Our Opinion: Child care crisis requires a refocusing of priorities – Berkshire Eagle
“I’ve been on the phone with directors who are just ready to cry.”
That’s what Anne Nemetz-Carlson, president and CEO of Child Care of the Berkshires, told The Eagle in summing up the steep challenges facing those who watch over our littlest residents. Child care providers, particularly those in Berkshire County, are facing a long-building crisis that has been exploded by COVID.
Young families bear it as well. If it was hard to find child care in the Berkshires before the pandemic, it’s nearly impossible now. Long waiting lists are the norm. Nearly a fifth of smaller, family-run programs have shuttered and larger centers, while more likely to survive, struggle mightily with staffing levels due to hiring issues and COVID-related absences. That means many child care centers can’t accommodate their full capacity, which in turn means fewer slots for the working families that desperately need them.
We share the view of advocates who say the extent of this care crisis should compel an earnest new look at how to seriously upgrade the child care and early education picture in Massachusetts.
The Build Back Better federal legislation, mired in D.C. sclerosis, would have helped a bit by bringing more than $3 billion in early childhood care funding to the commonwealth.
At the state level, the so-called Common Start bill (H.605, S.362) would solidify funding for these care programs by basing the formula on capacity instead of attendance. That’s more like how public education funding is allotted, a parity that early childhood education advocates say is long overdue. If implemented, it would make child care free for families below the Bay State median income. The legislation is backed by several members of the Berkshire delegation, including state Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier, D-Pittsfield, who underscored that this issue should be considered part of public education — and treated with similar import at the policy level.