The Learning Curve: San Diego Unified May Get $36 Million More for PrimeTime

For years, districts like San Diego Unified have struggled to provide before- and after-school care to all the families who need it. But the latest state budget may inject tens of millions of dollars into programs like San Diego Unified’s PrimeTime. That could allow districts to slash the long waitlists that have stymied working parents for years. 

The state of play: School schedules are pretty wonky. Most San Diego Unified schools for example, start around 8 a.m. and end around 3 p.m. That doesn’t work out well for most working parents, making before- and after-school care a necessity.  

Unfortunately, that care is also a rarity. Spots across San Diego are in extremely short supply, and the ones that are available often come with hefty price tags. That can leave working parents in a pretty impossible position – stuck between needing to work to support their family and not being able to work because of a lack of child care. 

That was the exact position Jared Goossens had been before scoring a spot in the before- and after-school care program run by San Diego Unified called PrimeTime. The program provides free before- and after-school care to well over 10,000 district students. 

I wrote about how securing that child care changed Goossens life a couple years ago. He went from being unable to keep a full-time job because he had no place to send his child after school and barely scraping by doing food delivery, to starting a career as a mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service.  

Back when I wrote that first story, in April 2023, San Diego Unified Trustee Shana Hazan set a lofty goal: clearing the district’s waitlist altogether, which at that point consisted of about 3,130 families.  

“My hope is that when you and I talk this time next year, there aren’t any more Jared’s, that his story doesn’t exist,” Hazan said. “Everybody should have access to after-school care, period, and it should not be so hard, and you shouldn’t have to advocate and go above and beyond as a parent to gain access.” 

Long story short, that didn’t happen. But the district did make some progress. By July of 2023, the district had slashed the waitlist by two thirds, thanks in part to increasing funding for programs like PrimeTime, which the state calls Expanded Learning Opportunities Programs. But just one year later, the waitlist had shot back up to around 4,200 families.  

Now, new additional funding may help Hazan’s goal inch closer to becoming reality. 

That new big funding tweak: When it comes to before- and after-school care programs, the state funds districts based on the percentage of English learners and low-income students. In the past, districts where 75 percent of students were English learners or low-income students received tier one funding, while all others received reduced tier two funding.  

As part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2025-26 budget, he proposed lowering the threshold to 55 percent of students. That change means a whole slew of new districts will qualify for tier one funding, San Diego Unified being one of them. 

That tier one designation brings with it a whole lot of dough. Tier two districts receive $1,580 per student, while tier one districts receive $2,750. Hazan said San Diego Unified officials estimate the district’s new tier one status could mean they receive about $36 million more in funding for PrimeTime.  

Budget finagling: The original version of the legislature’s budget revision included this new funding, but didn’t have it kick in until January. San Diego Unified leaders, however, advocated for the funding’s start date to coincide with the beginning of the new school year. That seems to have worked, as the budget agreement announced yesterday moved the funding’s start time up to August.  

The impact: Hazan said the district will put those funds toward helping providers hire more staff at the 144 TK-8 schools that operate PrimeTime sites across the district. When all’s said and done, the hope is sites will be able to significantly increase student capacity.  

But finding all that extra staff, let alone hiring them, will likely take providers quite a lot of time, maybe even all of next school year. That’s why Hazan said district leaders have been communicating with providers about the need to look for new staff ever since the new funding was announced.  

As of the end of last year, Hazan said the district had 12,453 students enrolled in the district’s afternoon PrimeTime program. She hopes the new funding can increase the program’s capacity to around 18,000 students by the end of next school year and, in the process, eliminate the waitlist that’s long plagued the program. 

“This is going to be really transformative. Even beyond the financial implications of families of having extra dollars in your pockets, it’s the mental relief that comes with not having to worry about ‘What is my child’s going to do in the afternoon?’ and ‘Do I need to leave work at lunch to pick up my kid?,’” Hazan said. “When families aren’t experiencing that stress and that mental load, parents can show up more fully for their kids.”  

Hazan is already gaming out the long-term impacts – and possibilities – of this increase in care. She wants to ensure providers are working to leverage the extra time spent with kids to provide educationally focused activities that can enrich students’ experiences – whether they be arts or STEM focused.  

She’s also setting her sights on an even longer-term goal. Hazan said her dream is to partner with some academic partner who could potentially perform research that can better inform policymakers about the impacts access to free child care has for working families.  

Does it help students academically? What’s the financial impact on families? Does it really reduce stress on parents? 

“Because I think it does and that we need to be really thinking about this as a really high impact strategy that could be universal, not just across the state, but across the country.” 

Even More Grossmont Madness 

The Grossmont Union saga has been long and contentious, but rarely has it gotten as juicy as Kristen Taketa and Jemma Stephenson’s phenomenal piece from a couple weeks ago.  

The reporters revealed that members of the conservative majority on the district’s board and their allies frequently communicated in private text and email threads. In those threads, the crew plotted about which enemies they wanted to lay off, which allies they wanted to promote and other decisions usually reserved for administrators like the superintendent.  

One frequent member of the chats who often served as a ringleader was Jerry Hobbs. Hobbs is the former Grossmont Union teacher who resigned in 2018 after an investigation was launched into allegations he’d engaged in racist and sexist behavior. He was later rehired after a sketchy backroom settlement cleared his record. The board fired him last month, but agreed to pay him $187,000. 

Some of the message chains, which included a majority of district board members, could even have violated the Brown Act. The law restricts majorities of board members from conversing outside of official meetings. 

What We’re Writing 

San Diego Unified’s board voted unanimously on Wednesday to appoint Interim Superintendent Fabiola Bagula to a permanent role. The move comes nine months after the board’s firing of Lamont Jackson after an investigation determined he’d sexually harassed multiple employees threw the district into chaos. Bagula is now the district’s third home-grown superintendent in a row. 

After two years, a rescinded grant, city officials declaring it dead and a whole lot of hard feelings, the safe parking site for homeless families at Central Elementary may actually see the light of day thanks to some nifty budget moves by the San Diego City Council.