Early Educator Investment Act / Child Care is Essential Act

Intro

In Rhode Island, child care is in high demand. Almost 70% of Rhode Island children under age 5 need some kind of non-parental care while their parents work. Importantly, the availability of quality child care for these children is dependent upon a stable workforce. Yet, inadequate compensation coupled with a lack of salary supplements for early childhood educators is creating high turnover in the field.

 

Investments in Rhode Island’s early care and education system, including the creation of tiered reimbursement quality rates for the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), helps programs attract and retain qualified and effective early childhood educators, provide high-quality learning environments, and promote children’s learning.

RIght from the Start is a legislative and state budget campaign working to advance policies for young children and their families in Rhode Island. While Rhode Island has much to offer, the reality is too many families struggle to support their young children during the critical early years of brain development. Rhode Island needs sustainable state funding and must raise additional state revenue for programs and policies that support families and their children from prenatal to Pre-K. These investments will pay dividends for our children’s success and our state’s economy for years to come. 

To learn about the Child Care Assistance Program, see our Child Care Guide Page.

To learn more about the campaign visit: www.rightfromthestartri.org.

Two Important Pieces of Legislation

  1. Legislation introduced by Representative Diaz and Senator Cano ensures access to affordable and high quality child care by adequately reimbursing child care providers.

2. Legislation introduced by Representative Casimiro and Senator Cano seeks to address three major areas of the Rhode Island early childhood workforce: 1) qualifications of educators, 2) compensation for educators, and 3) retention of educators.

Specifically, the legislation:

  • Describes the crucial importance of the early childhood workforce
  • Outlines the problems early care and education programs have in attracting and retaining educators
  • Instructs the Department of Human Services (DHS) to remedy the attracting and retaining crisis by establishing a plan to address workforce compensation, advancing strategies to improve qualifications and compensation of educators and coordinating efforts to improve compensation of the Early Intervention and Home Visiting workforces