Public officials and childcare organizations gathered at the Corning Childcare Center on Wednesday morning to demand that whoever wins the governor's race in November make rural childcare a priority. The rally drew attention to a shortage that advocates say forces parents to choose between keeping a paycheck and keeping their kids cared for.
The gathering, organized around First 5 Tehama's Corning site, included Tehama County Supervisor Rob Burroughs's call to find a way to make either private or public childcare work, according to krcrtv.com. Tehama County Supervisor Rob Burroughs told the outlet that childcare costs once consumed roughly two-thirds of his household income. “I mean it was like two thirds to childcare, and one third home, plus taxes,” Burroughs said. He argued the county needs solutions on both fronts: “whether it be privatized childcare or public childcare; we need to find a way to make that work.”
A separate campaign stop took place the same day. The Choose Children 2026 campaign visited the Corning Head Start Center on Wednesday, October 7. The rally called for a fix to a critical childcare gap in Tehama County, according to Action News Now.
Distance and Red Tape Top the List of Barriers
Speakers at the Corning rally pointed to a mix of obstacles keeping rural families from accessing care, including sheer distance from the nearest provider, language barriers and a lack of support for children with special needs, the krcrtv.com report noted. First 5 Tehama Executive Director Heidi Mendenhall said the county's spread-out geography makes it especially hard for small, family-run childcare operations to stay afloat. “So it's really hard for family childcares to thrive in small communities,” she said.
Mendenhall outlined three priorities advocates want state leaders to act on: removing roadblocks that keep rural families from accessing existing programs, clarifying which departments provide funding and how to apply for it, and cutting the red tape that discourages people from opening new childcare businesses, the station's report said. She added that organizers hope the Corning center itself can serve as a model other rural communities might replicate.
A Statewide Shortage With a Rural Edge
The frustration voiced in Corning echoes patterns documented across California. Licensed childcare statewide was available for only 26% of children with working families as of 2023, according to the California Child Care Resource & Referral Network, and families who do secure a spot typically spend about a quarter of their income on it. The same research found the median monthly cost of licensed family childcare in 2022 ran $1,232 for an infant and $969 for a preschooler.
Rural counties fare worse on access specifically. The California Budget & Policy Center found rural counties post some of the lowest enrollment rates for eligible children, roughly 9% to 11%, at or below the statewide average of 11%. Tehama County was grouped with Colusa, Glenn and Trinity counties in that analysis because sample sizes were too small to calculate separately, the center noted. Statewide, only one in nine children eligible for subsidized childcare programs actually received services in 2022, even as California has pledged to add 200,000 childcare spaces by 2027.
Licensed childcare-center spaces increased 3% from 2021 to 2023. The region that includes Tehama County saw a 2% decline in licensed spaces between 2021 and 2023, according to the Resource & Referral Network, while many Southern California counties climbed back to within 1% or 2% of their 2019 capacity, per the policy institute's analysis.
Local Childcare Efforts
The Corning center could serve as a model for other rural communities, First 5 Tehama Executive Director Heidi Mendenhall said. Advocates have called for state leaders to support both private and public childcare options.
Burroughs said the county needs to find a way to make private or public childcare work.
