We are thrilled that Congress has passed and President Joseph Biden has signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. 

This new funding will spread much needed aid across the country, and it includes $39 billion to rebuild child care. 

According to estimates, Massachusetts will receive an additional $510 million for child care. This investment is critical for stabilizing the state’s early education and care system.

The Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) “plans to use the federal stimulus funds as part of a larger set of grants to child care providers to ensure the viability of the industry, while also fostering innovation across the field to meet the evolving needs of working families and employers through COVID recovery period,” the department explains in its stimulus funds document.

As Commissioner Samantha Aigner-Treworgy explained earlier this month at EEC’s board meeting, Massachusetts plans to provide stimulus funds to all licensed child care programs. EEC is working on a formula to determine how much funding each of the 6,832 programs will receive.

This is a welcome change from last year when federal CARES Act funding was only given to subsidized child care programs.

In the coming weeks, EEC will release a plan for using these funds just as the department did with December’s stimulus funding. 

The formula will be based on:

– program capacity

-investments in program staff, and

– services provided to priority populations of children and families

“This will include robust engagement with stakeholders to inform the specific structures of the formula across these three dimensions, in order to efficiently and effectively develop a payment mechanism that can support operational stabilization of the child care industry.”

“Another spending priority for EEC is ensuring the federal funds support increased investment in program educational staff, including improving staff compensation and hiring of additional staff to improve ratios, given the overwhelming burden this pandemic has put on our early education and care workforce.”

This is a victory for all the early education and care programs that have been struggling financially through the pandemic, keeping children safe and engaged during a global crisis. We look forward to seeing this federal investment put programs back on the feet and help them become even stronger so that they can provide children with high-quality opportunity to play, grow, and succeed.