Screenshot of a report from the Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation at the University of Massachusetts Boston and Networks of Opportunity for Child Wellbeing

Faced with the devastation caused by the pandemic, the early childhood community has been asking how it can rebuild and become stronger than ever.

To facilitate this work, the Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation (IEELI) at the University of Massachusetts Boston hosted a series of webinars last summer.

The webinars – “Reinventing Child Care in Massachusetts” – drew more than 700 early childhood professionals and other stakeholders who shared ideas for building an early childhood system that would be:

• high-quality

• accessible to all families

• able to provide professional compensation to educators based on their skill and experience

• able to offer professional and leadership development, and

• active in addressing racial inequities

Once the series was done, IEELI teamed up with Networks of Opportunity for Child Wellbeing (NOW), part of Boston Medical Center’s Vital Village Networks, and the two organizations ran an Action Lab 90 Day Challenge.

The 90 Day Challenge is a tool that Vital Village Networks uses to promote “social connections, cooperative development of social innovations (co-design), team-based iterative learning, and collective actions by using an equity framework.”

The action lab drew more than “50 leaders and stakeholders in ECE, K-12 and higher education, business, workforce development, government, and philanthropy” who looked at four areas of focus:

• the evolution of early care and education

• supportive policies

• information and infrastructure, and

• funding

A slide deck of this work is posted here.

In each area participants developed guiding questions, actions they could commit to, and policy recommendations. The report that summarizes this work paints a picture of a thriving early education and care system.

Among the action lab recommendations:

• “Treat child care as a public good and necessary infrastructure for a healthy economy; double the investments in childcare within a five-year period.”

• “Create a system in which all parents have access to childcare using a pay scale based on their income.”

• follow the lead of states like Connecticut, Illinois, and Wisconsin by developing an Early Childhood Integrated Data System (ECIDS)

• pay teachers “a salary equal to the salaries of PreK-12 teachers,” and

• provide a benefits package that includes health and dental insurance, retirement benefits, disability coverage, tuition reimbursement, and vacation time

A key theme in this work is evolution. Without evolutionary change early education and care will continue to struggle.

Or, as the report says:

“If children are our economic future,
If the demand of a thriving economy is the supply of workers to meet the needs of the Commonwealth’s employers,
If a thriving early care and education system depends on the supply of its workforce,
THEN
We must build an equitable early care and education system to meet the needs of employers, parents, and children.

“As a result, there will be:
– A return to a more thriving economy, but one in which more women and people of color are thriving;
– Access to quality, accessible and affordable childcare, achieving equity in early education for the first time for families from all economic backgrounds;
– A thriving, vibrant, well-compensated ECE workforce; and
– More women of color in leadership.”

Please, check out the summary and share its ideas with your networks and your elected officials.