Photo: Alyssa Haywoode for Strategies for Children

Today the Massachusetts House Ways and Means Committee released its $49.6 billion state budget proposal for fiscal year 2023.

For early education and care, this budget includes several key provisions:

• $60 million in a salary rate reserve for providers who accept child care subsidies (line item 3000-1042). This line item also includes an additional $10 million for grants to early education and care providers for costs associated with personal childcare, a new initiative.

• $5 million for navigation support and outreach to families, including language continuing EEC’s recent policy of paying subsidies based on child enrollment instead of attendance (part of line item 3000-1000). 

• Increases for: Access Management (3000-2000, for resource and referral agencies); Head Start (3000-5000); and Workforce Development (3000-7066)

• Level funding for the Commonwealth Preschool Partnership Initiative (3000-6025) and early childhood mental health (3000-6075).

In total, the House budget proposal provides $91 million more for early education and care than the FY23 budget proposal that Governor Charlie Baker released in January.

The House budget proposal does not include funding for the Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) grant, which has been helping to stabilize child care programs since its creation in August 2021.

Please visit our state budget page for more information.

If you are reading this before 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, April 14, 2022, please join us for a review of the House’s budget proposal on this morning’s 9:30 Call. 

And please join us in thanking Speaker of the House Ron Mariano, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Aaron Michlewitz, House Chair of the Joint Committee on Education Representative Alice Peisch, and the members of the House of Representatives for investing in early education and care.

The increased funding in this budget proposal is a crucial first step towards implementing the full recommendations of the EEC Economic Review Commission, which has called for a total investment of $1.5 billion over the immediate, short- and long-term. You can contact your state representative today to thank them and encourage them to do more.

The FY23 state budget has many more steps before it is final. Amendments for the House proposal are due on Friday and then the full House will debate the proposal the week of April 25, 2022.

Then the budget process moves to the Senate. So there will be a lot more outreach for advocates to do.