Governor Patrick

Yesterday, following a tour of the Community Action Programs InterCity (CAPIC) Head Start site in Chelsea, Governor Patrick announced that the Department of Early Education and Care “has increased access for high-quality early education opportunities to more than 3,200 children,” according to a press release.

Thanks largely to a fiscal year 2014 state budget allocation of $15 million, Massachusetts will issue new vouchers for high-need families who have been on the waiting list for subsidized early education and care.

The press release explains, “As of September 2013, there were more than 43,000 children active on the wait list for a child care subsidy. This newest announcement represents the most significant investment in new opportunities for state early child care in nearly three years.”

“Every child in Massachusetts deserves the opportunity to receive high quality early education, and increasing the number of early ed vouchers will provide thousands more of our children with the opportunity to succeed,” Governor Patrick said in the release. “We know from educators, from academic research, from years of public policy and from our own experience as parents, that investing in our children at a young age pays huge dividends for them and for our community as a whole.”