Child Care: A Big Investment Today for an Equitable Economy Tomorrow - Boston Indicators
By Titus DosRemedios and Marisa Fear, Strategies for Children
There’s an old saying, sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown this to be true for the early education and care sector in Massachusetts and across the nation. The sector had struggled for decades pre-pandemic, responded heroically to provide essential services during the crisis, and now requires systemic reform and bold investment to build back stronger. Old progressive policy goals like universal, affordable child care that once seemed far out of reach are now part of what’s necessary for an equitable economic recovery for all. If lawmakers don’t seize the current opportunity, the next time the child-care sector is pushed to the brink it may be too late—children, families and providers simply cannot withstand another national emergency.
Pre-pandemic, Massachusetts was making slow but steady investments in early education and care:
As our economy recovered from the aftershock of the Great Recession, our state budget started to make annual increases in the Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) and the many child-care and out-of-school time programs it regulates statewide. We’ve now seen eight consecutive years of post-recession budget increases, $346 million since Fiscal Year 2013, thanks in part to rising federal budget appropriations for child care. But the money is spread thin, across thousands of subsidy-accepting child care programs and tens of thousands of educators. It should also be noted that the 2008 Great Recession led to five years of state budget cuts, so much of the recent progress essentially backfills what was lost.
In a severely under-resourced sector and workforce, recent public investments have helped stabilize providers and inch salaries up for some members of this undervalued and underpaid set of educators, 92 percent of whom are women and 32 percent people of color. Although 15.3 percent of early childhood educators still live below the poverty line, a growing number of practitioners, advocates and champions in the State House were moving the issue in the right direction.
Boston’s development of its pre-kindergarten program was lauded as one of the highest quality, research-proven models in the nation. No, it was not universal, but it was on a path to achieve universal access by 2024 with continued federal, state and local investment. Collaborative partnerships between Boston Public Schools and community-based child-care programs were taking root with funding levels high enough to actually support quality programming. Similar grant-funded preschool models had begun in eight Gateway Cities.
A new coalition (now dubbed Common Start) had formed around the idea of universal, affordable child care. Cross-sector advocates were committed to the principal that early education and child care should be a public good. Massachusetts consistently ranked as one of the least affordable states in the U.S. for child care, pricing many families out of the market, including those who were eligible for a public subsidy based on their income. We had identified the problem and were working on solutions.
During the pandemic, the narrative of slow-and-steady progress suddenly shifted to one of existential crisis. All licensed early education and care providers were ordered to close from March 23 to late June, 2020. Out-of-pocket parent payments stopped during this time, and many families with young children and school-age children struggled economically. In Massachusetts, child care is a $4 billion industry, whose largest revenue source is parent fees. Our conservative estimate is that the industry has lost $1 billion due to lost parent fees during the pandemic, and it continues to operate at very thin margins in 2021. As of February 2021, only 83 percent of child care providers had reopened, representing 200,000 spots or 87 percent of pre-COVID capacity, and most programs have seen reduced enrollment. Nationally, 2.5 million women have left the workforce since the beginning of the pandemic, many citing child care responsibilities.