RECAP of the April EEC Board Meeting: Changes to Child Care Financial Assistance Regulations and a Look into EEC’s Cost of Care Research
At Neighborhood Villages, we prioritize keeping up with the policy landscape in the early education and care field, both across the country and in Massachusetts. That includes tuning-in to the monthly meetings of the Massachusetts Board of Early Education and Care (“EEC Board”), to stay apprised of updates and to identify opportunities for how we can work with government and other stakeholders to improve our early education and care system.
The primary topics of this month’s Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) Board meeting were a vote on proposed changes to child care financial assistance regulations and the sharing of EEC’s cost of care research. Here’s what you need to know…
If You Are a Provider:
Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) Operations Grants have received additional funding through a supplemental budget recently signed by the Governor. This funding will allow continued disbursement of grants through June of this year.
If You Are An Educator:
The application for the Early Childhood Educators (ECE) scholarship program, which provides tuition assistance for early educators seeking postsecondary degrees, is now open. To learn more, click here for information sessions.
EEC’s program for educator financial assistance (for enrolling their children in care) remains open. As of the April Board meeting, the pilot had reached more than 1,500 children. More than 500 children have been enrolled with access to financial assistance and another 500 are awaiting placement. In addition, EEC has signed agreements with 217 new providers to participate in the subsidy system. The addition of these programs effectively expands the pool of providers that are able to serve children with financial assistance.
If You are a Child Care Stakeholder or Advocate:
The EEC Board voted to approve proposed revisions to the Child Care Financial Assistance regulations. The vote was unanimous. EEC continues to work on an implementation plan for the changes, which will go into effect in the next several months.
The Board heard from the Center for Early Learning Funding Equity (CELFE) on its findings from research on the cost of care in Massachusetts. A significant portion of EEC’s budget is dedicated to child care financial assistance, a large part of which comes from the federal government. As one of the conditions of federal funding, EEC must conduct a study every three years to understand prices of tuition in the child care market, in order to compare those prices to how much EEC reimburses providers to enroll children with financial assistance. EEC contracted with CELFE to conduct a market rate survey in the fall, together with a narrow cost analysis. The most recent research was designed to produce a more robust estimate of the true cost of high-quality care in the Commonwealth. The analysis is intended to help EEC understand the extent to which subsidy rates allow providers to cover the current cost of care and how much funding is needed to support increased staffing and compensation.
CELFE’s findings provide a data-driven picture of what per-student costs are and what they might be with greater staffing and compensation, as staff salaries are the largest contributor to overall per student cost of care. For example, findings indicate that currently, Teachers in Region 1 (Western MA) earn $16.00 per hour, which amounts to $33,280 per year and contributes to a per-infant total cost of $115.15 per day. If these educators were paid professional wages, the daily per-infant cost in Western MA would go up by about $24, resulting in total costs of $139.02 per day (about $36,000 per year). For preschoolers, the per-preschooler cost would be $55.71 per day (about $14,500 per year), as compared to the current rate of $46.83 ($12,200 per year).
As part of its report, CELFE recommended that EEC develop a “cost-informed” reimbursement rate structure. They suggest that EEC:
Simplify the rate structure;
Set rates across ages in a consistent way across regions;
Use both Market Rate and Cost research to inform rates; and
Consider how child care financial assistance rates work with other funding sources (e.g., C3 funding).