The Need For Fair Compensation In The Early Childhood Workforce

For far too long the early care and education workforce has been undervalued and underpaid, despite the essential care and services they provide to children and families. This historic undervaluation has created a crisis–wages are so low that approximately half of early educators qualify for public benefits. According to fiscal year 2021 salary data gathered by the Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, this inadequate compensation helps explain why almost 70 percent of child care centers stated they had early childhood teacher turnover over the past two years. Simply put, the workforce is in crisis. Without significant financial resources, our early childhood system is at risk of crumbling.

We’re listening. Start Early has been busy urging the state to direct more funding to the early childhood system so that it can finally begin to stabilize and the workforce can be better compensated at a wage they deserve and that is reflective of the important work they do to educate and care for our youngest learners.

Every year, our legislative and administrative policy teams, along with external partners, work on budget advocacy to secure higher investment across the entirety of the early childhood field. Last year, we pressed Illinois state legislators for a 10 percent increase for every building block in Illinois’ early childhood system: the Early Childhood Block Grant, Early Intervention program, the home visiting programs Maternal Child Home Visiting (formerly Parents Too Soon) and Healthy Families Illinois through the Department of Human Services, and the Child Care Assistance Program. These investments would go towards areas like child care programs, services for children with potential disabilities or developmental delays, and programs for pregnant parents and their babies.

Recognizing the need to stabilize our early childhood system, state legislators provided $64.4 million in additional funds for early childhood programs for fiscal year 2023, which began on July 1st. Through administrative advocacy, we’ve pushed state agencies to funnel a portion of this money toward compensation.

But these financial resources aren’t nearly enough to create a conducive early learning environment that serves all children aged 0-5 and it certainly isn’t enough to ensure our workforce is well compensated.  Due to the complicated nature of our early childhood system and its reliance on the blending and braiding of various funding sources, providers and directors struggle to keep classrooms open and cannot meet the needs of all children and families across the state. Even with our wins in fiscal year 2023, we still need more resources so we can serve more families.

That’s why during the Spring 2023 legislative session, Start Early will continue to work with our partners to advocate for a 20% budgetary funding increase for early childhood. This increase would mean an additional $119.6 million for the Early Childhood Block Grant, $23.2 million for the Early Intervention program, $2.1 million for the Maternal Child Home Visiting program, $1.5 million for the Healthy Families Home Visiting program, and $82.1 million for the Child Care Assistance Program. Governor Pritzker has indicated his intentions to make preschool available for every family throughout the state and to provide economic security for families during his second term. Ambitious plans require sizeable appropriations and a compensated and valued workforce.

We’ll continue to push the Illinois legislature and state agencies to invest in and improve early care and education programs so more people can view working in the field as a career and not just a temporary job.