Mass. child care providers brace for cuts to state grants

More than half of the state's 8,323 child care providers were recently notified that the monthly payments they receive from the state will be cut significantly in May and June. State officials say they need to make adjustments to Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) grant payments to stay within what's budgeted in the 2024 fiscal year.

In an FAQ published on its website, the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care said the changes don't reflect an overall cut to C3 program funding, which was $475 million this year.

"C3’s success in supporting new programs and classrooms to open is creating larger than expected growth," according to the FAQ, meaning funds need to be spread out among more centers.

"We know how difficult this is for the programs who will be receiving a reduction," said Massachusetts Early Education and Care (EEC) commissioner Amy Kershaw in an interview. "But we're also in the position of needing to be good stewards of the public dollar and needing to live within our means this year."

Providers who are impacted say the cuts will result in a significant strain to their budgets and drain their savings accounts. The extent of cuts ranges anywhere from roughly half to three-quarters of usual monthly payments.

"It's really disheartening," said Caitlin Maddix, co-director of The Family Cooperative Inc in Watertown. "We're already in a field that feels really undervalued."

The C3 grant system began as a pandemic-era support system, intended to prevent widespread child care closures due to increased costs for items like personal protective equipment, cleaning supplies and rising food prices. It was originally funded with federal pandemic aid, but Massachusetts lawmakers decided to continue the program in 2024 once federal dollars dried up. C3 grants make up roughly a third of Massachusetts' $1.5 billion early education and child care budget.

Advocates tout the program for increasing teacher salaries, lowering tuition for families and growing the number of available child care seats.

Maddox's child care center received $15,600 a month from the state this year through a C3 grant. She spends most of that on teacher salaries, including a 6% raise across the board.

Child care provider payments are based mainly on a center's enrollment and size of staff. Additional funding is available to providers that serve families who receive child care financial assistance.

Amy O'Leary, executive director with Strategies for Children, an early education advocacy group, says that the open and flexible design of the C3 program makes it incredibly hard to budget for, because providers can qualify for more funding at any time when they add new student slots.

"The good news is this money was designed to stabilize programs, and we've seen incredible data to show that has worked," she said.

According to state data, the C3 program has allowed the state to surpass pre-pandemic levels of child care capacity, adding about 10,600 seats this year alone.

How much in payment reductions child care providers would see for May and June is based on a tiered system.  Head Start and Early Head Start centers and programs serving more than 33% of kids who receive child care financial assistance (also known as vouchers) will not see cuts. But other centers, depending on how many families they serve that require financial assistance or whether they operate in a high-needs community, would see payment reductions ranging from 55% to 75%.

Jacey Norton, director of Framingham Centre Nursery School, says while she has enough savings to make payroll for May and June, her biggest worry is whether her C3 payments will lower in fiscal year 2025, which starts July 1. The C3 funding she currently receives allowed her to raise teacher pay from $18 to $26 an hour. If her monthly payments decrease by too much, she said she'll have to consider dropping some employee benefits, like paid time off during public school vacation weeks.

"I can commit to the end of this school year but what do we do for next year?" said Norton. "We can't say, 'Oh, you make $26 an hour, we need to send you back to $18 an hour.'"

Governor Healey's budget proposal for the next fiscal year includes level funding for the $475 million C3 program.

Kershaw said her team is considering updates to the program that would avoid budget issues like this in the future, including directing more resources to programs serving low-income families. But Kershaw added, no matter what, program funding will remain available to all child care providers.

"We know that programs are ... increasing capacity and most importantly investing in their staff," said Kershaw. "So we're really committed to the economic mobility of all the education and care workforce regardless of what type of program they're working in."

The C3 distribution cuts were discussed at a Board of Early Education and Care meeting on Wednesday. The governing board did not take any immediate action to address the issue.

News of the C3 grant shortfall comes as the state Senate plans to introduce an ambitious early education and child care bill on Thursday. That proposal would, among other things, make the C3 program a permanent line item in the state budget, though it doesn't specify how much money the state must allocate to the grant system each year.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct Jacey Norton's name and title and Caitlin Maddix's name. We regret the error.