Joyce Stone has been making the rounds.

In the last two weeks, the manager of the Amador Child Care Council has taken her presentation on the local economic impact of the early education industry to the Amador County Board of Supervisors and city councils in Jackson, Plymouth and - last night - Sutter Creek. Tonight she will be in Ione and tomorrow Stone will stump for the $5 million industry before the Amador County Unified School District Board of Trustees in an attempt to convince elected officials to begin seeing education as a vital part of the county's economy.

Armed with a June study authored by child care and education stakeholders in Amador and Calaveras counties, Stone has been laying out her case. The report was released by Constructing Connections of Amador and Calaveras Counties, launched in 2005 through a five-year grant. The bi-county partnership is a program of the Low Income Investment Fund, with funding from First Five California. Members of the working group that helped develop the report come from HRC Child Care Resources, First 5 Amador, First 5 Calaveras, the Amador County Office of Education and Amador Child Care Council. The Insight Center for Community Economic Development, a national research, consulting and legal organization, compiled the report.

As an industry, early care and education - or ECE, as it's known - generates more than $4.9 million annually for Amador and provides 217 full-time jobs, more than the local construction industry.

The indirect benefits are telling, as well.

Education attainment, employment and homeownership are greater among those from low income settings who have received early quality child care. Conversely, a reliance on public assistance, the likelihood of special education enrollment, juvenile delinquency and adult incarceration can be more prevalent among those without access to quality programs.

In Amador County, a shortage of ECE facilities has rippled through struggling families and the labor force. Nearly 18 percent of workers in the county have at least one child under 13 and live in a household where all parents work, the study says. Meanwhile, the annual cost of full-time, licensed child care is more than $6,300, almost double the cost of yearly tuition at a California State University. There are currently less than a dozen of these centers in the county. Some only offer day care services.

"There's not one child care center in the city of Sutter Creek right now," Stone told the Ledger Dispatch a day after her Sept. 16 presentation to the board of supervisors, "not one in Jackson. We just lost one in Ione. In some cases, the situation is worse."

Stone explained that the situation isn't helped any by the expensive up-front costs of starting a licensed child care center nor the maze of regulatory requirements at the local level.

"The challenge in the county - the state in general and really across the county - is there is a shortage of quality sites," she told supervisors last month. "There are not a lot of quality sites in Amador County. There's a shortage of financing and real estate options, there's a shortage of teachers, there's a shortage of options for families."

A 2004 needs assessment by the Amador Child Care Council - the most recent to be completed - showed that only 24 percent of working parents could locate child care resources.

"So there is a big gap already and, as the county grows, the gap is likely to get bigger," Stone said.

The impacts can be unexpected.

Anne Platt, chief executive officer of Sutter Amador Hospital, testified in the report that the lack of local child care facilities contributed to the Jackson hospital's difficulty in attracting skilled professionals with kids.

Stone is hoping local governments will bring early education under their land use planning umbrellas as general plan updates progress. The report also recommended dozens of public sector, business and ECE strategies that could make such centers more prevalent. Among them are offering incentives for businesses and developers that integrate early education into their plans, expanding public transportation opportunities for working families, and increasing financial support of college and university ECE classes.

While the Amador Learning Center offers some ECE courses, Stone said there's a big push for providers to get their bachelor degrees, which means traveling outside of the county to university institutions. Stone told supervisors she was also trying to create a scholarship fund for students who go into the child development field.

"We're also trying to recruit younger folks into the field," she added. That will include coordinating presentations at both high schools, though an Amador High School early education elective was cancelled due to budget cuts.

So far, reaction to Stone's presentation has been mixed. The crowd gathered at the board of supervisors meeting last month to honor a retiring county employee filed out as Stone began her presentation, leaving an audience paid to be there.

When they have asked questions, elected officials at the county and city levels have mostly inquired about licensing issues. In Jackson, City Manager Mike Daly spoke with Stone about making early education part of the struggling city's revitalization efforts, while Plymouth Mayor Jon Colburn suggested she consult planners on tying education to land use in the city's developing general plan. Sutter Creek's meeting occurred past deadline.

Maybe tomorrow, in front of elected school board members and education advocates, Stone will finally have the audience she needs.

"We have to be concerned for the people without one foot in the grave," Stone chuckled last week, referring to the county's older-skewing demographics, "like so many of us are."