Massachusetts child care centers struggling with a shortage of workers. Why it's happening – MetroWest Daily News
By Ashley Soebroto
Amid a nationwide child care crisis, Massachusetts struggles to retain and bring in early educators due to the state’s high living costs and the industry’s low wage and benefits.
After the pandemic shuttered thousands of child care centers across the country, the lack of early education became a glaring issue, from long wait lines to unaffordable care. One factor of that inaccessible child care is a workforce shortage.
“This is happening across the country, and Massachusetts is struggling to retain early educators in the workforce,” said Anne Douglass, founding executive director for the Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation at the UMass Boston. “A significant segment of the industry is unable to find enough educators to operate at full capacity.”…
Lauren Kennedy, co-president and chief strategy officer of Boston-based advocacy group Neighborhood Villages, said wages are low because families are given the responsibility to pay for the cost of care.
Local, state and federal governments fund part of the day-to-day operation for K-12 public schools. But for early education, the tuition families pay for early education services is what funds child care centers, which is why they are limited in what they can offer for wages, according to Kennedy.
“This vicious circle just keeps repeating itself where quality and educator wages are just fundamentally pitted against family affordability,” she said. “So the only way that we fix this … is by having the government step in and offset the cost of child care.”