RECAP of the September EEC Board Meeting: Update on Financial Assistance, C3 Spring Survey, and The Economics of Child Care

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 updates on the state’s effort to reform Massachusetts’ child care financial assistance program; a look at the latest Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) survey results; and an introduction to The Economics of Child Care project. Here’s what you need to know…

If You Are a Provider:

1. EEC will offer the option again this year to providers who participate in the subsidy program (i.e., accept family financial assistance for child care) to close during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, while still being paid.

2. EEC has gotten approval to delay the process for re-procurement of child care contracts. Rather than pushing out the request for proposals this fall, they will be released in the winter and go into effect on July 1, 2024.

3. EEC has retired its old background record check system, which should improve the crucial first step in the process of hiring educators. 

4. The EEC Board heard public testimony from Lucas Skorczeski of Acre Family Child Care, a family child care (FCC) system, regarding the need for FCC systems to receive C3 funding – from which they are currently excluded – in order to continue operations. Unlike individual FCC providers, which are eligible for and receive C3 grant funding, FCC systems do not provide child care, but do support family child care providers who wish to take advantage of resources and supports such as training, technical assistance and consultation, monitoring, and referrals to health and social services for children in their care.  

5. EEC has been updating its policies for Massachusetts’ Child Care Financial Assistance program (aka subsidy program). The new policy manual has been condensed from 135 to 33 pages and is a tool directed at program administrators. While new regulations governing the financial assistance program go into effect on October 2, 2023, it is estimated that implementation will take place through an iterative transitional process, over a number of years. 

If you Are a Parent/Family:

1. Among the initiatives that are part of the child care financial assistance reform are: 

1. Engagement with families interacting with the child care financial assistance program to get user feedback on the digital service experience;

2. Waitlist cleanup;

3. Digital application and case tracking, which will allow families to track their journey from waitlist to placement; and

4. SMS texting pilot, which is testing the use of text message nudges/reminders to families moving through the financial assistance process.

2. The Financial Assistance Caseload has recovered to 58,000 children following a decline due to the pandemic.

If You Are An Educator:

1. The Early Educator Care Pilot has resulted in 1253 children of early educators being enrolled in care and another 503 on the waitlist or in the eligibility determination process; EEC indicated that though the program started as a pilot, it is “moving to priority status”. 

If You are a Child Care Advocate:

1. EEC shared the latest results from its survey of providers who are grantees of the Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) program, which includes 87% (6,806) of all licensed center-based and Family Child Care programs. C3 grants serve as  direct-to-provider operational grants that providers have wide discretion to use. Nearly all of the grantees responded to the survey between April and July of this year. Compelling findings include providers reporting that:

• 58% of all grant funds have been spent on operational expenses (those things required to keep doors open, like existing payroll) and 25% of all funds have gone toward longer-term investment expenses, such as bonuses or salary increases.

• Programs would need to increase tuition rates if C3 ends; this was true of 68% of centers and 53% of FCCs.

The survey also reveals that:

• Programs serving the highest percentage of children with financial assistance have educators with the lowest hourly salaries

• 982 programs would close if C3 funds were no longer available

EEC indicated that while there are no imminent plans to change how the C3 program operates, they have several levers with which to potentially make changes: the grant formula used to determine individual provider amount of funds; data collected from providers; requirements for use of funds; and requirements for eligibility.

1. EEC has engaged the support of Jeffrey Liebman, affiliated with the Rappaport Institute of Greater Boston Research Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School and Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, to undertake a research project over the next year. The goal of the project is to study the cost of care and how the early education and care sector is financed, in an effort to identify how the sector would be organized and how different funding sources should be weaved together. The work’s underlying hypothesis is that there is no reason that Massachusetts cannot do the same for child care as it did for health care, with respect to creating universal coverage. Dr. Liebman will produce a report in 2024, providing a policy end-game to provide accessible care for all.