Currently, the early education and care workforce is paid little more than minimum wage and has limited access to health insurance or other employer benefits. Moreover, we do little to invest in early educators’ professional development – and, where we do, we fail to match advanced credentials and degrees with increases in wages. This must change.

The recently proposed legislation in Washington, D.C. and in Massachusetts are a step in the right direction. But there’s work that can be done now, while policymakers work to turn bills into law. This is where Neighborhood Villages comes in…

Our elected leaders have (finally!) gotten to work on expanding access to high-quality, affordable early education and care, proposing a flurry of legislation to reform our child care system and begin to address some of the long-standing inequities that families, providers, and educators alike have been experiencing for too long.

But what’s actually in these plans and pieces of legislation? Here’s what you need to know…