Neighborhood Villages Applauds Senate for Passage of Early Education Legislation in Massachusetts
BOSTON, MA (July 7, 2022) — Neighborhood Villages — a Boston-based nonprofit that advocates for solutions to the greatest challenges faced by the early education sector — today applauded the Massachusetts Senate for passing An Act to Expand Access to High-Quality, Affordable Early Education and Care. Lauren Kennedy, co-founder of Neighborhood Villages, issued the following statement:
“We applaud the Senate for passing this bill, which strives to address current access, affordability, and workforce challenges in Massachusetts’ early education and care sector. The bill makes care more affordable for more families, makes investments in early educators, and, importantly, it makes permanent the direct-to-provider grants first made possible by the state's Commonwealth Cares for Children Stabilization Grant Program, which are critical to keeping child care programs open, especially in socially vulnerable communities. Now, more than ever, families across the Commonwealth are in desperate need of affordable care solutions that enable them to work and provide their children a high-quality early education that will set them up to thrive.”
We sincerely thank the Joint Committee on Education, under the leadership of Chairs Jason Lewis and Alice Peisch; the Senate Ways and Means Committee; and Senate President Karen Spilka for their commitment and dedication to reforming Massachusetts’ early education and care system. We look forward to partnering with the Massachusetts Legislature to advance this critical bill and to continue working towards a future in which all families in the Commonwealth have access to high-quality, affordable early education and care. This bill stands as a substantial down-payment on that vision.”
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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.