300+ Parents, Educators, & Activists Rally Virtually For Universal Access to Affordable, High-Quality Early Education and Child Care
Coalition of Community, Faith-based, Labor, Business, and Early Education and Child Care Organizations, Educators, and Parents Ramps Up Push for New Investment Framework
ACROSS MASSACHUSETTS – One month after the Common Start Coalition announced the filing of legislation that would establish a universal system of affordable, high-quality early education and child care for all Massachusetts families, over a 5-year timeline, momentum is rising for state action to ensure that all families have the care solutions they need and that all children in our Commonwealth have the same, strong start and enter school on a level playing field.
Tonight, more than 300 parents, early educators, early education and child care providers, business leaders and other activists joined a virtual rally to call for quick action to address the early education and child care needs of families and businesses while ensuring that providers and early educators are fairly compensated for their work. During the rally, conducted with Spanish and Portuguese translation, several speakers shared stories about the urgent need for investment in early education and child care.
“A few years back my first child did not go to daycare because I could not afford it. Thankfully, his grandmother worked nights, so she kept him during the day, and she didn’t charge me. It shocked me to the core when I had to pay out of pocket when she could no longer keep him,” said Mikeya, a Boston mother of two boys, now ages 13 and 5. “I remember so well learning that my fulltime job making $18.00 an hour was considered over the income guidelines to get the assistance I needed, but not enough for me to afford childcare on my own. 13 years later, this pandemic has exposed more of the childcare issues that we face in the Commonwealth.”
“It's very frustrating for me as a working mom and as a resident of the city of Boston to learn that even in a pandemic it’s hard to find affordable, safe and reliable childcare,” continued Mikeya, a workforce development administrator and member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc who worked with EMPath, a member of the Common Start Coalition. “Ultimately, it seems as I will always have to decide to pay an arm and a leg for a childcare or an arm and a leg for rent. One of those two areas must take a back seat, and because I have no choice but to pay rent, most times unfortunately it has been my children. I want to know; will we ever reach a point where we don't have to make these types of choices? Hopefully that time is now.”
The Common Start legislation, filed by State Representatives Ken Gordon and Adrian Madaro and State Senators Jason Lewis and Susan Moran, would establish a universal system of affordable, high-quality early education and child care for all Massachusetts families, over a 5-year timeline. This universal system would cover early education and care for children from birth through age 5, as well as after- and out-of-school time for children ages 5-12, and for children with special needs through age 15. The new system would also ensure that a child who ages out during the school year can remain in care through the end of that school year.
“COVID put the spotlight on a very vulnerable part of our society: the critical work of the early education and care sector. We know that these first five years are critical in the development of every child,” said Cindy Horgan, Executive Director of the Cape Cod Children's Place. “Our early education and child care workforce is the critical factor, along with families, of building the architecture of our children's brains and influencing their development. We must do more to support this essential workforce because across this country, the average early educator is making poverty wages. High quality goes hand and hand with valuing the workforce doing this work, and when that is done well all of us benefit, because investing in early education and care is investing in all of us for our future.”
Programs would be available in early education and child care centers, private homes, and schools – the same settings where early education and child care is provided now. The bill provides a framework to increase the scope of public investment in early education and child care with an incremental roll-out over 5 years that prioritizes the lowest-income, highest-need families.
“As a business owner, I hear over and over again from my employees that their entire paychecks go to child care. We can do better, we must do better; the business community understands this,” said Paris Wallace, CEO of Ovia Health. “Every employee who has left our company during the pandemic has been a working mother, and this workforce crisis is directly linked to the lack of affordable child care. The number one thing the legislature can do to support businesses during and after the pandemic is to support legislation like this so we can support women in the workforce.”
The Common Start legislation would dramatically increase the affordability and quality of early education and child care for all Massachusetts families. The bill’s framework uses a combination of direct-to-provider funding and ongoing family financial assistance to reduce costs to families while compensating providers for the true cost of providing quality care.
Bedrock Funding: The legislation would create a new direct-to-provider funding allocation based on provider capacity (not attendance) that directly offsets provider’s operating costs, including higher educator pay.
Family Subsidy: Once fully implemented, families below 50% of statewide median income (50% of SMI today is $62,668 for a family of four, or $42,614 for a single parent with one child) would be able to access early education and child care options for free. Families with incomes above that threshold would receive financial assistance to allow them to pay no more than 7 percent of their total household income.
Public opinion research demonstrates broad support for a universal system of affordable high-quality early education and child care. In a poll of 800 Massachusetts voters conducted in early December by Beacon Research for the Common Start Coalition, 64% of Massachusetts voters favored the coalition’s legislative proposal, while only 23% opposed it. Support for the legislation is widespread, with a majority of all regional, gender, age, education, ethnic/racial, and income groups in the poll supporting the proposal.
“La legislacion Common Start es necesaria para los educadores de educacion temprana por que tenemos un proposito prioritario en comun, el cual es velar por la integridad fisica y emocional de nuestros niños dentro de un contexto familiar,” said Amparo Osario, an educator at the Clarendon Early Education Services Agency in Lowell. “Por lo tanto la Legislacion quiere dar apoyo economico y educativo para dar una alta calidad de servicio siendo este equitativo para nuestros niños y sus familias.”
[Translation: “The Common Start Legislation is necessary for early educators because we have a priority purpose in common, which is to ensure the physical and emotional integrity of our children within a family context. Therefore the legislation aims to give economic and educational support to provide a high quality of service that is equitable for our children and their families.”]
While Massachusetts is a nationwide leader on early education and child care and we’ve made important progress in recent years, the current system remains broken and access to quality early education and child care remains out of reach for too many families.
This year, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted just how critical early education and child care is for Massachusetts families, for children, for businesses, and for the entire Massachusetts economy. Without safe access to affordable, high-quality early education and child care, parents and other caregivers are either unable to work, or struggle to balance work with caring for their children. And our entire economy suffers as businesses struggle to reopen and recover because the workforce lacks early education and child care options, or because the productivity of their employees is compromised.
“Early education and care has been in crisis long before COVID-19,” said Jennie Antunes, Center Director at NorthStar Learning Centers in New Bedford. “Unfortunately, the same difficulties we face today are the same as it was 35 years ago when I entered the early education field. We have always been undervalued and underfunded."
Failure to address the child care crisis now will take its toll on the next generation: when denied access to high-quality early education and child care, vulnerable children miss out on the learning environments, structure, and stability that help set them up for education success, optimal earnings, and long-term health and wellbeing. Ensuring that all children have access to high quality early education and care is how we prevent achievement gaps from widening and health disparities from worsening.
The new legislative push for state action on early education and child care is led by the Common Start Coalition, a statewide partnership of organizations, providers, parents, early educators and advocates. The coalition, established in 2018, includes more than 120 organizations across Massachusetts, and is coordinated by a steering committee made up of the Coalition for Social Justice, Greater Boston Legal Services, the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action (JALSA), the MA Association of Early Education and Care (MADCA), the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, the MA Commission on the Status of Women, Neighborhood Villages, Parenting Journey, Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts, SEIU Local 509, and Strategies for Children. The coalition has six regional chapters across the state that include local parents, early educators, providers, and other advocates.
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The Common Start Coalition is a statewide partnership of organizations, providers, parents, early educators and advocates working together to make high-quality early education and child care affordable and accessible to all Massachusetts families. Our goal is to ensure that all families have the care solutions they need and that all children in our Commonwealth have the same, strong start and enter school on a level playing field. We are a diverse coalition including community, faith-based, labor, business, and early education and child care organizations, as well as early educators, parents, individuals, and direct service organizations. More information about the coalition is available at commonstartma.org.