Cape & Islands Parents, Early Educators, Child Care Providers & Business Leaders Call for Action on Child Care Legislation in Barnstable
Common Start Proposals Would Make Child Care More Affordable for Families, Increase Pay for Early Educators, Provide Stability for Providers, Support Children, Boost Businesses, and Advance Economic Competitiveness and Racial & Gender Equity
Barnstable, Mass. – During a community meeting with State Senator Su Moran and State Representatives Chris Flanagan and Dylan Fernandes held at the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce on Saturday, dozens of Cape and Islands parents, caregivers, early educators, early education and child care providers, business leaders, and advocates spoke up in support of comprehensive legislation that would help make high-quality early education and child care truly affordable and accessible to all Massachusetts families.
“The cost of childcare here on Cape Cod is significant and very challenging for families like mine to afford. During my 8 years of paying for full time childcare, on average we were paying $1,800 a month for full time care, 12 months of each year,” said Sara Grambach, a Barnstable parent. “I currently work a local community health center that has approximately 100 employees, most of whom are women, many of whom are raising children and growing their families. When our staff do not have sufficient care for their families, they can’t come to work. When our providers can’t come to the health center, patients can’t be seen for critical care.”
Local members of the Common Start Coalition, a diverse group of more than 170 organizations and thousands of individuals focused on establishing a system of affordable, high-quality early education and child care for Massachusetts families, discussed how funding from the Legislature has helped stabilize our state’s child care system over the past two years.
“Child care is a lynchpin for economic stability and competitiveness in our region: when families can't find or access suitable child care, they can't work and our local businesses, families, and consumers suffer,” said Senator Su Moran of the Plymouth & Barnstable District, lead sponsor of the comprehensive child care legislation supported by the Common Start Coalition. “Massachusetts can and must lead on this issue; we want our communities to be attractive to families and for our families and their children to thrive and succeed. Success begins in the earliest years of life, and investments in child care more than pay for themselves in the long term.”
“Massachusetts is too expensive for too many working families,” said State Rep. Dylan Fernandes. “The cost of early education and care is out of reach for many families who have to choose between paying for expensive care or leaving the workforce to stay home with kids - a choice that hurts our states economic competitiveness. I’m grateful to join the Common Start Coalition to support early education and care in our state.”
State Rep. Chris Flanagan agreed that the cost of childcare is nearly impossible to manage. He said that both he and his wife work two jobs to pay for child care for their three children: one-year-old twins and a three-year-old.
Speakers also addressed the work that is needed to solidify and build on the progress we’ve made in recent years, and make high-quality early education and child care truly affordable and accessible to all Massachusetts families.
“The Chamber has a strong interest in early education and childcare, and we formed a Task Force more than a year ago to address the crisis among members of the business community—business owners, workers, and consumers—post-Covid,” said Noelle Pina, Chief of Staff of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce. “Child care affects all of us and the crisis is real. 92% of child care workers are women and average annual salaries are approximately $40,000/year. Childcare costs many families more than $20,000 per year for a single infant, and as much as $35,000 per year for two children.”
“We currently pay $675 a week for childcare. Both my husband and I have master’s degrees and full time jobs, but that is almost a third of what our family brings in annually,” said Ryan Friel, a Centerville parent of three and local high school teacher. “At the beginning of the summer, I took on a second job as a waitress. I had to keep that job through part of the school year to keep us afloat. When I worked shifts, I didn’t get to see my babies at bedtime, which during the week, sometimes meant I got to kiss them goodbye in the morning and didn’t see them again until it was time to wake up the following day. This is not because we were irresponsible or made poor choices or we are bad with money. It is because of the childcare crisis.”
“Having been a career waitress for the previous two decades, I jumped at the opportunity to become a teacher because my soul is fulfilled; my destiny lies within this career,” said Stacy Bayt, a preK teacher and parent from Wellfleet. “I knew it was not going to be glamourous, but I will be honest and say there are some days I question why I took a $20,000/year pay decrease. To attract and retain professional teachers, we need a living wage.”
“Our child care system uses a seriously broken business model that must be changed; and the child care legislation provides a roadmap to fix the broken system,” said Cindy Horgan, Director of Cape Cod Children's Place.
“The Common Start Coalition’s legislative framework is a roadmap for solving the child care affordability, accessibility and quality crisis, described by our speakers this morning,” said Sandy Faiman-Silva, an organizer with the Common Start Coalition. “We know that our vision is ambitious, but we believe it is achievable. Inadequate access to affordable child care is costing our state dearly. Early Education and Child Care funding reform is costly, but every penny spent will bring benefits to our families, communities, and the Commonwealth and we cannot afford not to act!”
“When I observe early childhood classrooms, I witness the heroes of our time,” said Kathy Blackwell, an organizer with the Common Start Coalition. “Teachers with nine languages in one classroom. Teachers with seven severe behaviors in one classroom. Teachers waiting months to have an assistant and working with different substitutes every day. I have seen teachers with octopus-like abilities to keep children safe with their arms and legs. I have seen a scale of patience that is beyond description. I have seen closed classrooms, chairs piled up, because there is no money to hire staff or they cannot find staff to hire, with waiting lists of hundreds of children. I have seen directors driving from one end of the state to cover for sick staff or to help in emergencies.”
“This is untenable. If we want a bright future for our families and children, and teachers who can afford to do what they love, we must change things,” Blackwell continued. “The children will not stop growing while we discuss what to do. The work is done, the data is clear, the problem is fixable. I look forward to calling these heroes and telling them ‘The bill has passed!’”
Background on the Common Start Legislative Framework
The Common Start Coalition supports H.489 (filed by Representatives Gordon & Madaro) & S.301 (filed by Senators Lewis & Moran), which are co-sponsored by a large majority of legislators in both the State House of Representatives (102 legislators) and the State Senate (28 legislators). These bills would provide the specific structure that is needed to deliver affordable care options for families; significantly better pay and benefits for early educators; a permanent, stable source of funding for providers; high-quality programs and services for children; and substantial relief for businesses. Passage of the bills would make Massachusetts significantly more affordable, greatly improve our economic competitiveness, and dramatically increase racial and gender equity.
Under the bills, 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 bills affect 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 – in line with the ages covered by the current child care subsidy system.
The Common Start legislative framework uses a combination of direct-to-provider operational funding and family financial assistance to reduce costs to families while compensating providers for the true cost of providing quality care, including higher educator pay.
· Operational Funding: The bills would permanently establish a direct-to-provider funding allocation based on provider capacity (not attendance) that directly offsets provider operating costs, including higher educator pay – similar to the Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) program.
· Family Financial Assistance: The bills would provide financial assistance to enable more families to afford and access high-quality early education. They prioritize families earning at or below 85% of state median income ($115,546 for a family of 4, or $78,571 for a family of 2) and, as funding becomes available, would extend eligibility for financial assistance to middle-income families.
Earlier this year, a UMass Boston report on the affordability provisions of the bills found that nearly half of all Massachusetts families with children under 14 (or under 17 with special needs) would be eligible for financial assistance under the 85% threshold. For eligible families, the percentage of their family income going to child care would be reduced from an average of 17.2% to an average of 4.3%. The average affected family would save $13,260 per year.
With financial assistance provided for quality child care and early education, 10,400 mothers would enter or re-enter the workforce, and 21,000 currently employed parents would increase the number of hours they work. As a result, the overall family poverty rate would fall significantly.
Background on the Common Start Coalition’s Campaign
Since 2018, the Common Start Coalition has been steadily building a broad-based coalition to advocate for affordable, accessible, high-quality early education and child care. During the 2021-2022 legislative session, the coalition developed the comprehensive Common Start legislative framework that would help children, families, educators, providers, and businesses, and signed up a majority of legislators as cosponsors. In the spring of 2022, the coalition’s vision was reflected in a major report written by the state’s Early Education and Care Economic Review Commission and in legislation approved by the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Education.
The Senate passed its version of the Education Committee bill unanimously in the final days of the 2021-2022 legislative session, and while the bill did not receive a vote in the House, a majority of state representatives are on record supporting the Common Start framework. Additionally, state leaders have made a major down payment on the coalition’s vision over the past few years, including $1.5 billion for early education and child care in the FY24 budget.
A recent report by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation found that the state loses $2.7 billion each year due to inadequate access to child care, including $1.7 billion in lost earnings for employees, $812 million in additional costs and lower productivity for employers, and $188 in lower tax revenues for the state. The state’s Early Education and Care Economic Review Commission found that public funding is necessary if Massachusetts is to offer children an equal education, families affordable care, providers a sustainable business model, and educators a competitive living wage. As the Legislative Commission report says, immediate funding is needed now, as well as in the long term, to ensure that providers can keep their programs open and pay wages sufficient to keep educators in their classrooms.
Public support for state investment in early education and child care is strong, and has increased significantly over the past few years. A statewide poll of Massachusetts voters, conducted in December 2022 on behalf of the Common Start Coalition, found 73% support for the Common Start proposal, with only 18% of voters opposing it. Support was up nearly 10 points from two years prior, when the corresponding margin on that question was 64%-23%.
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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.
The coalition, established in 2018, includes more than 170 organizations across Massachusetts, and is coordinated by a steering committee comprised of the following members: CEO Action for Racial Equity, the Coalition for Social Justice, Greater Boston Legal Services, the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action (JALSA), Jumpstart for Young Children, the MA Association of Early Education and Care (MADCA), the Massachusetts Association for the Education of Young Children (MAAEYC), the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, the MA Commission on the Status of Women, Neighborhood Villages, Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts, SEIU Local 509, and Strategies for Children. More than 3,000 individual parents, caregivers, early educators, center administrators, business owners, and family child care providers are active members of the Common Start Coalition. More information about the coalition is available at commonstartma.org.