Early educators’ salaries are going up in Washington, D.C.

As we blogged last month, the work of advocates led the D.C. Council to create a tax increase for individuals whose annual earnings exceed $250,000. Some $75 million of these new funds will support early educators’ salary increases.

The D.C. Council also created an Early Childhood Educator Equitable Compensation Task Force that was charged with how best to accomplish this goal.

As the D.C. Council explains on its website:

“We all know that educating our youngest children isn’t child’s play. Yet the professionals who tackle this challenging and essential work have long been profoundly under-compensated for what they do. At its most recent meeting, the Council took a significant first step towards addressing this long-time injustice, queuing up payments of $10,000 or more this year.”

A Washington Post article adds:

“Thousands of day-care workers in Washington will get personal checks from the D.C. government for at least $10,000, after the D.C. Council voted unanimously Tuesday to redirect tax dollars from the city’s richest residents to child-care workers, who legislators say they believe are underpaid.”

The checks are an early first step to ensure that early educators receive a salary increase quickly.

In the future, the Post reports, the D.C. Council will probably subsidize “part of workers’ paychecks from their employers so that child-care workers will be paid on a scale comparable to public elementary school teachers.”

“Workers who care for babies and toddlers will be eligible for checks of about $10,000 or $14,000, depending on whether they work as assistants or leaders of day-care classrooms.”

More than 3,000 early educators working in center- and home-based programs are eligible to apply for the salary increase.

“Council members said they believe the checks will reduce turnover in the child-care field, which makes it hard for child-care centers to retain workers and, as Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) put it, ‘to be paid wages that reflect their skill and their work and will allow the city to grow our child-care sector.’ ”

Local early childhood advocates are excited about this progress. Among them is an advocate featured in the Post article:

“ ‘It’s just a breath of relief, and a galvanizing force for us to develop this long-term permanent program so teachers can actually have paychecks that reflect the work that they do,’ said Ruqiyyah Anbar-Shaheen, who led advocacy for increasing day-care workers’ pay in D.C. and then joined the task force. ‘I can’t believe we’re here. I’m so glad we’re here. I’m grateful.’ ”

D.C.’s victory on salaries is also a reminder of how important advocacy is for developing thoughtful public policies. Paying higher salaries helps stabilize and improve early childhood programs. This in turn helps children thrive and frees parents to go to work so they can help rebuild the Covid-ravaged economy. But more public funding is needed to make these workforce investments a reality.

Please share this exciting story with your colleagues and elected officials so they can see how much real progress can be made.