‘We have to begin somewhere.’ Facing system in crisis, Mass. House leaders propose boost for child care provider pay – Boston Globe
By Matt Stout
Massachusetts House leaders on Monday released a plan to dedicate an extra $40 million toward bolstering the salaries of child-care providers in Massachusetts, a three-fold increase lawmakers say will help stabilize an industry where thousands of workers still toil in poverty.
The funding, while combined with a series of other smaller increases, marked an initial but relatively modest step compared to the $1.5 billion in new investments a legislative commission said the state’s beleaguered child-care system needs. Massachusetts families pay some of the highest costs in the nation for child care, while workers’ salaries average just over $30,000 a year.
The House proposal does not include measures that would substantially cut the prices with which many families grapple. Instead, it focuses largely on the industry’s workforce, by injecting new money into worker pay and shifting how some providers are reimbursed by the state by basing the subsidies on enrollment, not attendance — a change, lawmakers say, that would stabilize their revenue…
The state, all the while, has faced increasing calls to help reshape the system. Lawmakers and advocates have pushed a sweeping proposal known as “Common Start” that would, for the first time, treat early education as a common good and pay for it with public funds, like K-12 public schools. That bill would limit what families have to pay for child care and boost the low wages of child-care employees. Such changes, supporters acknowledge, would require a massive infusion of taxpayer funds.
How the House proposal released on Monday affects the larger bill’s prospects is unclear. Mariano did not commit to tackling the “Common Start” bill before the formal legislative session ends this summer, saying only that “nothing is off the table.”
The Common Start Coalition, a network of groups that is pushing state lawmakers to adopt publicly funded, universal early-childhood education, organized a rally Saturday on Boston Common, where parents detailed their own struggles to find steady, affordable child care.
“I think they’re putting a down payment on our vision. It’s not complete,” said Deb Fastino, the statewide director of the Common Start Coalition, of the House’s proposal released Monday. “And we would like to see additional funding to help families. We do understand this is going to be costly, and it is going to take multiple years to reach Common Start’s vision.”