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This month, WHMP, a Northampton, Mass., radio station featured a discussion on early education on its podcast, “The Afternoon Buzz,” hosted by Ashfield attorney Stewart “Buz” Eisenberg.

This podcast episode welcomed three guests:

• Donna M. Denette, executive director of Children First Enterprises

• Keira Durrett, director of the Williston Northampton Children’s Center, and

• Clare Higgins, executive director of Community Action Pioneer Valley

All three are also regulars on Strategies for Children’s 9:30 calls, where we share the latest news on early education advocacy. Be sure to check out our 9:30 call webpage and sign up to join the call.

On the podcast, Donna Denette talked about the importance of child care as infrastructure, noting, “When we hear that we have to invest in roads and bridges, because people can’t get to work without roads and bridges — Covid made it very clear that people can’t get to work without childcare either.”

Denette knows a great deal about infrastructure. Her organization, Children First Enterprises, in Granby, Mass., has expanded its building size from 1,000 square feet to 6,000 square feet and, later, to 12,000 square feet. But because of Covid and the closing of other child care programs, the organization still has a wait list of families who need child care.

Keira Durrette, of the Williston Northampton Children’s Center, spoke about staffing challenges. She says her program is “extremely lucky” because its educators have been with the center for a long time.

“Two of us have been there since we opened, we have another batch who have been there for 18 to 20 years. Another batch 12 to 15 years, and a couple of new teachers who are just out of teacher prep program at Greenfield Community College. They did their student teaching with us, and now they’re on board on our team.”

However, she adds, “there’s a huge amount of turnover in the field of early education and care, mostly because of how hard the work is, and mostly because of how lousy the pay is.”

Because the children’s center gets 100 percent of its funds from parent fees, the only way it could pay higher salaries to educators would be to charge parents more. Unfortunately, parents simply can’t afford to pay more. It’s a financial bind that desperately needs a public policy solution.

Clare Higgins, executive director of Community Action Pioneer Valley, talked about the Head Start program that her organization runs. Reviewing the recent history of child care and Head Start’s role, Higgins says Head Start is “an integral part of the Build Back Better plan” proposed by President Biden as well as a good model of a pre-K program that meets the needs of children and families.

The big caveat, Higgins adds, is that Head Start is only for families who have very low incomes.

“When we hit the $15-an-hour minimum wage,” Higgins warns, “working parents will not be eligible for Head Start because the cut off is so low.” The sad result: plenty of working parents whose children could benefit from Head Start, won’t be able to enroll because of the income eligibility rules.

It will be up to public policy leaders to address these cost and subsidy issues and help parents get the early education and care they need to go to work.

“We have to decide whether or not this is a public good,” Higgins says of early education and care. If it is a public good, “What are we going to do about it?”

To hear more of this discussion, check out the podcast.