Case Study: Care in Massachusetts

“Money has been a constant struggle,” says Kim Silva of her 30 years as an early education teacher in Massachusetts. “One unexpected expense can put you in the hole for months.”

Silva, 46, is the lead teacher in a preschool classroom at NorthStar, a child care center in New Bedford. NorthStar largely serves children whose parents’ income is low enough that they are eligible to receive financial subsidies from the state to help pay for care. Silva has worked there since she was 15, moving from aide to teacher to lead teacher. Yet after more than three decades, she makes only $11.91 an hour. That’s $25,000 a year.

Silva speaks with an unqualified passion for the work she does. But she is also a single mother who has scraped and scrambled to support herself and raise her daughter, now 21, on an early educator’s salary. Like the majority of early childhood educators, Silva exists on near-poverty wages, on par with fast food cooks and bartenders, making less than bellhops, janitors, and parking attendants. The Department of Labor still groups most child care workers with personal service providers such as valets, butlers and fitness trainers  rather than other education-related occupations.

The Department of Labor still groups most child care workers with personal service providers such as valets, butlers and fitness trainers  rather than other education-related occupations.

Silva pays $841 a month to live in a low-income housing development in New Bedford. “It is not a good area,” she says. When her daughter was growing up, “there were gunshots. There were drugs. I had to make sure my daughter was always involved in something to keep her busy and safe.”

Her daughter attended NorthStar, where Silva paid on a sliding scale. But even that sometimes proved too much. There were times when finances were so lean that she and her daughter had to move in with her mother. “There were months of cable on, cable off, electric on, electric off,” she recalls, her eyes  swelling with tears. “It got to a point where I had to choose between rent or sending my daughter to daycare. So we left our home so she could get an education.”

Silva has always been on food stamps. Most recently she was receiving $33 a month in food benefits, which dropped to $16 a month when she got a raise after earning her bachelor’s degree. That’s enough to cover milk, cereal, and bread. About one-third of Silva’s paycheck goes towards health insurance, which, for many years, was a necessity to cover her daughter’s ADHD medication.

“Don’t tell me we don’t subsidize child care in the United States,” said Mary Brown, who has spent 30 years as a child care center director and child care consultant. “We do. It’s the teachers, mostly women, who’ve been subsidizing child care all along.”

To afford even basics like food and clothing, rent and utilities, Silva has needed to take on additional jobs on the weekends. She works as a personal care assistant—cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and running errands—positions that, at $13.68 an hour, pay more than her job as a lead teacher.

Silva’s experience in Massachusetts reflects that of an entire nation of child care workers. The median hourly wage for child care workers is $9.77 an hour, which places them in only the second percentile of wage earners when all professions are ranked, making it one of the lowest paid professions in the country. Close to one-half (46 percent) of child care workers, compared to about one-quarter (26 percent) of the total U.S. workforce, are on public assistance. Low wages can lead to high teacher burnout, high levels of teacher stress, and high teacher turnover—the national turnover rate for child care workers is 13 percent, significantly higher than the 3.4 percent turnover rate for all non-farm jobs. All of this compromises the consistency of care parents require and the quality of care children need.

“Don’t tell me we don’t subsidize child care in the United States,” said Mary Brown, who has spent 30 years as a child care center director and child care consultant. “We do. It’s the teachers, mostly women, who’ve been subsidizing child care all along.”

In 2015, the median wage for child care workers in Massachusetts was $12.01/hr. Thirty-nine percent of the state’s child care workers are on public assistance. In addition, the state reimbursement rate to providers who accept children qualifying for subsidies remains significantly lower than the 75th percentile recommended by the federal government. These rates have a huge impact on what local providers who take any subsidized children can pay their teachers and on the quality of education they are thus able to provide.

Statistics like these have made it more and more difficult to draw teachers into the field and get them to stick around. “When the state pays deflated rates, it basically forces programs to balance the books on the backs of their employees,” said William J. Eddy, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of Early Education and Care.

In Massachusetts, near-poverty-level pay combined with the state’s low unemployment rate has created a severe shortage of qualified teachers. Silva is the model of dedication to her profession, but she herself acknowledges that it is untenable to demand of the next generation of teachers or the next generation of parents what was demanded of her. “We are definitely in a crisis situation here. If not for me, then for them,” she said. “Something has to change.”

Silva’s observation echoes the feelings of many educators, advocates, and providers in the state, all of whom recognize that without qualified teachers there is no early education system at all. In recent years in Massachusetts, much of the energy around reforming child care has focused on creating better conditions for this struggling workforce.

The teachers in Massachusetts are not the only ones feeling the pressures from lack of funding. Child care centers that accept even a portion of children who receive government subsidies have been forced to shut down classrooms, reduce staff, and strip benefits from workers just to keep their doors open.

“Things are the most financially precarious anyone can ever remember,” says Wayne Ysaguirre, president and CEO of Nurtury Boston, a child care center serving 1,200 children, 98 percent of whom are subsidized by the state. “And if an organization our size is feeling this, imagine the pressure on the smaller ones just to stay open.”

For larger centers like Nurtury, which form the backbone of the state’s subsidized care system, remaining financially viable has required remarkable ingenuity—combining state and federal resources, nonprofit grants, and often extensive fundraising. No center wants to close classrooms or underpay teachers.

“It’s a crisis situation,” confirms Ysaguirre. “The opportunities for children, for parents, for staff are all shrinking.”

“It’s a crisis situation,” confirms Ysaguirre. “The opportunities for children, for parents, for staff are all shrinking.”

“We either didn’t have applicants or those we had couldn’t work for money offered,” Ysaguirre explains. The salary Nurtury was offering for a lead teacher with a BA ranged from $15.64/hr to $18.66/hr, depending on level of experience, which translates to roughly between $32,000 and $38,000/yr. In contrast, the average yearly salary for a kindergarten teacher in Massachusetts is $67,170/yr.

With labor (i.e. payroll and payroll-related expenses) making up 80 percent of child care costs, early educators bear the brunt of the burden when providers like Nurtury hit financial struggles.

It would be easy to feel crushed by such pressures—by lack of teachers and lack of funds and lack of adequate support from the state. But instead, advocates, teachers, and providers are sifting through the rubble for some signs of hope.

They point to the state’s inclusion in the federal Preschool Expansion Grant (PEG) program. For the past two years, the state has received a small, $15 million federal grant to expand access to high quality preschool programs in five communities across the state. Area public schools collaborate with community providers who have attained a certain quality rating—Nurtury and Ellis both participate—to enhance learning opportunities for four-year-olds in ways that are sustainable and replicable by other communities. Teachers are paid salaries commensurate with public school teachers with support and continuing education built into the program. PEG also mandates extensive evaluation and data-gathering, which will help  in recreating similar models elsewhere.

Though the PEG program relies upon a small, temporary grant that targets a small portion of the population—preschool aged children eligible for subsidies—there is hope among participants that, if permanently implemented, it might free up resources and create models that could be applied to the 0-3 population as well. PEG differs from many universal pre-K programs in that, instead of being replaced by public school programs, community providers work in tandem with the school system, allowing PEG classrooms to benefit from their often extensive knowledge and experience. It’s a drop in a large bucket—the hope is to enroll a total of 3,000 additional four-year-olds across the four-year life of the grant; there are 224,901 children ages 3-5 in Massachusetts who would ideally qualify for preschool education—but for those taking part, it represents some refreshingly promising change.

“Maybe if we can prove that investment equals quality, we will find a way to make this model permanent.”

The federal grant is not indefinite, but the state has signaled its commitment to supporting and replicating the program by dedicating an initial $500,000 for planning expansion grants and then an additional $200,000 for fiscal year 2017.