The story of how Build Up SMC found its way into climate work and how listening to providers and taking practical first steps grew into a broader strategy for climate-resilient child care.
Climate change does not stop at the doors of a child care center or family child care home.
Extreme heat affects the rooms where infants sleep. Wildfire smoke makes outdoor play unsafe. Flooding can prevent children and educators from reaching their program. Power outages can interrupt care, close small businesses, and leave working parents without options.
Yet child care is still largely absent from public plans, funding programs, and infrastructure investments created to help communities prepare for these extreme climate events and conditions.
Build Up San Mateo County set out to address this significant policy gap.
In July 2025, Build Up SMC published Protecting Our Youngest: A Climate Action Plan for Child Care in San Mateo County, the nation’s first county-centered climate action plan focused on early childhood. The plan makes a straightforward case: communities cannot build climate resilience without protecting the places where young children spend their days and supporting the educators who care for them.
The climate action plan also reflects a principle that has guided Build Up SMC since its founding: child care facilities are essential community infrastructure. They should be considered in public planning and investment alongside housing, schools, transportation, energy, and water systems.
The plan began not with a government directive or formal policy process, but with a recommendation from a trusted colleague and a moment of possibility.
From a National Vision to Local Action
In late 2023, my colleague encouraged me to read the newly published U.S. Early Years Climate Action Plan. The national plan called attention to a problem that had received far too little consideration: young children are among those most vulnerable to climate change, yet their needs and the places where they spend their earliest years are often missing from climate planning.
Climate resilience was already connected to Build Up SMC’s mission to preserve, expand, and improve child care facilities, but the national plan helped me see how much more intentional we could be. I remember thinking, We need this in San Mateo County.
Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a longtime Build Up SMC funder and partner, connected me with Elliot Haspel and Joe Waters of Capita, two leaders behind the national plan. Our conversations about young children, climate change, and child care facilities helped shape my vision for a county-centered plan. Elliot and Joe encouraged the idea and confirmed that San Mateo County would be the first county in the nation to undertake this kind of early childhood climate planning.
Those conversations launched a process that would engage more than 150 people, lead to early implementation projects, influence local funding, and ultimately help embed climate-resilient child care facilities in theSan Mateo County Child Care Blueprint.
Building Policy Through Community Engagement
In April 2024, Build Up SMC brought together more than twenty community leaders for an Early Childhood Climate Action Workshop. Elliot Haspel and Angie Garling of the Low Income Investment Fund presented the national plan, and participants used a dot-voting exercise to identify the issues most urgent and relevant to San Mateo County. I later facilitated a similar exercise with the San Mateo County Child Care Partnership Council.
Over the following year, more than 150 people participated through discussions, interviews, written feedback, live polling, and a multilingual provider survey. Participants included child care providers and leaders from early childhood, public health, sustainability, government, business, philanthropy, design, and facilities.
What Providers Told Us
The planning process confirmed that climate change was already affecting child care operations. One in three surveyed providers reported closing or modifying operations because of extreme heat, wildfire smoke, poor air quality, flooding, power outages, or other climate-related conditions during the previous two years. Heat and air quality were their greatest concerns.
The survey also revealed significant gaps in preparedness and support:
· Sixty-eight percent of providers reported having no partner assisting them with climate resilience.
· Twenty-three percent said they did not have adequate emergency supplies, while another 25 percent were unsure.
· Most had limited or no knowledge of existing grants, rebates, technical assistance, or facility-upgrade programs.
· More than half expressed interest in tree planting or outdoor-learning adaptations if support were available.
Most importantly, providers told us they needed more than information. They needed grants, emergency supplies, trusted contractor referrals, on-site consultations, permitting assistance, translated materials, and individualized help applying for existing programs.
These findings have significant policy implications.A rebate or grant technically available to a provider does little good if the eligibility rules exclude family child care homes, the application is inaccessible, the provider cannot obtain landlord approval, or no one is available to help manage the project.
What struck me most was not that providers were ready to act, but that the systems around them were not designed for their participation.
Climate-Ready Facilities Are a Public Health Strategy
Climate-ready child care is fundamentally a public health strategy. Extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and poor air quality can affect children’s breathing, sleep, concentration, behavior, and healthy development. Repeated emergencies and disruptions can also create stress and instability for children, families, and educators.
Clean air, comfortable temperatures, reliable power, safe drinking water, shaded play areas, and access to nature contribute to healthier learning and working environments. Even programs without large campuses can incorporate trees, plants, shade, natural materials, or small areas where children can move and explore.
These environments support physical safety and emotional well-being. Access to nature can encourage movement and exploration, reduce stress, support emotional regulation, and strengthen children’s sense of connection and belonging. Calm and predictable environments can be especially meaningful for children who have experienced adversity or trauma.
Educator well-being must also be part of the conversation. Extreme heat, wildfire smoke, power outages, and other climate emergencies take both an emotional and a physical toll on caregivers, who are responsible for keeping young children safe while navigating these conditions themselves. Teachers cannot provide consistent, nurturing care while working in overheated rooms, breathing unhealthy air, or managing emergencies without adequate support. Facility investment is also an investment in educator health, well-being, morale, and retention.
Facility Equity Is Educational Equity
The disparities in child care facilities are often visible the moment you walk through the door. Loving, gifted educators can be found in every community, and the quality of their care is not determined by the wealth of the families they serve. But funding profoundly shapes the environments they can provide.Programs with access to capital can replace aging HVAC systems, repair roofs and windows, improve air quality, install shade, and respond quickly to safety concerns. Providers operating on narrow margins, especially family child care homes and programs serving subsidized or lower-income families, may recognize the same needs but lack the resources to address them. Too often, those serving children with the greatest needs have the least access to facility funding and technical assistance. Every child deserves a healthy, welcoming, and climate-resilient place to learn, regardless of family income or ZIP code.
A Policy Agenda for Climate-Ready Child Care
The San Mateo County Early Childhood Climate Action Plan organizes this vision into practical actions for government, business, philanthropy, nonprofits, and child care providers.
For local governments, the plan recommends explicitly including child care in municipal climate action plans, general plans, hazard-mitigation plans, emergency-preparedness systems, and public funding strategies.
It calls for centers and family child care homes to be eligible for rebates, energy-efficiency programs, electrification assistance, facility assessments, and climate-resilience grants. Because many providers operate with extremely narrow financial margins, programs must offer full or near-full subsidies when possible rather than relying on traditional cost-sharing models.
The plan identifies immediate infrastructure priorities, including:
· Clean air, ventilation, cooling, and energy-efficiency improvements
· Solar power, battery storage, emergency supplies, and continuity systems
· Flood protection, safe drinking water, and essential building repairs
· Trees, shade, drought-tolerant landscaping, and outdoor learning environments
It also calls for direct, culturally and linguistically responsive technical assistance. Providers need help identifying appropriate programs, completing applications, securing landlord approval, finding trusted contractors, navigating permits, and managing improvements from beginning to end.
Funding decisions should be guided by equity. Tools such as CalEnviroScreen, the San Mateo County Office of Education Equity Index, child care supply data, local tree-canopy coverage, and climate-risk information can help identify communities facing the greatest needs.
The plan also recommends establishing a Child Care Climate Readiness Capital Fund that combines public, private, and philanthropic resources to finance both small improvements and larger facility investments.
The San Mateo County Early Childhood Climate Action Plan also looks beyond traditional measures such as emissions and energy savings. Success should include more facilities with clean air, cooling, backup power, shade, and resilient outdoor spaces; more underserved providers receiving funding and technical assistance; fewer climate-related closures and parental workdays lost; and improved health outcomes, including fewer asthma-related emergency room visits among young children. Climate investments can simultaneously advance public health, educational quality, equity, workforce stability, and economic resilience.
Testing the Ideas Through Action
As we moved from planning to implementation, the work needed an identity of its own. As I played with names, I loved that Build Up Green Spaces spelled BUGS. It made me laugh, but it also felt perfect for an initiative focused on creating greener, healthier spaces for young children. BUGS became the umbrella for turning many of the plan’s ideas into action.
Our first tree-planting pilot with Canopy offered an early example of implementation. More than 100 children, families, educators, community members, and civic leaders came together to plant trees and grapevines at four early learning sites in East Palo Alto and North Fair Oaks. The pilot was practical, joyful, educational, and intergenerational, creating cooler, healthier outdoor spaces while giving children a hands-on experience of environmental stewardship.
One father shared that he had participated in a tree planting in East Palo Alto when he was young. Today, when he passes the tree with his child,he points to it and says, “That’s my tree. I helped plant that tree.”
That story has stayed with me. A tree creates shade, improves air quality, and helps reduce heat. It can also create belonging, memory, pride, and hope.
Demand That Could Not Be Ignored
The first round of the BUGS Infrastructure and Resilience Grant Program, funded by San Mateo County Measure K, offered another opportunity to move from policy to action. Build Up SMC received 108 complete applications requesting more than $1.5 million—nearly eight times the available funding. Seventy-seven applications came from family child care providers and thirty-one from centers. If fully funded, the proposed projects would have benefited more than 2,400 children.
The response was both exciting and sobering:providers were eager to invest in their facilities, but the scale of the need far exceeded the resources available.
Fifteen providers received first-round grants ranging from $9,000 to $15,000. After two rounds, Build Up SMC has awarded grants to 33 providers, with awards ranging from $4,500 to $15,000.A third round will open in fall 2026.
The response became an important policy finding in its own right.Providers were not resistant to climate action. They were ready to act.
It also showed that climate resilience cannot be separated from basic facility conditions. A provider worried about a failing roof, an inadequate electrical system, a broken window, or an unusable outdoor space cannot simply move on to solar panels or electrification. Climate policy must meet providers where they are and recognize that repair, health, safety, resilience, and sustainability are interconnected.
From a Local Plan to a Countywide Commitment
On March 17, 2026, approximately 150 people gathered at Skyline College for the Build Up Green Spaces Early Childhood Climate Summit. Participants represented eleven San Mateo County cities, thirty-one county ZIP codes, and six Bay Area counties.
Dr. Lisa Patel, MD, MESc, FAAP—executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health and clinical associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford School of Medicine—delivered the keynote, and leaders from early childhood, public health, sustainability, facilities, philanthropy, and local government shared research, practical strategies, and examples of action. Angie Garling, who helped introduce the national plan at our first workshop, returned to help us recognize how far the work had come.
The summit publicly launched the plan and generated significant momentum among providers, cities, public agencies, and community organizations. Today, the work no longer lives only in one plan or initiative. The lessons and priorities that emerged through the San Mateo County Early Childhood Climate Action Plan and BUGS are now reflected in the new San Mateo County Child Care Blueprint, where safe, high-quality, climate-resilient facilities are a major goal. The Blueprint calls for expanding BUGS, incorporating child care into local climate planning, and strengthening cross-sector investment.
Build Up SMC’s role has often been to serve as a bridge between child care providers and the public agencies, funders, policymakers, and technical partners that can help turn their needs into action.
That is how an idea begins to become systems change.
Local Leadership Matters
AB 1914 would have required California cities and counties to incorporate child care into long-term planning. In August 2026, the bill was held in the Senate Appropriations Committee and did not advance through the Legislature. That outcome makes local leadership even more consequential.
San Mateo County does not have to wait for a statewide mandate to treat child care as essential infrastructure. Through the San Mateo County Early Childhood Climate Action Plan, its implementation through BUGS, and the integration of climate-resilient facilities into the Child Care Blueprint, our community is demonstrating how local governments and cross-sector partners can act now.
Our experience also offers lessons for other communities: listen to providers and connect child care to climate, public health, emergency-preparedness, and infrastructure systems. Make funding and technical assistance accessible to centers and family child care homes. Test practical solutions and measure unmet demand. Use what is learned to shape long-term policy and investment.
Most importantly, communities must recognize that the place where a child spends their earliest years matters.Quality includes the air children breathe, the temperature of the rooms where they learn and sleep, whether care can continue during an emergency, and whether children have welcoming outdoor spaces where they can move, explore, and connect with nature. As one San Mateo County provider reminded us, “You can’t have quality without the space to do it.”
The San Mateo County Early Childhood Climate Action Plan is both a roadmap and an invitation. No single organization can do this work alone.
As San Mateo County’s only child care initiative focused specifically on facilities, Build Up SMC understands both the importance and the challenge of securing sustained investment in this work.
San Mateo County may be the first to create a county-centered early childhood climate action plan, but we hope it will not be the last. We did not have a map for this work at the beginning. The work grew from listening to providers, recognizing the connections between child care facilities and climate resilience, and finding partners willing to build something new together. We share this story in the hope that it can help other communities find their own way into this work. By centering young children and the people who care for them, communities can create healthier, safer, and more supportive environments; strengthen families and local economies; and advance shared prosperity and resilience for everyone.
Launching this work was made possible with funding from San Mateo County Measure K, with additional support from First 5 San Mateo County and Silicon Valley Community Foundation.