We stand up for a Massachusetts where everyone gets a fair shot, does and pays their fair share, and plays by the same rules.
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
Representatives for Closing Tax Loopholes
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