By Vasundhra Sangar
Vice President, Government Affairs

The Massachusetts Senate on Thursday passed An Act ensuring affordability, readiness and learning for our youth and driving economic development (The Early Ed Act – S.2697) in an effort to increase the availability and affordability of early education and child-care options for families while addressing some of the workforce-participation issues that have left many companies short of employees.

Families

• The Early Ed Act raises the income threshold for child-care access subsidies from 50% to 85% of the state median income ($124,000 for a family of four).
• It caps child-care cost sharing at 7% of income for eligible families and eliminates cost sharing for families below the federal poverty level ($35,140 for a family of five).
• It ensures that the rates and fees charged to families are reviewed and renewed every five years.

Workforce

• Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) Grants are made permanent for providers. C3 grants were introduced federally to help keep child-care providers solvent throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and have been refurbished on the state-level through the last several fiscal- year budgets.
• The bill directs the Department of Early Education and Care to create a career ladder for early childhood educators, including opportunities for scholarships and loan forgiveness.
• It sets pay and benefit standards for early education and childcare workers on par with K-12 public educators.

AIM is gratified to see continued leadership from the Healey-Driscoll Administration and the Legislature to improve child-care access that enables parents and caregivers to be a part of the workforce. AIM has prioritized this issue through its Pink Slip initiative because expanding access to child care allows more flexibility for caregivers seeking to enter or remain the workforce.

For more information on the status of S2697 or AIM’s ongoing advocacy on early education and child care, please contact me at vsangar@aimnet.org.”