Massachusetts needs a robust child-care system

Originally Appeared in The Boston Globe
By Karen Spilka and Lauren Birchfield Kennedy

March 12, 2024

Working parents, imagine that you’re waiting to hear if your fourth grader will be going to school next fall. She’s been on a waitlist for 14 months. You hope to hear soon, because you’ll need to delay your career to stay home with her if she doesn’t get a spot.

This scenario is basically unthinkable for students in K-12 education, but it plays out far too often for parents of infants and toddlers seeking child care in Massachusetts. This happens even though research has shown that quality early education and care in the first five years of life greatly increases the chances of a student’s success later in life — and despite the reality that parents and caregivers often choose to — or need to — work after welcoming a child to the family.

At the Dr. Thomas J. Curran Early Childhood Education Center, Jessie Barton worked on reading in her kindergarten class. SUZANNE KREITER/GLOBE STAFF

It’s well past time to argue the merits and necessity of a robust early education and care infrastructure in Massachusetts and get to work on implementing a solution. That’s why this week the Senate is taking up the EARLY ED Act, comprehensive early education and care reform that will help teach our youngest learners and stabilize this crucial sector of our economy.

For far too long, early education and care has been a lose-lose proposition for families and programs. While the average annual cost of child care for one infant in Massachusetts is nearly $21,000 — one of the highest costs of any state in the nation — child-care workers make so little money that they often leave the profession for other jobs. The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the unsustainability of this sector, causing many programs to close and forcing parents to stay home to take care of their children — ultimately setting women’s participation in the workforce back to 1986 levels.

The weaknesses in our early education and care infrastructure call out for a whole-system approach to reform, one that provides lasting stability for programs, educators, and children. The bill being debated Thursday takes an important step toward providing that stability by making the state’s Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) funding permanent. These monthly operational grants, which were created during the pandemic to allow programs to keep their doors open, have become indispensable to early education and care programs across the Commonwealth. Unlike other states where programs are scrambling as their federal COVID funding disappears, programs in Massachusetts are paying their staff more, avoiding steep tuition increases, and opening up more spaces for children. These grants need to be made permanent.

This legislation would also open the possibilities of more affordable quality early education to thousands of families with lower incomes through expanding eligibility for subsidized child-care slots. In fact, the bill would cap out-of-pocket costs for families receiving state child-care financial assistance at 7 percent of a family’s income. For families trying to provide a strong start for their children while struggling with the high cost of living in Massachusetts, this new provision would provide financial relief and the peace of mind that comes with not having to worry about one more skyrocketing expense.

The Commonwealth can’t guarantee the quality in the promise of quality early education and care without ensuring that early education and care programs hire and retain the most qualified, well-compensated workforce. This bill directs the Department of Early Education and Care to develop a career ladder with recommended salaries and benefits for early educators. It also makes permanent our existing early educator scholarship and creates a new loan forgiveness program.

Finally, our whole-system approach needs to include a key sector of our economy that benefits greatly from a robust child-care ecosystem in Massachusetts — employers. That’s why the EARLY ED Act includes an innovative pilot program that incentivizes public-private investments in new child-care slots.

The Senate has been working toward two goals lately: addressing affordability, competitiveness, and equity in the state; and advancing a Student Opportunity Plan that provides quality education for our children from birth to adulthood. Comprehensive early education and care reform will help us achieve both these goals and much more. It’s time for Massachusetts to act.

Karen Spilka is president of the Massachusetts Senate. Lauren Birchfield Kennedy is co-president and chief strategy officer at Neighborhood Villages.