Updates on Massachusetts Fair Share Budget Priorities

The full Massachusetts House is considering the Fiscal Year 2018 budget after the Ways and Means Committee released their draft version.

Over the last few 4 years, Massachusetts Fair Share has been pushing for increased investments in early education. We know that early education is the foundation of lifelong success and can address the academic achievement gap, but investment has lagged significantly.

We were proud to see that  $15 million was added into a rate reserve for our early educators, seeing the critical investment made by the legislature is a step in the right direction. Through our work, we found that increasing the support for early educators is critical to stabilize the field and allow providers to maintain staff, which has a very large turnover rate, due in large part to underfunding.

Although we were happy to see this initial investment into early education, we will continue to push for the full $36.4 million amount that the Board of Early Childhood Education and Care suggested. We think our young children are worth this critical investment to ensure they have high-quality teachers.

We’re backing the amendment to add an additional $5 million to the rate reserve for early educators, put forward by state Representative Alice Peisch, House Chair of the Joint Committee on Education. So far, we have reached 63 cosigners to Rep. Peisch’s amendment.

At Massachusetts Fair Share we have pushed this issue to make sure that every child in the state gets the same strong start. We have met with legislators on the Ways and Means committee to ensure that they know how important early education is. We have delivered a letter which earned the support of over 100 early childhood professors, and practitioners to invest into early childhood education.

We can afford to invest in early education and child care, too, if we address loopholes in our corporate tax code. Representative Cutler of Duxbury and 16 cosponsors are fighting to do just that. By cutting corporate tax loopholes in Massachusetts we could receive an estimated $79 million in revenue, that we could put toward Massachusetts kids.

Representatives Cosigning for Early Education Amendment

1. Peisch of Wellesley
2. Cutler of Duxbury
3. Linsky of Natick
4. Livingstone of Boston
5. Vieira of Falmouth
6. Khan of Newton
7. Ferrante of Gloucester
8. Vega of Holyoke
9. Walsh of Framingham
10. Smizik of Brookline
11. Pignatelli of Lenox
12. Dwyer of Woburn
13. Barber of Somerville
14. Keefe of Worcester
15. Tucker of Salem
16. Chan of Quincy
17. Ayers of Quincy
18. Connolly of Cambridge
19. Puppolo of Springfield
20. Cantwell of Marshfield
21. Driscoll of Milton
22. McMurtry of Dedham
23. Rogers of Cambridge
24. Brodeur of Melrose
25. Lawn of Watertown
26. Tosado of Springfield
27. D’Emilia of Bridgewater
28. Schmid of Westport
29. Ferguson of Holden
30. Balser of Newton
31. Cahill of Lynn
32. Crighton of Lynn
33. Gordon of Bedford
34. Madaro of Boston
35. Benson of Lunenburg
36. Campbell of Methuen
37. Higgins of Leominster
38. Collins of Boston
39. Lewis of Framingham
40. Mark of Peru
41. Cariddi of North Adams
42. Stanley of Waltham
43. Fiola of Fall River
44. Kafka of Stoughton
45. Garlick of Needham
46. Decker of Cambridge
47. Dykema of Holliston
48. Barrows of Mansfield
49. DuBois of Brockton
50. Sánchez of Boston
51. Moran of Lawrence
52. Hecht of Watertown
53. Evandro C. Carvalho
54. Jeffrey N. Roy
55. John W. Scibak
56. Bradford R. Hill
57. Mark J. Cusack
58. Byron Rushing
59. Denise Provost
60. William C. Galvin
61. Jay R. Kaufman
62. Lori A. Ehrlich
63. Diana DiZoglio
64. Steven Ultrino

Representatives for Closing Tax Loopholes

1. Cutler of Duxbury
2. Cantwell of Marshfield
3. Calter of Kingston,
4. Ultrino of Malden
5. Dwyer of Woburn
6. Dykema of Holliston
7. Provost of Somerville
8. Garry of Dracut
9. Day of Stoneham
10. Barber of Somerville
11. Farley-Bouvier of Pittsfield
12. Decker of Cambridge
13. Fernandes of Falmouth
14. Ashe of Longmeadow
15. Heroux of Attleboro
16. Lewis of Framingham

 

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