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.

Neighborhood Villages is thrilled to announce a new partnership with the LEGO Foundation and Boston Public Schools (BPS) Department of Early Childhood to develop a first-of-its-kind play-based, vertically aligned curriculum for early childhood education settings.

At Neighborhood Villages, we know that successfully overhauling our broken early education and care system starts with assigning professional value to early educators. That’s why we are working to build an example of what a comprehensive early education workforce infrastructure can look like if we properly invest in and support early educators.

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. This month’s EEC meeting focused on what the new child care subsidy reimbursement rate should be for providers participating in the subsidy system.

As the most recent legislative session in Massachusetts came to a close on July 31, 2022, it ushered in some major progress on early education and care, while laying out a roadmap for where we must go moving forward.  

With the Massachusetts Legislature in the process of finalizing the FY23 budget, Neighborhood Villages is urging lawmakers to prioritize the needs of children, families, and employers of the Commonwealth by investing the maximum amount possible in the early education and care system. In particular, we’re advocating for the continued funding of Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) Stabilization Grant Program and have asked that the Massachusetts Legislature fund the program at the $250 million figure currently proposed in the state’s Senate budget.

On the 50th anniversary of Title IX (the federal law passed in 1972 that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools), it’s fitting that this week’s episode of Neighborhood Villages and Lemonada Media’s hit podcast, No One Is Coming To Save Us (NOICTSU), features Olympian Allyson Felix, the most decorated U.S. track and field athlete in history and a fierce advocate for women and moms

As we face an ongoing child care crisis across our country, the impact on the early childhood workforce is devastating. Our early education and care system isn’t just failing our children and families – it’s also failing our early educators.

On May 18, the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Education favorably reported out a new bill — An Act to Expand Access to High-Quality, Affordable Early Education and Care (H.4795/S.2883) — aimed at addressing current access, affordability, and workforce challenges in the Massachusetts early education and care sector. We’ve summarized our new fact sheet that breaks down the elements of the legislation.

That’s why we are advocating for the inclusion of $480 million in the state’s FY23 budget to extend the C3 stabilization grant program through FY23. Extension of these grants is critical to keeping child care programs open, ensuring access for children, and supporting socially vulnerable communities.

As we honor women’s contributions in American history this Women’s History Month, we also recognize that our nation’s broken child care system underscores the persistent undervaluing of women and their work in our society, especially for women of color.

As we’ve already seen, getting back to some kind of normalcy for many families hinges on one thing: child care. So how do we avoid where we found ourselves in 2020 (and 2021, for that matter)? We put infrastructure in place to keep child care open. Our ability to do that relies on making free, preventative COVID-19 testing available to child care providers.

We recently surveyed a collection of almost 50 early education and care center-based programs in Massachusetts to get a snapshot of the current state of the sector through the perspective of their directors.

Here in Massachusetts, and across the country, our nation’s broken child care system is one of the greatest drivers of racial inequality. Black children, Black parents, and Black workers have been experiencing the consequences of our failure to invest in it for generations. It is time for that to change.