Neighborhood Villages Applauds Movement of Early Education Legislation in Massachusetts

BOSTON, MA (May 18, 2022) — Highlighting the need for meaningful child care reform, Neighborhood Villages — a Boston-based nonprofit that advocates for solutions to the greatest challenges faced by the early education sector — applauded the movement of early education and care legislation, which was reported out of the Joint Committee on Education today. Lauren Kennedy, co-founder of Neighborhood Villages, issued the following statement:

“The child care crisis is one of the biggest social justice issues we face. The bill reported out of Committee today represents an important step forward in ensuring that more families in the Commonwealth can access high-quality care and makes a critical commitment to early education and care providers and educators. Notably, the bill makes permanent a highly successful, new approach to infusing public funds into the field of early education and care: operations grants for providers that can be put towards raising wages and making long term investments in program quality.

We commend Committee Chairs Rep. Alice Peisch and Sen. Jason Lewis for their leadership on this bill. Neighborhood Villages looks forward to continuing to work closely with the legislature, and to build momentum for an early education and care system that is affordable and accessible for all Massachusetts families. We must seize this opportunity to create a more equitable and just Massachusetts.”

###

Neighborhood Villages, founded in 2017 by Lauren Kennedy and Sarah Muncey, is a Boston-based systems-change non-profit that advocates for early education and care policy reform and implements scalable solutions that address the biggest challenges facing providers and the families who rely on them. For more information, visit https://www.neighborhoodvillages.org/our-work.