Screenshot: Website of the 192nd General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Looking for excitement?

You might not think you’d find it in a fiscal year 2023 budget meeting of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Ways and Means.

But here’s the exciting part: Massachusetts is on the edge of greatness. This state could make wise, strategic investments in early education and care that could lead to powerful change. Residents of every city and town could have access to affordable, world class preschool programs that help young children thrive and grow into successful adults.

“This will take time,” Amy O’Leary, Strategies for Children’s executive director, said in her testimony to the joint committee.

It will also take visionary action.

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

There is a huge need for progress. As O’Leary explains in her testimony: 

“To be clear, for early education and care the crisis continues. Many programs operate at a deficit yet continue to open their doors to serve children and families every month.

“This is true of subsidized and private programs, center-based and family childcare alike.

“The early education and care landscape is made up of 7,500 programs with the capacity to serve 220,000 children from birth to age 13. About 50% of these programs serve subsidized children, to varying degrees. The remaining half of the system relies on parent tuition to provide early education and care services to the Commonwealth.”

The impact of the pandemic has been devastating.

“Since March 2020, 1,359 programs have closed (17% of all programs and representing over 23,000 slots for children). This is in addition to the decades of closures prior to the pandemic. Programs serving a high proportion of children receiving subsidies have remained relatively stable throughout the pandemic (only 6% closed), whereas 28% of programs without children with subsidies have closed (two-thirds of all closures).”

One solution: treat early education and care like “a public good – just like public schools or our physical infrastructure of roads and bridges – needed to maintain a 21st century workforce.

“Massachusetts was making slow-and-steady investments in early education and care prior to the pandemic and now we have the opportunity to take the lessons we have learned, coordinate every federal, state, and local dollar, and develop policy solutions for the future.”

Specifically, the Legislature should fund the “immediate” recommendations in the Special Legislative Early Education and Care Economic Review Commission’s report. This includes investing:

• $480 million to continue operational funding to programs through fiscal year ’23

• $5 million to permanently have a policy of reimbursing programs that serve subsidized children based on enrollment, not attendance

• $200 million to raise subsidy reimbursement rates to 75% of market rate while simultaneously developing cost modeling to determine true cost of funding high-quality care 

• $12 million (and additional one-time costs) to review subsidy regulations and policies and to provide additional navigation support and outreach to families, and

• $15 million to provide additional resources to the Department of Early Education and Care

O’Leary supports this funding move and so do William Eddy, the executive director of the Massachusetts Association of Early Education and Care (MADCA) and JD Chesloff, the executive director of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, who both also testified at the Joint Commission meeting, starting at the 2:39:22 time mark in the video.

So please reach out to your legislative leaders, share the commission’s report with them, and ask them to act on the “immediate” funding recommendations. Tell them that what’s exciting is their chance to make history by making an investment in young children that will become an investment in the future of this state.