Child care is in crisis. Here's what's being done about it – WBUR
By Carrie Jung and Max Larkin
There’s more than one way to tally the cost of child care.
The sticker price for families is certainly high: Tuition in Massachusetts is the highest among the 50 states. But the system takes other tolls.
Most child care providers run their businesses on razor-thin margins and can only afford to pay their staff around the state's minimum wage. And there are broader impacts: parents stay out of the workforce, businesses are short-staffed and children miss out on educational opportunities.
While these struggles are not new, the pandemic has made them harder to ignore. As staff quit and centers closed, a struggling system was pushed closer to a breaking point. And more business leaders and politicians began to see child care not as a private burden for families and caregivers, but as an urgent public problem…
However, early childhood advocates in Massachusetts notice an unprecedented level of movement on Beacon Hill. In March, a special legislative commission on the costs of early education and care released a report that called on the state to "invest in both quality and access" for early childhood care. The report recommended spending approximately $1.5 billion a year.
It seemed like a green light to the Common Start Coalition, a group of lawmakers, advocates and other stakeholders that had drafted a bill in 2021 aiming to make just those kinds of investments. The Common Start bill included several big proposals like a 7% cap on family spending for child care and an expansion of who is eligible for state subsidies up well into the middle class…