Concern Turns to Preschool Facilities

By Linda Jacobson

San Francisco

With no playground of its own, the Tenderloin Childcare Center sometimes has its 36 preschoolers walk past boarded-up buildings and homeless men sleeping in doorways to reach a subway station, where the youngsters catch a ride to a city playground.

Traveling back and forth from the playground to the child-care center—located on the first floor of a brick apartment building that used to be a YMCA hotel— is not something the children or the teachers look forward to. But there is no alternative.

"It can be one of the most challenging parts of the day," Graham Dobson, the administrative coordinator of the center,...