Affordable, quality early care and education are essential to RI. Here's why. | Opinion

Lisa Hildebrand is executive director of the Rhode Island Association for the Education of Young Children and Mary Varr is executive director of the Woonsocket Head Start Child Development Association. Both are leaders of the RIght from the Start campaign, which advocates for policies that support young children and their families.

The workforce that supports young children’s early learning and development, which is made up almost exclusively of women, and disproportionally women of color, has been in crisis for years. This crisis is negatively affecting families, children’s learning and development, and our state’s economy.

Child care educator wages are among the lowest in the state. At $13.97 per hour in 2022, child care educator wages are in the same range, or lower, than fast food workers, dishwashers, laundry workers, animal caretakers and retail sales workers. Highly-qualified Head Start and preschool teachers also make wages substantially below their market value.

Thanks to the leadership of House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi, Senate President Dominick Ruggerio, Gov. Dan McKee and key champions in the legislature, Rhode Island allocated new funds in the state budget to address the severe staffing crisis in our child care and early learning programs. This year’s budget includes $3 million in new funding for Early Head Start and Head Start programs and $4 million to implement a Child Care for Child Care Educators pilot program to help recruit and retain our child care workforce.

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The $3 million restores funding cut in 2008 and confirms the state’s commitment to these proven programs that improve outcomes for young children and families. In the 2022-2023 school year, despite long waiting lists, almost 30% of the Head Start and Early Head Start classrooms in the state were closed because programs could not attract and retain qualified staff.

New state funding is supplementing federal investments to help programs retain highly-qualified and effective teaching staff by raising wages and benefits. New funding is expected to enable 12 classrooms (serving 39 infants/toddlers and 99 preschoolers) that were closed last year to reopen in communities across the state.

The state’s new $4-million investment to pilot a Child Care for Child Care Educators program is modeled after a successful initiative in Kentucky. This program recognizes that many child care educators are parents of young children who need care while their parents work that and some parents staying at home with their young children would be interested in working in the child care/early learning field, but they cannot afford the cost of child care for their own children. Rhode Island’s Child Care for Child Care Educators program was launched in August and already has nearly 200 early educator parents signed up.

While their job involves some of our tiniest residents, Rhode Island’s early educators play a big role in our state’s economy: they help families with young children get to work. Even more importantly, they provide quality early learning and development experiences for our children, so they are ready to succeed when they reach kindergarten. And as anyone with young children knows, it takes a lot of dedication, patience and hard work to keep children engaged and learning the skills they need. That’s the work our early educators do on a daily basis.

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These investments support our state’s early educator workforce and build on other recent investments made by the General Assembly and Governor McKee, including $3,000 per year pandemic retention bonuses, expanded investments in the T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood program, and the new Child Care WAGE$ program, which provides annual salary supplements up to $12,000 to retain our most qualified early educators.

Affordable, quality early care and education are essential. With increased investments in proven programs like Early Head Start and Head Start and new, creative programs like Child Care for Child Care Educators, we’re making strides to support, retain and grow our early educator workforce, a true linchpin for our state’s broader economy.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: These investments support our state’s early educator workforce and build on other recent investments.