Legislative Roundup: MA Delivers for Early Education and Care
As the most recent legislative session in Massachusetts came to a close on July 31, 2022, it ushered in some major progress on early education and care, while laying out a roadmap for where we must go moving forward.
Between the beginning of the session, in January 2021, and its end, the Massachusetts Legislature — all while weathering a global pandemic and its devastation of the state’s child care capacity — considered some of the most substantial pieces of early education and care legislation that have been introduced in the last decade. It stood up a special Commission to evaluate immediate and long-term needs for public investment, and introduced new vehicles and revenue streams for financing the early education and care sector.
While the Legislature did not deliver on transformational policy reform, it did demonstrate a robust response to the unequivocal truths that the pandemic exposed: child care is an essential economic driver and a public good. And our current early education system is in desperate need of reform and public investment.
So, what did the legislature deliver for early education and care?
The Massachusetts state legislature’s policy work can be broken into two major buckets:
The annual budget, which is largely about allocating public dollars to specific divisions of the government and its programs, specifically for the upcoming fiscal year (July 1st – June 30).
Laws that represent substantive policy changes. Bills in this category propose changes to how government operates and/or what the people can expect from their government. They may or may not be attached to funding and do not automatically lapse with the end of a fiscal year.
When it comes to annual budgets, money is a reflection of priorities, and we saw clearly that early education and care was prioritized in a number of ways:
Annual State Budget Appropriations — The Governor signed the FY23 budget into law on July 28, 2022. The budget includes historic investments for early education and care that total nearly $1.2 billion; these funds will go toward – among other things – educator wages and professional development, operational grants for early education and care providers, and funding that allows Neighborhood Villages to continue to carry out its mission and work to support the sector.
Federal Stimulus Appropriations, Fiscal Year 2022 and Fiscal Year 2023 — Funding from federal COVID-19 relief bills targeted the early education and care sector, aiming to stabilize providers and help families access care during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSA), signed into law in December of 2020, included $131 million for early education and child care in Massachusetts. Through a program called Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3), these funds were used by the state to provide grants to early education and care providers, to help stabilize the field and prevent program closures.
The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), signed into law in March of 2021, resulted in $5.3 billion for Massachusetts, including $510 million specifically allocated to early education and care. Of those funds, $314 million was used to fund the C3 grant program; remaining state ARPA funds for early education and care await appropriation by the Massachusetts Legislature.
When it comes to substantive policy change, several major pieces of legislation were introduced this session and considered by the Legislature. Unfortunately, no leading child care legislation became law. Neighborhood Villages will continue to lay the groundwork to see transformative policy make it over the finish line in the next session, so that all families in Massachusetts have equitable access to high-quality, affordable early education and care.
Here’s what the Legislature considered this session:
Common Start legislation (H.605/S.362) — Introduced in 2021, the Common Start legislation would transform early education and care in Massachusetts. It would make our system more affordable and accessible for families, improve the quality of care for children, provide financial stability for providers, and – finally – ensure respectable wages for educators. This bill set the agenda for what meaningful investment in universal child care for Massachusetts could look like. Neighborhood Villages is proud to support this legislation along with our partners at the Common Start Coalition and will be working to see its vision become reality in the session ahead.
An Act to Expand Access to High-Quality, Affordable Early Education and Care (H.4795/S.2997) — This bill was passed unanimously by the Senate, but ultimately was not considered by the House of Representatives. The bill would – among other things – make the Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) stabilization grant program permanent, update the state’s subsidy rate structure, and expand families’ access to financial support for child care by raising the income eligibility threshold. The bill did not mandate dedicated funding, but rather made expansion of eligibility for subsidies, delivery of grant funds to providers, and other provisions contingent on appropriations made year over year in annual budgets. Neighborhood Villages anticipates that this bill will be taken-up again during the next legislative session.
Economic Development Package (H.5034) — This economic development bill (‘An Act relating to economic growth and relief for the Commonwealth’) remained in the final stages of negotiations as the session came to a close. If the bill were to pass in an informal session or in the next formal legislation session, and all current provisions for early education and care were maintained, the field would gain an additional $150 million for the C3 stabilization grant program, as well as any revenue generated by an lottery program (estimated to be about $200 million) for placement in a trust fund.
These major investments represent serious progress — more than we’ve seen in a decade — toward meaningful investment child care reform, and mark what we hope will be an ongoing prioritization of early education and care for years to come. But our work is not done. Neighborhood Villages will keep fighting for a Commonwealth in which all families have the right to affordable, high-quality early education and care for their children. We hope you’ll join us.