Child care, early education must be post-pandemic priority, advocates say - Berkshire Eagle
By Chris Lisinski and Katie Lannan, State House News Service
Education advocates and experts told state senators on Wednesday that the disruption caused by the COVID-19 crisis presents a unique opportunity to reform aspects of all levels of schooling and encouraged them to act before that moment passes Massachusetts by…
“If we don’t seize this opportunity, the next time our sector is pushed to the brink, it may be too late,” said Amy O’Leary, director of Strategies for Children’s Early Education for All campaign…
Industry advocates called for lawmakers to increase the state’s investment in the early education and child care sector to help reverse the disproportionate economic damage women have borne during the COVID-19 pandemic. Forcing widespread closures and a massive shift in work patterns across the state, the public health crisis pushed both parents and child care providers into a precarious position.
A vast majority of child care providers are women, and mothers have also been hit harder by COVID-19’s impacts because they have left work or cut back hours at greater rates than fathers, the senators were told.
In October, the Massachusetts Commission on the the Status of Women published results from a survey finding that 21 percent of women were considering quitting their jobs because of the challenges that finding child care and education during the pandemic posed, while 45 percent said changes in school and care arrangements had hurt their financial security.
“Our hard-won progress on closing the gender wage gap can be set back decades by this moment with women’s labor force participation still around 1980s levels,” Julie Kashen, director for women’s economic justice at The Century Foundation, said on Wednesday. “The choices made by policymakers have deliberately failed to establish a robust care infrastructure and family-supporting workplace policies in the United States.”