California has almost 3 million children 5 years old and under. Hundreds of thousands of these kids lack affordable childcare because of backlogs in the state’s subsidized childcare program. The pandemic --which led to the closure of 8,500 childcare facilities--only worsened the bottleneck. And lack of childcare means that in many households one--or both parents--won’t be able to work. In this hour, we examine the long term access and affordability problems in early childhood care and how it affects the state’s persistent achievement gap. We’ll also hear about a state plan to phase in universal transitional kindergarten.

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