Suffolk County Legislators, Parents, Early Educators, Child Care Providers & Business Leaders Call for Action on Child Care Legislation in East Boston
Common Start Proposals Would Make Child Care More Affordable for Families, Increase Pay for Early Educators, Provide Stability for Providers, Support Children, Boost Businesses, and Advance Economic Competitiveness and Racial & Gender Equity
East Boston, Mass. – During a regional meeting and discussion at East Boston Social Centers yesterday, dozens of Suffolk County legislators, parents, caregivers, early educators, early education and child care providers, business leaders, and advocates spoke up in support of comprehensive legislation that would help make high-quality early education and child care truly affordable and accessible to all Massachusetts families.
“We at East Boston Social Centers are proud to have been part of the Common Start Coalition's work from the early stages. We are deeply grateful for the investment our champions in the legislature and Boston's city government have made in our early education and care system and are grateful for their commitment to continuing this important work,” said Justin Pasquariello, Executive Director of the East Boston Social Centers. “Thank you to Rep. Madaro for his leadership and support and partnership for this event, and to Sens. DiDomenico and Edwards, Rep. Turco, and Kristin McSwain for joining for this event and demonstrating their continued deep commitment to this vision. Thank you to our partners in the field, our hardworking teachers, and the children in our programs and their parents for your work together to help all children thrive. We are deeply grateful to our speakers, our guests, and everyone who has voiced support for this important work of ensuring all children have access to high-quality, affordable early education and care taught by equitably paid teachers.”
Emcee State Representative Adrian Madaro; State Senator Sal DiDomenico; State Senator Lydia Edwards; State Representative Jeffrey Turco; and Kristin McSwain, Senior Advisor for Early Childhood and Director of the Mayor's Office of Early Childhood all spoke on why we need the Common Start vision of affordable, accessible, high-quality Early Education and Child Care.
“As the father of two young children, and a State Representative for the hard-working parents of my East Boston district, I know how essential high-quality, affordable early education and care is for working families — and for the healthy development of our children. I also know how essential it is for the economic competitiveness of our commonwealth,” said State Representative Arian Madaro. “I am proud to sponsor the Common Start legislation and pleased to support the first event in an upcoming Common Start Campaign regional tour. I support the goals of this important legislation: ensuring our youngest learners and their families have access to high-quality, affordable early education and care taught by teachers who earn the wages they deserve.”
“As a father of two boys who attended quality child care programs, I know personally the transformative impact that investing in our youngest learners can have,” said State Senator Sal DiDomenico. “Supporting our state's children has been one of my top priorities throughout my time in the legislature and I am proud of the progress we have made in funding our early education and care system. I am committed to the work of the Common Start Coalition because it is absolutely imperative that we guarantee all Massachusetts children and families have access to high-quality, affordable early education and care taught by teachers earning the wages they deserve.”
“The School Age care I received after-school and during vacations played a transformative role in my life, and ensured my mother could work, knowing I was safe and well supported. I am committed to ensuring my constituents, and all the commonwealth's children, have access to high-quality, affordable early education and care, like I had,” said State Senator Lydia Edwards. “I am passionate about ensuring the commonwealth is an affordable place where all families can thrive. Housing and child care are the most significant expenses for many families with young children — and so I am proud to work to ensure both are affordable. My commitment to ensuring all have the resources they need to live with dignity extends to our early education teachers and I am proud to support the vision of their earning the wage they deserve.”
“There are moments of deep moral clarity in this work as a legislator — and this is one of those moments,” said State Representative Jeffrey Turco. “I hear personally from parents and early education and school age providers in my district about the importance of ensuring all children have access to high-quality, affordable, early education and care taught by professionals who earn the wage they need and deserve. As a father to six children, I know personally the importance of their having a loving, nurturing environment where they can learn. We must make these investments and advance this work because it is the right and necessary thing to do. I am proud to co-sponsor this Common Start legislation.”
“We in the city of Boston are deeply grateful for the legislature's partnership in support of our youngest children,” said Director Kristin McSwain. “We must continue to build on this strong foundation until all children in the Commonwealth have access to high-quality, affordable early education and care taught by teachers who earn the wages they deserve. Boston is proud to have made investments to support this vision. As federal stimulus funding ends, we ask our partners at the State House to please pass the legislation based on the Common Start framework. To make essential investments in the early education and care workforce, early education providers need the security of knowing the state has made a permanent commitment to the foundation funding they have received in recent years — among many other important provisions, this legislation would accomplish that.”
Local members of the Common Start Coalition, a diverse group of more than 170 organizations and thousands of individuals focused on establishing a system of affordable, high-quality early education and child care for Massachusetts families, discussed how funding from the Legislature has helped stabilize our state’s child care system over the past two years.
Speakers included Provider Thara Fuller, Executive Director of the John F. Kennedy Family Service Center; Mary Dooley, Center Director of East Boston Head Start; parent Jay Dave of Newtowne School, Cambridge; and educator Jaqueline Carmenatty of East Boston Social Centers’ Social Sprouts Early Learning Center. All thanked legislators for funding that is supporting providers, increasing educator pay, and preventing closures. All expressed a need for further steps to achieve the full Common Start vision.
“As leader of The John F. Kennedy Family Service Center: an early education and care program serving diverse children in Charlestown, I am deeply grateful for the legislature's recent transformative investments,” said Thara Fuller, Executive Director of the John F. Kennedy Family Service Center. “Those investments have enabled us to make major investments in our workforce. At the same time, we continue to face significant needs and new challenges continue to arise. We are seeing more complex behavioral, mental health and other needs among our children. We need to invest much more to recruit and retain our workforce. We are navigating a complex maze of eligibility as we work to get children the early education and care they need — this maze needs to be greatly simplified. The Common Start legislation would make giant strides toward a future where all children and families can easily access the high-quality early education and care they need and where we can pay our employees the wages they deserve.”
“I am proud to have worked in Early Education for forty-one years at ABCD Head Start, most of those years serving the community of East Boston,” said Mary Dooley, Center Director of East Boston Head Start. “Over that time, we have learned so much more about the critical importance of these earliest years. We know the first three years are the most important for a child's development. I am grateful to the legislature for their significant investments these past few years — and know there is so much more to do to help all children thrive. This is a moment of great promise — and also of continued crisis as we navigate complex funding streams and requirements to support families and struggle to recruit and retain our educators. It is now the time to take action, which is why I am proud to support the Common Start vision of all children having access to high-quality affordable early education and care taught by equitably paid teachers.”
Speakers also addressed the work that is needed to solidify and build on the progress we’ve made in recent years, and make high-quality early education and child care truly affordable and accessible to all Massachusetts families.
“I am proud to have worked at the Social Centers for nineteen years and grateful to serve as the Lead Teacher for our UPK classroom,” said educator Jacqueline Carmenatty of the East Boston Social Centers’ Social Sprouts Early Learning Classroom. “I am committed to this work, but as a single mother of three, it can be tough to support a family. When I became a UPK Lead Teacher, I finally received a wage that enabled me to buy a home. I support the Common Start vision of ensuring all early education teachers earn a wage that is comparable with public school wages so all teachers can afford to support their families and to stay in this work.”
“My favorite part of the day is circle,” said 4-year-old Luca Bucella, a student in Jacqueline’s class. “Miss Jackie reads to us and then after, we act out the book.”
“As both a parent and board member at Newtowne School, I share our school's commitment to providing equitable access to high-quality, affordable early education—and ensuring that teachers receive the wages they deserve,” said parent Jay Dave. “Thanks to the state's foundational funding for early education and care, we proudly committed to bringing our teachers' starting salaries into parity with those of public school teachers. We achieved this without huge tuition hikes, while continuing to offer scholarships to a significant percentage of the children we enroll. We were fortunate to be able to make this decision, and this underscores the critical importance of sustaining these foundation grants to enable all programs to make long term investments in their workforce.”
“We at Charlestown Nursery are proud to co-sponsor this important first regional event on behalf of the Common Start Coalition.” said Cady Audette and Kelly Pellagrini, co-directors at
Charlestown Nursery. “All Massachusetts children deserve high-quality, affordable early education and care taught by equitably paid teachers. I am grateful to my legislators for championing children and making major investments in recent years — and I recognize this work isn't done. Thank you to our inspiring speakers for reminding us of the importance of investing in our youngest learners and their families, and thank you to our legislators and leaders from the city for their continued support.”
Background on the Common Start Legislative Framework
The Common Start Coalition supports H.489 (filed by Representatives Gordon & Adrian Madaro) & S.301 (filed by Senators Lewis & Moran), which are co-sponsored by a large majority of legislators in both the State House of Representatives (102 legislators) and the State Senate (28 legislators). These bills would provide the specific structure that is needed to deliver affordable care options for families; significantly better pay and benefits for early educators; a permanent, stable source of funding for providers; high-quality programs and services for children; and substantial relief for businesses. Passage of the bills would make Massachusetts significantly more affordable, greatly improve our economic competitiveness, and dramatically increase racial and gender equity.
Under the bills, programs would be available in early education and child care centers, private homes, and schools – the same settings where early education and child care is provided now. The bills affect early education and care for children from birth through age 5, as well as after- and out-of-school time for children ages 5-12, and for children with special needs through age 15 – in line with the ages covered by the current child care subsidy system.
The Common Start legislative framework uses a combination of direct-to-provider operational funding and family financial assistance to reduce costs to families while compensating providers for the true cost of providing quality care, including higher educator pay.
· Operational Funding: The bills would permanently establish a direct-to-provider funding allocation based on provider capacity (not attendance) that directly offsets provider operating costs, including higher educator pay – similar to the Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) program.
· Family Financial Assistance: The bills would provide financial assistance to enable more families to afford and access high-quality early education. They prioritize families earning at or below 85% of state median income ($115,546 for a family of 4, or $78,571 for a family of 2) and, as funding becomes available, would extend eligibility for financial assistance to middle-income families.
Earlier this year, a UMass Boston report on the affordability provisions of the bills found that nearly half of all Massachusetts families with children under 14 (or under 17 with special needs) would be eligible for financial assistance under the 85% threshold. For eligible families, the percentage of their family income going to child care would be reduced from an average of 17.2% to an average of 4.3%. The average affected family would save $13,260 per year.
With financial assistance provided for quality child care and early education, 10,400 mothers would enter or re-enter the workforce, and 21,000 currently employed parents would increase the number of hours they work. As a result, the overall family poverty rate would fall significantly.
Background on the Common Start Coalition’s Campaign to Address the Child Care Crisis
Since 2018, the Common Start Coalition has been steadily building a broad-based coalition to advocate for affordable, accessible, high-quality early education and child care. During the 2021-2022 legislative session, the coalition developed the comprehensive Common Start legislative framework that would help children, families, educators, providers, and businesses, and signed up a majority of legislators as cosponsors. In the spring of 2022, the coalition’s vision was reflected in a major report written by the state’s Early Education and Care Economic Review Commission and in legislation approved by the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Education.
The Senate passed its version of the Education Committee bill unanimously in the final days of the 2021-2022 legislative session, and while the bill did not receive a vote in the House, a majority of state representatives are on record supporting the Common Start framework. Additionally, state leaders have made a major down payment on the coalition’s vision over the past few years, including $1.5 billion for early education and child care in the FY24 budget.
A recent report by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation found that the state loses $2.7 billion each year due to inadequate access to child care, including $1.7 billion in lost earnings for employees, $812 million in additional costs and lower productivity for employers, and $188 in lower tax revenues for the state. The state’s Early Education and Care Economic Review Commission found that public funding is necessary if Massachusetts is to offer children an equal education, families affordable care, providers a sustainable business model, and educators a competitive living wage. As the Legislative Commission report says, immediate funding is needed now, as well as in the long term, to ensure that providers can keep their programs open and pay wages sufficient to keep educators in their classrooms.
Public support for state investment in early education and child care is strong, and has increased significantly over the past few years. A statewide poll of Massachusetts voters, conducted in December 2022 on behalf of the Common Start Coalition, found 73% support for the Common Start proposal, with only 18% of voters opposing it. Support was up nearly 10 points from two years prior, when the corresponding margin on that question was 64%-23%.
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The Common Start Coalition is a statewide partnership of organizations, providers, parents, early educators and advocates working together to make high-quality early education and child care affordable and accessible to all Massachusetts families. Our goal is to ensure that all families have the care solutions they need and that all children in our Commonwealth have the same, strong start and enter school on a level playing field. We are a diverse coalition including community, faith-based, labor, business, and early education and child care organizations, as well as early educators, parents, individuals, and direct service organizations.
The coalition, established in 2018, includes more than 170 organizations across Massachusetts, and is coordinated by a steering committee comprised of the following members: CEO Action for Racial Equity, the Coalition for Social Justice, Greater Boston Legal Services, the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action (JALSA), Jumpstart for Young Children, the MA Association of Early Education and Care (MADCA), the Massachusetts Association for the Education of Young Children (MAAEYC), the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, the MA Commission on the Status of Women, Neighborhood Villages, Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts, SEIU Local 509, and Strategies for Children. More than 3,000 individual parents, caregivers, early educators, center administrators, business owners, and family child care providers are active members of the Common Start Coalition. More information about the coalition is available at commonstartma.org.