to safety inspections, while at the same time creating incentives for providing more care to more families. We can do this with increased outreach, assistance, and streamlined permitting and inspection timelines.
Improving access to wraparound care, making sure kids have safe and welcoming spaces before and after school. In-school or near-school care and activities for kids K-6 are essential for working parents. We can and must do more to partner with school districts to maximize opportunities in our elementary and middle schools for fun, safe, and supportive before and after school care. Many cities locate community centers, libraries, and other spaces near schools, which can provide additional options for kids and families to get homework help, explore the arts, exercise, and make social connections. Rebecca will use her expertise community networks to help develop programs and policies that expand access and resources where they are needed.
Rebecca is a lifelong organizer, and she knows that lasting child care reform requires power — not just policy. Child care workers see that teachers earn more and have stronger protections in part because they are organized. That means supporting child care worker leadership development, collective voice, and organizing capacity — so those closest to the work are shaping the decisions that affect their livelihoods and the families they serve.
The scale of investment needed to make child care truly affordable and to pay child care workers living wages will not happen without a larger, more powerful movement of child care workers, families, and workers. As a County Councilmember, Rebecca will ensure child care workers have a seat at the table — and will support efforts to grow child care worker leadership, collective voice, and organizing capacity so those closest to the work can shape the decisions that affect their lives.
Lasting solutions require lasting investment. Rebecca will pursue sustainable county funding — including a voter-protected and approved approach that builds on the success of Best Starts for Kids and leverages additional philanthropic funding — to ensure child care is reliable, affordable, and here to stay.
She will use her years of experience in this area, plus deep connections to state government, to make sure programs are additive– that we get a fair share of state resources as a foundation of local investments to pursue universal access and intergovernmental coordination.
Rebecca will also push for progressive funding options that reflect a simple principle: those who have benefited most from our economy should help invest in the care systems working families depend on.
She will also work to improve how and when payments are made, so our child care workers are not forced to bear all the risk and liability. Protecting paying subsidies based on enrollment not on perfect attendance and paying at the first of the month not the end of the month improves child care business stability.
This isn’t just about expanding child care slots. It’s about changing how King County shows up for families.
By treating child care as public infrastructure — and by centering community, workers, and equity
— this approach moves beyond patchwork fixes and builds something durable. It reflects what Rebecca Saldaña has done throughout her career: turn community vision into lasting public systems.
Establishing free, universal, publicly-funded education for the first 12 years of children's lives will require a significant investment. But the long-term costs of failing millions of our children and their families year after year are much, much higher. In fact, children who attend Head Start or other pre-kindergarten programs are less likely to be arrested or abuse substances later in life, and are more likely to attend and complete college.
For every dollar the government spends on high-quality preschool programs it saves at least $7 in future spending on social services, remedial education, public safety and juvenile justice.
Best Starts for Kids was once considered too ambitious. Today, it’s transforming lives across King County. This is the next chapter of that same leadership.
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Sources:
https://www.strongnation.org/articles/2503-the-economic-impacts-of-insufficient-child-care-cost-washington-state-5-billion-annually