By 2024, childcare in Boulder County, Colorado had become a growing strain. Prices were among the highest in the state, and while the county had more licensed slots per child than many other Colorado counties, advocates said care for infants and toddlers remained hard to find.
That November, the Early Childhood Council of Boulder County, a nonprofit advocacy group, convened about two dozen community members, childcare providers, parents and elected officials to discuss the inaccessibility and unaffordability of childcare across the county.
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At the conclusion of the meeting, participants were asked if they wanted to take action. It was “a resounding yes from everybody,” said Kaycee Headrick, the council’s CEO. Shortly after, the group evolved into a task force that began looking into potential solutions, and nearly two years later it published a report offering a plan for improving the county’s early childhood system for families and providers, which would require about $30 million of annual public investment to implement.
This summer the information was presented to the Boulder County Board of Commissioners, which voted unanimously to put a measure on the November ballot that would raise property taxes to generate the $30 million a year needed to expand early care and education in the county. The increase, 2.579 mills, would cost the owner of a $725,000 home about $115 a year, according to the county.
A ballot measure — a proposal put directly into the hands of voters to approve or reject in an election — leaves the final decision with the public rather than elected officials. In a political landscape where many issues and crises compete for attention, a ballot measure can isolate a single issue and requires only an up or down vote. For early care and education, such measures have become a more popular way to secure funding, a trend reflected in the upcoming election.
This November, a record number of communities will vote on dedicated funding for children, with early childhood funding on the ballot in six states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri and Texas — according to an analysis from Children’s Funding Project, a national nonprofit focused on public financing for children and youth.
Colorado has two statewide measures that could fund early childhood and local ones are on the ballot in Baltimore, Maryland; Tempe, Arizona; Boulder County, Colorado; San Diego County and Marin County, California; San Antonio, Texas; and St. Louis, Missouri. (Kalamazoo, Michigan also added a childcare funding measure to its primary election in August, which passed).
Colorado’s statewide ballot measures both focus on generating or redirecting additional state revenue toward public services, including early care and education — but they both fold early childhood support into a larger K-12 funding initiative. One measure, Proposition NN, would use the state’s surplus funds for education; the other, Colorado Amendment 87, would create a graduated income tax for education, healthcare and children. San Diego and Tempe also build early care and education support into larger measures for issues including public safety and transit funding.
But some local efforts focus exclusively on young children. St. Louis, Marin County and Boulder County have standalone childcare tax measures on the ballot, while Baltimore is proposing to set aside existing city revenue to create a Baby Fund, which would support the city’s families and newborns. San Antonio voters will have the option to renew and extend their existing sales tax that funds Pre-K 4 SA, which originally passed in 2012.
“This is the largest number of local ballot measures focused on funding for early childhood ever,” said Olivia Allen, co-founder and vice president of strategy and advocacy at Children’s Funding Project.
The American childcare system has long lacked a sustainable public funding source. While shot-in-the-arm funding like the emergency relief aid from the American Rescue Plan can be helpful in a time of crisis, multi-year, sustainable funding is needed to shore up the childcare system, said Allen.
This is the largest number of local ballot measures focused on funding for early childhood ever.
Olivia Allen, co-founder and vice president of strategy and advocacy at Children’s Funding Project
Dollars secured through ballot measures can be more effective than adding comparable funding through a state budget or grant, explained Allen. “It gets locked in by the people,” she said. “It’s not vulnerable to an election or budget shortfall or change in political leadership — it’s much harder to undo the will of the people.”
In Marin County, Joanne Webster is confident about Measure P’s chances this November. Webster is president of the North Bay Leadership Council, a public advocacy group backing the Marin County measure, which would raise money to expand access to childcare. Measure P proposes authorizing what Webster calls a “very modest” annual parcel tax that would require homeowners to pay 5 cents per square foot, capped at 100,000 square feet — and directing the revenue toward affordable early care and education. The tax would cost about $100 annually for someone who owned a 2,000 square foot home, and it’s expected to garner about $12.5 million each year until the tax expires after 15 years, according to estimates from First5Marin.
“Marin had tried to do this in 2016 when we had to get two-thirds of the vote and failed marginally,” Webster said. But in 2017, a California Supreme Court ruling lifted the requirement that citizen-led ballot measures on local special taxes would require a two-thirds vote; localities now only had to secure 50% of the vote to pass a tax change.
Webster describes the wide coalition the campaign has built with parents, caregivers, business and education leaders and pediatricians ahead of the measure returning to the ballot in 2026. As a citizen-led ballot initiative, the campaign was required to collect 12,000 signatures to earn a spot on the ballot. The team collected over 20,000, Webster said. “We crushed it,” she added.
The initiatives in Boulder and Marin counties both follow a pattern Allen describes as “contagion,” meaning other cities in their states passed ballot measures for early care and education spending and now have the track records to show for it. This concept is known as “policy diffusion,” which refers to the process by which a government observes and adopts policy ideas, programs or regulations that have been implemented successfully elsewhere.
Webster cites the success of early childhood ballot measures in San Francisco and neighboring Sonoma and Alameda counties as catalysts for Marin’s early childhood education campaign. “It had a huge impact on us, in order for us to be economically competitive, we had to address affordability,” she said.
Similarly, Headrick’s task force in Boulder knew that only 30 miles away, Denver had used a ballot measure to create a 0.12% sales tax to fund the Denver Preschool Program. It hadn’t been a straightforward success story. The ballot measure failed twice, in 2000 and 2001, before passing in 2006 by a single point margin. When the program launched, support spread among families who could witness and experience the benefits of quality early childhood education. As DPP’s cohorts moved on to enter secondary education, the program collected longitudinal data and shared the findings with voters. “[Students] are better prepared, they have better reading scores and are less likely to repeat grades. Families are now moving to Denver to qualify for the Denver Preschool Program,” said Elsa Holguín, president and CEO of DPP. Eight years after its initial authorization, in 2014, Denver voters supported increasing the tax to 0.15%, which passed by 10 points. In 2023, voters made the tax permanent, rescinding the previous expiration date, with a 56 point margin.
Support for early care and education funding grows once programs launch and see success. Every early childhood ballot measure that has passed and later come up for reauthorization has been renewed, often by a much wider margin than the original vote, said Allen.
While polling data shows significant support for public childcare funding, early care and education issues have low salience, meaning the fact that voters care isn’t changing voting behavior or shaping how they make decisions about candidates. But voting for a ballot measure is different from casting a vote for a candidate — the issue stands alone, rather than being connected to a political party or person. Cost-wise, undertaking a statewide ballot measure is often comparable to costs incurred lobbying and supporting candidate campaigns to motivate statehouses to act.
Headrick outlines the busy schedule she will have as Nov. 3 approaches: knocking on doors, making phone calls, distributing posters, setting up stands at the local farmer’s market. She is proud that the Boulder Chamber of Commerce has come out in support of this ballot measure. “They see this as a tool for economic vitality for our community,” she said.
Not everyone she encounters is willing to support a tax increase though. “We have heard some frustration,” said Headrick.” This election, with 14 statewide measures on the ballot, including some with proposed tax hikes, there’s financial pressure.
“There’s some differing opinion on how we get there,” she said. “But everyone acknowledges the need for better access to affordable childcare.”