“No area has had a greater impact on our workforce than early education and care. The lack of adequate and affordable childcare threatens to be a drag on our economy. The House remains committed to investing more towards early education. As such, this FY27 budget will invest a total of $1.86 billion towards early education. This includes fully funding the Commonwealth Cares for Children, or C3, grants at $475 million. This budget also includes $20 million for Head Start grants, $20 million for childcare and referral agencies, and $7.5 million for an early education scholarship.”
— Budget Letter from Chairman Aaron M. Michlewitz, House Committee on Ways and Means, April 15, 2026
The executive summary, which contains highlights on early education and care funding is posted here. And click here to download the full budget.
To learn more, join Strategies for Children and Neighborhood Villages on Zoom on Thursday, May 7th, from 6:30-7:30 p.m., for another Budget Breakdown session where we’ll review the next phase of the state budget process as well as the Massachusetts House’s Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Proposal. We’ll also talk about next steps in our continued advocacy for early education and care. Everyone is welcome. You can register here. Interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese will be provided by Excel Linguistics. This meeting will be recorded.
UPK is shutting down childcare centers. I don’t understand the reason behind opening more UPK programs.
All of this advocacy for more funding isn’t needed if there aren’t any centers to improve the foundation of our schools. We are working extremely hard to build our schools but we are losing our staff to public school because we can’t give them affordable wages insurance, etc.