In her inauguration speech, State Senator Robyn Kennedy talked about the importance of investing in early childhood programs. She also appeared earlier this month on Strategies for Children’s 9:30 call as part of our “First Year Tour” meet-and-greet with newly elected legislators. Click on the white arrow below to hear her speech or read her tweet.
Archive for the ‘MA Legislature’ Category
In quotes: Massachusetts State Senator Robyn Kennedy
Posted in Child care, Cost and affordability, Funding, MA Legislature, Strategies for Children, tagged #ChildCare, #mapoli on March 31, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Tax relief for families of young children
Posted in Family engagement, MA governor, MA Legislature, MA state budget, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, tagged #mapoli, #TaxCredit on March 30, 2023| Leave a Comment »
This week, in her testimony at the Revenue Committee hearing in the State House, Amy O’Leary shared a vital message with Massachusetts legislators:
Families with young children need economic relief. And Massachusetts can help by passing the bill An Act to establish a Child and Family Tax Credit, H.2761/S.1792, into law.
“Across Massachusetts, families are struggling to keep up with the rising costs of food, housing, and childcare. At the same time, those earning the least pay a larger share of their income in state and local taxes than higher-income families. That’s unfair,” O’Leary, the executive director of Strategies for Children said in her testimony.
O’Leary drew on work done by the Early Childhood Agenda, which solicited feedback from across the state and created a roadmap for improving children’s lives. One vital goal that emerged in the Agenda’s work is to help families become financially secure.
The strategy for achieving this goal is Solution #3 on the Agenda:
“Provide a guaranteed minimum income for MA families and ensure we have an adequate safety net—expand the state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), create a robust and inclusive Child and Family Tax Credit (CFTC) and raise cash assistance grants.”
Governor Maura Healey has already called for a new family tax credit for residents “who are struggling to get by as the cost of living continues to skyrocket past them.”
(more…)Advocacy opportunity: act now
Posted in MA Legislature, MA state budget, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, tagged #Advocacy, #mapoli on March 28, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Photo: Alyssa Haywoode for Strategies for Children
Are you ready to advocate for early education and care funding?
The House Ways & Means Committee will release its FY’24 state budget proposal in a few weeks. Now is the time to contact your own state legislators in support of high-quality early education and care.
Click here to email your state representative and state senator today!
Our collective “ask” was developed with sponsoring organizations of Advocacy Day 2023 for Early Education & Care and School-Age Programs. Click here for the full ask sheet and here for more advocacy materials. Feel free to customize and personalize your message to legislators.
Stay tuned for more budget advocacy in the weeks and months ahead.
Join us for Advocacy Day
Posted in COVID-19, Early educators, MA Legislature, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, Strategies for Children, tagged #earlyed, #ece, #InvestInChildCare, #mapoli, #MARunsOnChildCare on March 9, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Please join us for Advocacy Day for Early Ed & Care and School Age programs – next Tuesday morning, March 14, 2023, in the Great Hall at the Massachusetts State House!
Registration starts at 9:30 a.m.
The program of speakers starts at 10 a.m.
Meetings with state legislators start at 11:15 a.m.
And, of course, there’s the excitement of getting to meet with hundreds of other early childhood professionals.
Check out the RSVP page for more info.
And click here for related materials, including social media hashtags.
In previous years, Advocacy Day has had a celebratory mood, created by early educators who understand the power of speaking as a group and asking policymakers to create more affordable, high-quality early childhood programs for families. You can read more about that in our past Advocacy Day blogs.
(more…)The power of advocacy
Posted in Child care, COVID-19, Early educators, Funding, MA Legislature, MA state budget, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, tagged #InvestInChildCare, #mapoli, #MARunsOnChildCare on March 6, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Photo: Alyssa Haywoode for Strategies for Children
Here’s a great example of the power of collective advocacy.
Last month, more than 180 organizations and 718 individuals all signed a letter that was sent to the Massachusetts Legislature. The letter’s request: please provide an additional $70 million to fund this fiscal year’s Commonwealth Cares for Children or C3 stabilization grants.
These grants were essential for helping child care providers stay open during the pandemic, and they have become critical for supporting program quality and workforce retention.
“Now is the time,” the letter adds, “to move from a temporary stabilization program to permanent direct-to-provider operational funding and take an essential next step in our efforts to establish a sustainable business model for early education and care.” The C3 grant program can pave “a pathway from stabilization to systems growth.
“The $70 million will bridge the gap between the end of the childcare stabilization grant program and position a permanently funded operational grant program for sustained support and success into the future.”
The advocacy letter featured the logo of the Early Childhood Agenda, a new effort in Massachusetts to build collective power for transformational change. Check out highlights from the release of the Agenda at the State House earlier this year.
Now, we are happy to say that the advocacy letter was received, and its message was heard!
(more…)Governor Healey’s first budget proposal has good news for early education and care
Posted in Child care, Funding, MA governor, MA Legislature, MA state budget, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, Strategies for Children, tagged #earlyed, #ece, #InvestInChildCare, #mapoli on March 2, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Yesterday, Governor Maura Healey and Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll kicked off the Massachusetts budget season by releasing their $55.5 billion budget proposal for fiscal year 2024, which includes good news for early education and care.
“Our FY24 budget is what Massachusetts needs to meet this moment and build a strong economy, livable communities and a sustainable future,” Governor Healey said in a statement. “Combined with our tax relief proposal, we will set Massachusetts up for success by lowering costs, growing our competitiveness, and delivering on the promise of our people.” Earlier this week we highlighted the Child and Family Tax Credit in Healey’s proposal, which would provide $600 per eligible dependent.
For early education and care, the Healey-Driscoll budget proposal includes:
• $475 million to continue the state’s C3 operational grants
• $25 million for financial assistance for low-income families
• $30 million for Commonwealth Preschool Partnership Initiative
• $20 million for child care resource and referral services
• $20 million in rate increases for subsidized child care providers
• $5 million for Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation Services, and
• $5 million for comprehensive strategic analysis to build on the work completed through the Special Legislative Early Education and Care Economic Review Commission
(more…)State budget season is starting: Governor Maura Healey will release her budget proposal tomorrow
Posted in Funding, MA governor, MA Legislature, MA state budget, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, tagged #earlyed, #ece, #InvestInChildCare, #mapoli, #MARunsOnChildCare on February 28, 2023| 2 Comments »
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey will make news tomorrow when she releases her first state budget proposal for fiscal year ’24. It will be a fiscal snapshot of her policy priorities, and we’re excited to see how she invests in early education and care.
Healey stands on a strong funding foundation. As our budget analysis explains, the state’s FY’23 budget made historic investments in the early childhood system, including:
• a $1.16 billion budget for the Department of Early Education and Care, which is a 45% increase over FY22.
• a new $175 million High-Quality Early Education & Care Affordability Fund, which supports recommendations made in the Special Legislative Early Education and Care Economic Review Commission
• an Economic Development bill signed into law in November that provided an additional $150 million for C3 Stabilization Grants, and $315 million for the Affordability Fund
Advocates hope Healey will continue to increase the state’s investment, and so far, the signs are promising. Yesterday, Healey announced a major tax relief proposal that includes $458 million for a new Child and Family Tax Credit that will “provide families with a $600 credit per dependent, including children under 13, people with disabilities, and senior dependents aged 65 and older,” a press release says.
This tax relief proposal “will be factored into the budget Healey will file on Wednesday,” according to a State House News story published in the Lowell Sun. “It will be up to the Democrats who control the House and Senate to decide whether to increase or decrease the scope of Healey’s proposals.”
(more…)In quotes: political consensus in Massachusetts on the importance of investing in child care
Posted in Business and economy, Child care, Funding, MA governor, MA Legislature, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, tagged #ece, #mapoli, #MARunsOnChildCare, #SolveChildCare on February 10, 2023| Leave a Comment »
“With sky-high prices, persistent staffing shortages, low worker pay, and not enough spots to meet parent demand, Massachusetts’ child care sector has emerged from the pandemic in even worse shape. And the dysfunction in the system ripples outward, affecting children’s development and plaguing businesses when their employees can’t find reliable child care. For decades, very little has been done about it.
“This year, however, advocates say they are finally seeing political will on Beacon Hill and beyond to take action.
“For the first time in recent memory, all three key decision makers on Beacon Hill — Governor Maura Healey, Senate President Karen E. Spilka, and House Speaker Ronald J. Mariano — have explicitly said they want to tackle the issue, expressing support for legislation that would infuse the child care sector with public funding, much like K-12 schools already receive. It aims to create a five-year blueprint to provide child care and preschool for all families, and bump up the value of child care subsidies awarded to the state’s neediest families.”
“In a statement, Healey said her administration is ‘actively evaluating’ how to deliver aid for parents and educators through the budget and ‘other avenues.’ Healey is expected to announce her first budget proposal next month.”
— “Long overlooked, child care industry may finally get a permanent lifeline from Beacon Hill,” by Samantha J. Gross, The Boston Globe, February 8, 2023
Leading the way: Doug Howgate, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation
Posted in Child care, Funding, MA Legislature, MA state budget, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, tagged #ece, #SolveChildCare on February 9, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Doug Howgate
Doug Howgate was a college student majoring in political science at Holy Cross when he went on a field trip to a place he’d never seen before, the Massachusetts State House.
“I’m pretty sure looking back it was during a Ways and Means hearing,” he recalls. “We went down to Gardner Auditorium. I remember seeing Senate Ways and Means Chair Mark Montigny there. You just got a sense that the building had a lot of energy, that there was a lot going on, the issues seemed relevant to where I lived, and really it just seemed like it would be a fun place to work for a couple years.”
Today, after more than a few years of work in various jobs both inside and just outside the State House and after earning a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University, Howgate is the president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation (MTF), and he’s pushing Massachusetts to make progress on a number of issues, including early education and care.
“I’m very lucky to live in Massachusetts, a place with a very active and engaged state government, where you can see policy in action, and you can see a connection between the things you do on Beacon Hill, and the things that happen in the lives of you and your family.”
Howgate is aware of the challenges the state faces: that resources are limited and that policymakers can’t do everything. He’s aware of persistent inequities, acknowledging that “being a white guy from a liberal arts college, I had a lot of benefits that I wasn’t aware of at the time,” including Holy Cross alumni who helped him get jobs.
(more…)In tweets: The Early Childhood Agenda
Posted in Child care, Early educators, MA Legislature, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, QRIS, Quotes, Strategies for Children, tagged #EarlyChildhoodAgenda, #mapoli on January 27, 2023| 2 Comments »
The Early ChildhoodAgenda’s plan has been released! To learn more, check out the Agenda’s website and read about the Agenda’s 10 priorities for improving the early childhood environment in Massachusetts.
-
Eye on Early Education is a blog of Strategies for Children, an organization that works to ensure that Massachusetts invests the resources needed for all children, from birth to age five, to access high-quality early education programs that prepare them for success in school and life. The blogger, Alyssa Haywoode, comes to Eye on Early Education after a career in journalism. -
- CHECK US OUT
-
-
- LOOK & LISTEN
Back To School
The Young Reader's Journey
Early Learning Matters TOPICS
- Accreditation
- Achievement gap
- Assessments
- Boston
- Business and economy
- Child care
- Cognitive development
- College/career readiness
- Cost and affordability
- COVID-19
- Curriculum
- Demographics
- Dept. of Early Education and Care
- Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education
- Dept. of Higher Education
- Developmentally appropriate practice
- Diversity equity and inclusion
- Early educators
- Early Learning Challenge
- Election
- English language learners
- equity
- Facilities
- Family child care
- Family engagement
- Federal
- Full-day kindergarten
- Funding
- Guest Blog
- Head Start
- Health
- Higher Education
- Infants and toddlers
- International
- K-12
- Language development
- Literacy
- MA governor
- MA Legislature
- MA state budget
- Massachusetts Cities and Towns
- Mil Milagros
- Multimedia
- NAEYC
- National
- Philanthropy
- Play
- Pre-K to 3
- Pre-kindergarten
- Professional development & preparation
- QRIS
- Quotes
- Reading proficiency
- Research
- Science & math
- Social-emotional development
- Standards and curriculum
- Strategies for Children
- TBT
eyeonearlyeducation.org 