Gov.-elect Xavier Becerra says he wants to improve childcare, fueling high expectations

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As California’s next governor, Xavier Becerra will inherit a childcare system that remains unaffordable for many families and financially unstable for many providers. Advocates hope he will use his experience as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary to create universal access, raise wages for providers and prioritize sustainable funding for early childhood education.

Childcare “can’t just be one amongst a hundred priorities — it needs to be one of the top three,” said Stacy Lee, chief learning officer and senior managing director of early childhood at nonprofit Children Now.

Becerra has experience with early education. As HHS secretary, he administered billions in childcare relief funds during the pandemic, and supported nationwide efforts to expand subsidized care. Becerra also oversaw the Office of Head Start and the Office of Child Care during the Biden administration.

Becerra’s team did not respond to a request for comment. But during the campaign, he spoke about the need to expand access to early learning while improving pay for the people who provide it. 

“We can’t talk about universal pre-K, we can’t talk about having affordable childcare unless we’re willing to face the fact that we don’t pay childcare providers, we don’t pay Head Start teachers enough for them to make a living,” Becerra said in a forum held before the California primary election. “So we may say we want to expand it to everyone, but until we start to reward the people who are actually teaching, we don’t do that.”

At the same forum, hosted by Choose Children, a network of dozens of early education groups, Becerra shared a personal connection to the issue. Because his parents could not afford childcare, he said, he was a latchkey child who, along with his three sisters, “had to survive the two hours or so” at home alone after school until a parent arrived. 

Throughout his campaign and his time as HHS secretary, Becerra emphasized the importance of investing in children early. At the forum, he repeated a quote he attributed to his mother: “Es mejor prevenir que remediar” or “It’s better to prevent than to try to remediate.”

What Becerra is inheriting

Expectations are high for Becerra as he prepares to succeed termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom. 

“We hope and expect that our governor-elect will implement childcare for all during his time or at least set California on the path to this universal model where it doesn’t matter your work status or your income,” said Julia Forte Frudden, senior policy analyst at the Child Care Law Center. 

Newsom expanded transitional kindergarten to all 4-year-olds in California, widely considered a significant achievement despite a bumpy rollout. His administration also funded thousands of new subsidized childcare slots, though fewer than he promised in 2021. 

Reimbursement rates for childcare providers remain low. The 2.01% cost-of-living adjustment for providers — meant to ensure their wages can keep up with inflation — falls short of their 2.87% statutory rate and of the 4.31% discretionary adjustment that K-12 teachers received in this year’s state budget. 

Becerra will take office amid uncertainty over federal funding for programs that support children and families. Head Start faces a potential overhaul that could significantly change how the early learning program has operated for nearly six decades. 

Meanwhile, families and providers have faced persistent instability as the second Trump administration has sought to freeze, delay, or cut federal funding for programs including Medi-Cal, CalFresh and California’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which helps some families access childcare. 

High hopes for Becerra for early education

Becerra’s experience with early education policy has advocates hopeful about what childcare could look like in California during his next four years as governor. 

“He knows it’s a broken system that’s not meeting the needs of parents or providers right now,” said Forte Frudden of the Child Care Law Center.

The shortcomings of the childcare system became especially apparent during the Covid pandemic, when childcare facilities were shuttered due to lockdowns and outbreaks. Some parents, mostly mothers, left the workforce because they had no one to care for their children.

Becerra became HHS secretary in 2021, when the early learning field was still reeling from the pandemic’s impact. 

His administration oversaw the disbursement of American Rescue Plan funds, which included $39 billion to stabilize the childcare industry. More than $2 billion of those funds had reached 50,115 childcare programs in California by mid-2023, according to a fact sheet from the federal Office of Child Care. 

In 2024, Becerra supported President Biden’s call for an additional $16 billion to extend those stabilization funds. 

“Families with young children can’t work, go to school, or get job training if they don’t have childcare,” Becerra wrote in his testimony. “If we don’t give childcare providers — mostly small businesses — the support they need to serve their communities, working families across the country will suffer the consequences. Unstable childcare is a main reason workers leave their jobs.”

Becerra was also HHS secretary when Biden introduced the Build Back Better plan, a nearly $2 trillion legislative package that proposed about $400 billion for universal prekindergarten and a major expansion of subsidized childcare. 

In a February 2022 livestream discussing the proposal, Becerra met with parents and their children at the White House. The parents shared their struggles finding affordable childcare that met their children’s needs.

But the childcare provisions were ultimately dropped from the legislation after then-Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, and Republican members of Congress raised concerns about the cost, an outcome that disappointed many providers and families. 

As Becerra prepares to take office, advocates said they hope California can become a leader in early education.

“California’s perfectly capable of finding a universal childcare solution. We have the resources,” said Lee of Children Now. “If you don’t provide care, people get pushed into poverty. If you do provide care, it lifts them up throughout their whole lifetime.”

This story was originally published by EdSource.