Finding child care in the Berkshires went from hard to horrible since the pandemic. We look at the reasons behind the child care staffing crisis – Berkshire Eagle
By Larry Parnass
It’s the crisis we could have seen coming. Child care providers did. They knew their underfunded, underpaid system, a “mishmash” of care that parents must navigate on their own, was vulnerable to breaking down.
Today, they’re fighting to hold it all together, one positive COVID-19 test and one teacher resignation after another.
By all accounts, the pandemic steamrolled a stressed early education system in Massachusetts. Programs that working parents desperately need in the Berkshires now struggle to find staff members and fulfill their civic mission, their leaders say. Because they can’t hire all the educators they need, fewer child care “slots” are available, with obvious hardships all around — and fewer workers able to clock in…
Separately, the Common Start Coalition is backing a bill by that name that would solidify funding for care programs by basing it on capacity, not attendance — a system more akin to public education. Once fully implemented, it would make child care free for families below the statewide median income ($42,614 for a single parent with one child; $62,668 for a family of four). A hearing was held in November before the Education Committee…
Amy O’Leary, executive director of the advocacy group Strategies for Children, believes the pandemic is finally laying bare what’s wrong with the current child care system, which Farley-Bouvier refers to as a “mishmash.”
O’Leary thinks the system’s near-collapse over the past two years makes the case for reform. The state itself adopted a key piece of the Common Start legislation during the pandemic, when it shifted to a payment system based on enrollment rather than attendance…
“In most of the policies, we’ve been an afterthought,” O’Leary said of the child care field. “We’ve left it up to parents to navigate. I think that has changed. We need to recognize these systems for what they are doing to support children's development and for the connection to our economy. It was very clear, when people suddenly were like, 'Wait a minute, you can't ask people to go back to work, if they don't have child care.'”