Photo: Yan Krukov from Pexels

A long awaited and welcome report from the Massachusetts Legislature has been released this week, and it charts a policy course for early education and care.

“Building a sustainable and well-functioning system for early education and care is critical and urgent, especially for Massachusetts’s most vulnerable families,” the report from the Special Legislative Early Education and Care Economic Review Commission says.

The commission was chaired by Representative Alice H. Peisch (D-Wellesley) and Senator Jason M. Lewis (D-Winchester), and was composed of “a variety of stakeholders… including legislators, providers, professional organizations, business leaders and employers, advocates, and state agency leaders.”

As Chair Peisch says in a press release, “Long a leader in K-12 public education, Massachusetts now has an opportunity to build on that success in the early education and child care sectors by acting on the recommendations contained in this report.” 

“This work is critical to our goals of advancing racial justice and an equitable economy that works for all,” Chair Lewis adds.

Maria Gonzalez Moeller, CEO of The Community Group in Lawrence, Mass., adds: 

“I was honored to serve on the EEC Economic Review Commission and encouraged that they sought insight from early educators in communities serving high percentages of low-income children. This level of attention and support for child care is exactly what our children, families, and educators need and deserve.”

The report points to decades of research about the benefits of high-quality early education and care, and it calls for closing opportunity gaps and maximizing investments.

“Fully implementing all these recommendations will require upwards of $1.5 billion annually over time.”

The commission did not identify new revenue sources, however the report does note “substantial additional resources will be necessary and will likely require a combination of increased federal funding—since the federal government currently provides more than 60% of the public funding to the early education and care sector in Massachusetts – as well as increased state funding and/or consideration of other alternative measures, such as requiring businesses of a certain size to provide an employee benefit for early education and care similar to current healthcare requirements.”

Specifically, the report identifies four areas where action should be taken to serve the state’s 7,500 licensed early childhood programs, including:

• program stabilization

         º continue Covid stabilization funds

º base reimbursements of subsidized programs on enrollment (not attendance) 

• family affordability and access 

         º raise subsidy reimbursement rates

º promote employer best practices in assisting workers with child care

         º expand capacity in underserved communities 

• workforce compensation, pipeline, and advancement 

º increase compensation for early educators through grants and rate increases

º create a career ladder and competency-based credentialing system that includes aligned professional development and a new compensation scale 

º explore strategies to increase workforce retention such as tax credits for early and out-of-school time educators, higher education loan forgiveness, and additional scholarships 

• system infrastructure and local partnerships 

º provide additional resources to the Department of Early Education and Care to support management of new state policies, programs, and initiatives 

º support local partnerships across the mixed delivery system, and 

º implement and evaluate local shared services and quality hubs to increase program operational capacity, support the provision of comprehensive services, and encourage ongoing program improvement

This work is particularly important given how many programs the state lost during the pandemic. As the report explains:

“Of the nearly 1,400 programs (including 23,395 child slots) that have closed since the beginning of the pandemic (average of 69 per month), approximately 30% were centers and 70% were family child care providers. About 175 of the programs that closed served school-age children, and of these, 104 programs served exclusively school-age children.” 

Amy O’Leary, executive director of Strategies for Children, praises the early childhood field as well as the report and its potential. 

“We continue to be inspired by this dedicated and resilient workforce and their

commitment to providing high-quality learning experiences under incredible circumstances,” she says. 

“The roadmap outlined in the Commission’s recommendations tackle many of the persistent challenges we have faced and put us on a path to establishing a system of affordable, high-quality early education and child care for all Massachusetts families including much needed support for early educators. We look forward to our continued partnership to ensure full implementation and funding for this vision.”

We encourage the Legislature to implement the report recommendations and begin investing in the systemic change that’s so badly needed in the early education and care system.