Posts Tagged ‘#ece’

In quotes: child care shortage in Framingham

Posted in Child care, Early educators, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Quotes, tagged , , on April 14, 2023| Leave a Comment »

“ ‘Every place you go in the Framingham area, there are waiting lists for child care — it’s terrible,’ Mayor Charlie Sisitsky said during a forum last month on economic development.

“The lack of early childhood education providers has led to a crunch in openings for slots in preschools and other types of pre-kindergarten day care. Heidi Kaufman, executive director of education at the MetroWest YMCA, which oversees nearly 150 children in its pre-kindergarten program, said the YMCA program is booked to full capacity and has a lengthy waiting list.

“ ‘We are 100% full and we have no wiggle room whatsoever,’ she said. ‘Our wait list is so long, we won’t have any openings in the fall, which is usually when we have openings for the general community.’

“Despite already operating at full capacity, Kaufman said the YMCA would like to add to its staff, rather than relying on existing staff to work longer shifts with fewer breaks. But the child care industry in general has a limited amount of staff available. Some veterans are burned out by demands brought on by the pandemic, which made preschool and child care nearly impossible. And chronic understaffing can lead to those who remain to feel overworked and unable to perform the job to their ideal standards, leading to further burnout.” 

— “Where are all the workers? Start with child care, politicians and others say,” by Jesse Collings, MetroWest Daily News, April 11, 2023

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House Ways & Means Committee invests in early education and care in FY’24 state budget proposal

Posted in Child care, MA Legislature, MA state budget, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, tagged , , , on April 13, 2023| Leave a Comment »

state house

Photo: Alyssa Haywoode for Strategies for Children

On April 12, the House Committee on Ways & Means released its fiscal year 2024 state budget proposal, totaling $56.2 billion and proposing major investments in early education and care.

In his letter to members of the House, Chairman Aaron Michlewitz said “No area has had a greater impact on our workforce than early education and care. The lack of adequate and affordable childcare continues to hamper our recovery. The House remains committed to investing more into early education.”

For early education and care, the proposal includes:

• $290 million to continue the state’s C3 operational grants (line items 3000-1045 and 1596-2410). The budget also dedicates iLottery revenues to a newly created Early Education and Care Operational Grant Fund which is intended to augment C3 funding (see outside sections 6 and 8)
• $90 million for rate increases and $10 million for grants to early education and care providers for costs associated with personal child care (line items 3000-1041, 3000-1042)
• $17.5 million for Head Start (3000-5000)
• $20 million for child care resource and referral agencies (3000-2000)
• $15 million for preschool expansion CPPI grants (3000-6025)
• $10 million for professional development opportunities for child care providers (3000-7066)
• $5 million for the Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation Grant Program (3000-6075)

The House Ways & Means budget is posted here.

The House has until Friday to file amendments to the budget, and members will debate amendments in the weeks ahead. Check this page for future updates and advocacy opportunities.

Go to SFC’s state budget webpage for line item language, and contact Titus DosRemedios if you would like more information.

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The 9:30 Call is three years old

Posted in Early educators, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Strategies for Children, tagged , , on March 21, 2023| Leave a Comment »

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We’re proud to announce that the 9:30 Call turns three years old this week.

Launched in the chaotic early days of the pandemic, the 9:30 Call began as a response to a global emergency. The Call helped early childhood providers across the state connect and keep up with evolving Covid policies.

Since then, the 9:30 Call has grown into a powerful advocacy tool for managing the pandemic and making policy progress for children and families. 9:30 callers have heard from their colleagues as well as from elected officials, policymakers, researchers, advocates, and academics.

Whether you’ve joined the call once or many times, we want to thank you and invite you to join us this week. 

We are spending a few minutes at the start of each of this week’s calls sharing reflections and memories about past speakers and topics.

Visit our 9:30 Call website for additional information about our past and upcoming guest speakers. And sign up for the 9:30 Call to receive the Zoom link for this and future meetings.

You can also find the follow-up materials folder with the chat, slides and attachments from previous calls.

This week’s schedule includes:

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Join us for Advocacy Day

Posted in COVID-19, Early educators, MA Legislature, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, Strategies for Children, tagged , , , , 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.

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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 , , , 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

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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 , , , , 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.”

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In quotes: addressing misconceptions about the brains of bilingual babies

Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Infants and toddlers, Language development, Quotes, Research, tagged , , on February 24, 2023| Leave a Comment »

“During a recent BabyTalks webinar Beth Zack, PhD and Marley Jarvis, PhD shared research findings on infants’ and toddlers’ inherent capacity to learn multiple languages and identified strategies that educators and adults can use to support DLLs’ [dual language learners’] development. Through the course of the webinar, Zack and Jarvis also addressed several misconceptions about language learning in the first three years of life.

“Misconception 1: The brain cannot accommodate learning more than one language in the early years.

“Reality: Infant and toddler brains are more sophisticated than adults give them credit for and there is no better time to solidify bilingualism. As Zack and Jarvis shared, language development starts before a child is even born as babies begin to hear their parents’ voices in the womb during the third trimester. Because of this, babies can actually identify their parents’ home language as soon as they are born, and what is more, they are born being able to distinguish between the different sounds of all languages. Additionally, research has shown that babies can recognize a “foreign language,” that is, a language that differs from the predominant language used in their environment. They are also more interested in sounds from foreign languages because they are less familiar with them.”

— “Dual Language Learning Among Infants and Toddlers: Addressing Misconceptions About Babies’ Brains,” a blog post by Leslie Villegas and Nicole Hsu, New America, February 8, 2023

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Lessons from Somerville: How to build a strong and sustainable early childhood system

Posted in Cost and affordability, COVID-19, Family engagement, Funding, MA state budget, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Philanthropy, Pre-kindergarten, tagged , , , on February 23, 2023| Leave a Comment »

somerville

Photo: Huong Vu for Strategies for Children

Somerville, Mass., has spent years building a strong foundation for its early education and care programs.

Now, a case study – One Somerville, Every Child — explores how Somerville has used a three-year (2019-2022), $1 million grant from the Commonwealth Children’s Fund to make vital progress that will support young children and families – and set an example other cities can learn from.

This work began in 2018 when representatives of the City of Somerville and the Somerville Public Schools were introduced to team members from the Commonwealth Children’s Fund – thanks to the Harvard Education Redesign Lab’s By All Means Initiative.”

Somerville officials “shared plans and dreams they had for expanding their early childhood services, and the CCF team shared their plans to start investing in communities piloting innovations in early childhood systems,” the case study says.

Somerville had three goals it sought to achieve:

• expand and institutionalize its early childhood programs

• expand its existing preschool initiatives, and

• bridge the gaps between children’s birth and when they start school

Another program that was central in the grant-funded work was “Somerville’s light-touch, universal home visiting program, SomerBaby,” a first point of connection “to early childhood services and supports for many families.”

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The second year of the Advocacy Network: introducing a new group of leaders

Posted in Child care, Early educators, Funding, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, Strategies for Children, tagged , , on February 16, 2023| 5 Comments »

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Advocacy Network Year 2 Cohort

Last year, Strategies for Children launched the Advocacy Network for Early Education and Care, a program for educators and leaders in the early childhood field who wanted to expand their impact. Seven advocates completed the first cohort, and are having a positive advocacy impact on their programs, communities, and state.

Now we’re excited about the second year of the program and how a new group of leaders will expand advocacy in their communities. 

“This program is all about the advocacy journey,” Titus DosRemedios, deputy director of Strategies for Children, says. “Last year’s participants went on a journey with us and with each other. They stepped out of their comfort zone, met knew people, learned about policy and ‘Advocacy 101,’ and took new strides in their professional development. They had the chance to speak on panels, serve on committees, write and share testimonies, appear in the news media and on social media, and develop advocacy projects for their programs, classrooms, and communities. This created a powerful ripple effect for the early childhood community, one that we know will continue with cohort 2 and 3.”

This year’s cohort 2 participants are:

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The National Early Care and Education Workforce Center – a federal effort deployed by local and national leaders

Posted in Child care, Cost and affordability, COVID-19, Federal, Funding, National, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, tagged , on February 14, 2023| Leave a Comment »

workforce

Photo: Huong Vu for Strategies for Children

Earlier this month, federal officials announced that they are creating the new and promising National Early Care and Education Workforce Center (the ECE Workforce Center). It’s a national effort to rebuild the workforce that includes local leaders here in Boston.

Launched by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with $30 million in funding, the new center will address an old problem: even before the pandemic, the early childhood workforce was plagued with low pay and high turnover rates. This situation has grown worse during the pandemic.

 “We know it is hard for families to find quality early childhood programs. One of the reasons is that programs are having trouble recruiting and retaining early educators,” January Contreras says. Contreras is the assistant secretary at the Administration for Children and Families, part of HHS. “We cannot continue to expect early educators to remain in these critical roles only to earn poverty wages.”

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra adds, “HHS is honored to launch this first-of-its-kind research and technical assistance center to support the essential early childhood workforce who partner with families every day to ensure young children have what they need to thrive.”

The new ECE Workforce Center will help by addressing recruitment and retention. The center’s work will include the input of early educators and be carried out over the next five years by six partner organizations. They are:

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