The QCC County Program Profile provides county data from the Common Data File (CDF) and the Annual Progress Report (APR). For counties that are a part of a consortium, the QCC County Program Profile provides a combined view of the CDF and APR. Both qualitative and quantitative data are presented to provide a local view of early learning and care climate.

Quality Connections is an initiative of the San Francisco Department of Early Childhood, a merger of two existing city departments, First 5 San Francisco and the Office of Early Care and Education. Both First 5 and OECE have long histories of supporting young children and families in San Francisco through early care and education innovations, family support services, and programs to support children’s healthy development. In 2022, they merged to expand their capacity and funding and to integrate the City’s early childhood services better. Our vision is that every child in San Francisco has the best start in life, and our City is a great place to raise a family. To achieve this, we recognize and support the extraordinary passion, skill, and expertise early educators and the professionals that support them bring to this profession.

Through Quality Connections, the San Francisco Department of Early Childhood is working to ensure that all early learning settings are guided and supported in their quality improvement efforts. Quality Connections helps define and measure specific quality indicators for participating early learning programs that are aligned to state Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) standards. Through this process, Quality Connections and early learning programs are able to target quality improvement efforts in the areas that will most benefit them.

Quality Connections partnerships provide training, technical assistance, and coaching to support early educators‚and reflect on strengths and challenges and focus on areas that will systematically improve quality.

San Francisco has a unique history of supporting high-quality early care and education through local funding and initiatives such as Early Learning for All. All city-funded early education programs participate in training and workforce retention support through Quality Connections. CA State Preschool Programs (CSPP) participate in professional development, workforce retention, QRIS rating, and assessment. Quality Connections provides these services to more than 181 child care centers and more than 300 family child care homes/educators throughout San Francisco.

• County General Fund through San Francisco
• Department of Early Childhood
• First 5 IMPACT
• CDE QRIS Block Grant

• PreK-3rd Grade Alignment San Francisco Unified School District
• San Francisco State University
• City College of San Francisco
• San Francisco Child Care Planning and Advisory Council
• Children’s Council of San Francisco
• Wu Yee Children’s Services
• San Francisco Department of Early Childhood
• San Francisco Department of Public Health
• Support for Families
• WestEd Assessor

The City and County of San Francisco require QRIS participation for all CSPP programs as one of its embedded funding standards. This standard is shared with information about QRIS improvement supports to help them meet those standards. For non-CSPP programs, the City and County of San Francisco require participation in the Quality Standards aligned with the QRIS. Sites meeting state and local standards become eligible to participate in the San Francisco Early Learning For All, which provides additional market-rate funding and local vouchers for early care and education slots.

Quality improvement supports are available to all Early Learning For All sites. Supports include coaching, training, short-term technical assistance, reimbursement of training fees (for CPR and first aid), conferences, access to unit-bearing coursework, teacher action grants, and release time for specific interventions.

Sites participating in the Early Learning Scholarship at the Tier 4 level qualify for incentive layer funds regardless of setting type. Participating programs are eligible for CARES 3.0 which supports educators with direct stipends — and incentivizes early educators to pursue coursework, degrees, and new/updates of the Child Development Permit. Stipends are structured to reward higher levels of coursework completion, degree attainment and attainment of higher levels of the Child Development Permit. Stipends are issued twice a year — the average stipend amount is $12,336 (2023 data).