The West Marin Fund has launched a new initiative aimed at increasing the affordability, quality and accessibility of care for children under age 6.

Since May, around 25 donors and organizations have contributed $200,000—start-up monies for the first phase of the project, which includes providing informational workshops and processing grant applications from local childcare providers and advocacy groups by the year’s end. The fund plans to support an estimated five grantees for around five years, for a total cost of $650,000, beginning in January.

“We are seeing more and more need for creating greater equity for low-income families and kids of color,” said Sarah Hobson, the fund’s executive director. “There are more and more studies showing where brain development is crucial and that the early childhood development is extraordinarily important. All of this has prompted the West Marin Fund to take a role in this, and to determine what it is we can do to make a difference.”

The initiative will continue the fund’s existing programs that tackle early education in West Marin. Since 2013, the fund has awarded $78,000 to preschool programs in Stinson Beach, Bolinas, Point Reyes Station and Tomales. Another $340,000 has gone toward summer camps, youth centers, and environmental and art programs at local school districts.

The fund also collaborates with the Terra Linda-based Marin Promise Partnership to address inequity. Last year, a generous contribution by Inverness resident Maureen Kennedy allowed the fund to establish a sub-fund, called the Madrone Fund, which supports Marin Promise in various local initiatives dedicated to closing the achievement gap.

Maria Niggle, a West Marin Fund steering committee member who helms a kindergarten readiness initiative at Shoreline Unified School District through Marin Promise, says closing the achievement gap must begin in a child’s first years.

In the 2018-2019 school year, just 52 percent of the 27 children in kindergarten in Inverness and Tomales were considered ready for kindergarten. That number is more or less on par with countywide averages, according to data gathered by the readiness initiative.

A recent early learning and care needs assessment conducted by the county found that 74 percent of children under age 6 have both parents working, compared to the state average of 63 percent. Licensed childcare in Marin is unavailable to 46 percent of all infants and toddlers with working parents regardless of income, and affordability is a challenge: the average cost for preschool in Marin is 39 percent higher than the state average.

Among those families with infants and toddlers that qualify for state-subsidized childcare, over 60 percent do not receive full-time care.

Preschool programs in West Marin currently serve 109 children; roughly half of those families receive financial assistance and half pay full tuition. Twenty-eight percent of students in West Marin preschools are English language learners.

Ms. Niggle drew attention to the median family income in Marin: $118,000. That far exceeds the state-designated standard of $63,000 to receive subsidized childcare, but is $31,000 less than the annual income necessary to cover basic living expenses in the county.

“For families in general, that’s a lot of money, and childcare is a big chunk of the [expenses],” Ms. Niggle said. “How can we help families make it in West Marin? How can we help mothers?”

Part of the answer, Ms. Niggle said, may come from recognizing existing informal networks—such as private childcare with nannies and sitters—available for families in West Marin.

“There are a lot of informal networks, and so how can we support those in addition to the formal networks? In rural communities, it’s those informal networks that keep people connected, but if you are new or you don’t speak English, how do you find them?” she said.