The 2025-26 California Spending Plan: Child Care and State Preschool

Nov 14, 2025 - The net effect of the policy is that less unspent funding will be returned to the state at the close of the fiscal year. Beginning 2026-27, the budget package sets a new policy to fund direct contrac t providers based on the lesser of (1)  the maximum reimbursable amount in their contract, (2)  the contractor ’s reimbursable program costs, or (3)  the contract rate per child day of enrollment.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5088

The 2025-26 Budget: Child Care and State Preschool

Mar 28, 2025 - Given the alternative methodology and a new collective bargaining agreement may not be finalized prior to the June  15 deadline to pass a budget, the Legislature may want to plan for costs associated with the new rates in 2025 ‑26.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5024

The 2025-26 Budget: Overview of the Governor's Budget

Jan 13, 2025 - New Tax Expenditures of $150   Million. The Governor ’s budget includes some revenue proposals, which would expand existing tax expenditures and create new ones. This includes increasing the existing film tax credit from $330  million to $750  million per year and excluding some military retirement income from taxation.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4951

The 2024-25 Budget: State Preschool

Apr 16, 2024 - Assembly Bill  110 provided CDE new authority to issue temporary rate increases to contractors if funding was available within the State Preschool budget appropriation. The intent of this new authority was to allow CDE to fully expend temporary COVID-19 relief funds before they were set to expire at the end of September 2023.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4894

The 2023-24 California Spending Plan: Child Care and State Preschool

Nov 17, 2023 - The spending plan delays the planned child care slot increases by one year, resulting in $134  million General Fund savings in 2023 ‑24. The administration intends to resume adding new slots in 2024 ‑25, reaching the overall 200,000  new slots goal by 2026 ‑27.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4817

The 2023-24 Budget: Child Care Proposals

Feb 9, 2023 - Specifically, the past two budgets assumed DSS would require at least three months to modify AP agency contracts to reflect new slot funding. Additionally, the past budgets assumed DSS would not begin to award new slot funding to GCC providers until t he last two or three months of each fiscal year.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4672

The 2022-23 California Spending Plan: Child Care and Preschool

Oct 27, 2022 - Further detail is provided in our New Workload and Funding for CDE EdBudget table. Child Care Budget Includes $2.4  Billion Increase for Child Care. As Figure  4 shows, the 2022-23 budget package adds $1.7  billion ongoing for child care programs.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4643

The 2021-22 Budget: Child Care Proposals

Feb 11, 2021 - Includes New Budget Structure and Provisional Language to Modify Shift Midyear. The Governor ’s budget includes provisional language that would allow the administration to transfer local assistance expenditure authority (both federal fund and General Fund) between CDE and DSS during the course of the fiscal year.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4363

The 2023-24 Budget: Transitional Kindergarten and State Preschool Proposals

Feb 14, 2023 - These students do not generate state funding until their fifth birthday and must turn five before the end of the school year. State Also Made Recent Programmatic Changes to TK. The 2021 ‑22 budget agreement also included a new class size requirement for TK —specifically , requiring that school districts maintain an average TK classroom enrollment of no more than 24 students at each school site.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4682

A Review of Child Care and Preschool Program Flexibilities in Certain Counties

May 13, 2021 - This would allow the state to test new policies at a small scale before implementing the changes statewide. For example, the state could implement a different family fee schedule in pilot counties a year prior to making the new family fee schedule statewide policy.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4431