Massachusetts Can Be a Beacon for Child Care Reform — But We Must Act Now

As we noted in a previous blog post: Child Care Reform is All the Rage. 

While it’s exciting to see early education and child care finally getting the attention it deserves in Washington, the truth is that, no matter what happens in Congress, we can’t afford to wait for D.C. to act. We need to make change happen at the state level – and fast. Educators can’t afford to wait. Parents can’t afford to wait. Children, especially, can’t afford to wait. 

Here in Massachusetts, we have the opportunity to bring universal, affordable early education and care to all families in the Commonwealth now. 

When you consider that the most important time for a child’s development is when they are 0-5 years old, delays of “just a few years” in implementing universal early education and care impact an entire generation. It also hamstrings the ability of parents to pursue employment opportunities and, for some families, access to child care can be the difference between financial stability and sliding into poverty.

While our early education and care system has never worked for anyone (neither families nor providers), the pandemic has exposed the serious rot in this broken system. Families are struggling because of it and children are being denied an education during some of the most critical years of their life. When it comes to parents in need of care solutions, few have felt the economic impact of the pandemic over the last year more than women, especially women of color. Millions of women were forced out of the workforce this past year and all of the economy’s 140,000 lost jobs in December were held by women.  

We need to turn this around – and that requires enacting child care reform.

This is why we need urgent action at every level, not just in Washington. The good news is, Massachusetts already has the blueprint to act!

The recently filed Common Start legislation, sponsored by State Representatives Ken Gordon and Adrian Madaro and State Senators Jason Lewis and Susan Moran, outlines a path to securing universal, affordable early childhood education and care for all Massachusetts families. The bill would dramatically increase the affordability and quality of early education and child care through a combination of direct-to-provider funding and increased family financial assistance. Many of the same proposals that are currently making their way through Congress echo this bill, including establishing median income levels at which access to early education and child care options would be free, investing in educators through higher salaries and workforce development, and funding providers at a level that actually reflects the costs of providing high-quality early education and care. 

More specifically, the Common Start Legislation:

• Ensures that, once fully implemented, families below 50 percent of statewide median income ($62,668 for a family of four or $42,614 for a single parent with one child) would be able to access early education and child care options for free.

• Guarantees that families with incomes above that threshold would pay no more than 7 percent of their total household income for care.

• Covers early education and care for children from birth through age 5, as well as after- and out-of-school time for children ages 5-12, and for children with special needs through age 15.

• Requires higher salaries and increased benefits for early educators and provides support for professional development and career opportunities.

• Offers early education providers the opportunity to receive direct-to-program funding that reflects the true cost of delivering high-quality early education and care to children and families.

We also know, unequivocally, that these policy reforms really do work. How? Because Neighborhood Villages is already implementing them. 

In addition to advocating for policy change, we’ve been doing the work on the ground and in the community to show what these policy reforms look like in practice. We strongly believe that successful child care reform requires putting families, providers, and educators at the center of public policy design – and that’s why we’re working alongside providers, educators, and parents to build and implement programs that can scale at a systemic level and create an early education and care system that works for everyone. From the Neighborhood, where we’re modeling the infrastructure of a school district for early education and care providers, to the Village, which provides supports to a broad network of providers, we’re creating a blueprint for building a higher-quality, better functioning early education and care system that delivers not only education and care, but also wraparound services and supports that meet the full-scope needs of children and families.

We’re not the only ones who know this is the path forward. The Common Start Coalition is a statewide network of more than 80 diverse organizations that includes community-based partners, businesses, providers, parents, early educators and advocates, all working together to make this vision a reality. The public is also on board. According to a poll of Massachusetts voters in December 2020, more than 64 percent favor the proposal and 61 percent said that early educators should be paid “significantly more” than their current average $31,000 annual salary.

Unfortunately, good poll numbers are not enough to really make a difference when it comes to convincing policymakers to change history. To get this legislation passed into law, we need you to raise your voice and demand change. We need you to join the movement for universal, affordable early education and care for Massachusetts. If you would like to learn more and join our work to pass comprehensive child care legislation, sign up here.

We have the opportunity right here, right now, to bring real change to Massachusetts. We can build something that will be a beacon for families, children and educators across the country. We can transform the early education and care system so it works for everyone.

The moment to act is now. Join us. Join our movement. 

Curious to learn more about our broken child system and how we can fix it? Listen to the new podcast from Neighborhood Villages and Lemonada Media: “No One is Coming to Save Us”.