Rosa Hernandez-O’Neil was surrounded by early educators growing up. Her mother ran a child care center in their home and her sisters all worked in the field. So, at 16 years old, Hernandez-O’Neil decided she wanted to join the family business as a teacher’s assistant.

And after getting her associate degree in baking and pastries from Johnson & Wales University, Hernandez-O’Neil found herself missing something that had been a part of her life forever: children.

“I just see the impact on the children that we’re serving,” she said. “I can see the growth and the development of the children that I work with every day.”

At 24, Hernandez-O’Neil achieved a leadership position as program director at Magic Seasons School Age Center in the Berkshires after eight years in the profession.

“I have always had a love and a drive for working,” she said. “But now working and doing something that I truly love, I think that that’s the reason why I show up every day. I show up for my teachers, I show up for my kids.”

Hernandez-O’Neil’s journey from teacher’s assistant to director is one that state officials are working toward making more common. They believe creating a pipeline for career growth in the early education industry will solve the workforce shortage.

Despite the state’s improvements in making child care more accessible, providers, teachers and researchers emphasize Massachusetts still struggles to recruit and retain early educators as wages remain too low and waiting lists for licensure trainings grow.

“If you don’t have the supported workforce, you’re not going to be able to provide the level of child care you need for your economy in the immediate term,” Doug Howgate, Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation president, told Axios in releasing a report on the industry’s workforce issues.

Low wages

Child care providers are struggling to recruit workers because of low pay and few growth opportunities, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation’s report.

Michelle Gonzalez, a lead preschool teacher at Boston Outdoor Preschool Network, said when she was first hired as an early educator in Boston, it was part-time and she needed to look for another job to support herself.

When BOPN had a full-time position open up a few months later, she jumped on it. But, even as a full-time teacher, an early educator’s salary influences her life choices.

“Even though I make enough, I live in restricted-income housing [and] can’t really get ahead,” Gonzalez said. “Eventually, I want to have kids, but at this pay, I can’t really think of it.”

The median hourly wage of an early educator in Massachusetts is $16.95, which is 16% lower than the living wage, $20.07, for one adult with no children, according to the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment.

The average salary for child care workers in Massachusetts during the spring was $43,000, per the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation’s report. Meanwhile, the average annual cost of living in Massachusetts is $53,860, making it the second most expensive state in the U.S., according to a recent Forbes Advisor report.

Early Education and Care Commissioner Amy Kershaw acknowledged that the industry has historically seen low wages. She said it is part of the labor market where wages don’t go up for early education workers as much as they do for others who work with kids.

“It is the part of the job market where wages have gone up the most and we haven’t seen as much growth within the early education compensation picture,” she said. “So we’re losing a lot of staff to other industries that we need to retain in early education.”

Those who leave the early education sectors have gone on to work as kindergarten teachers, teacher’s assistants, elementary and middle school teachers, and home health aides. Nearly all of these professions saw faster wage growth than child care workers, according to a recent Rappaport Institute report.

Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Lauren Jones said dealing with the low salary of early educators is a priority for the Early Education and Child Care Task Force. She added that the Commonwealth Cares for Children grants are an example of the “early steps” the Healey administration took to stabilize the industry.

“[It] has been beneficial for providers to offer some subsidies they get through the C3 grants to support bonuses and other resources that help to offset wages,” she said.

The C3 grants became permanent in the state’s fiscal year 2025 budget. Massachusetts is the only state in the country to retain this program at the same level the federal government funded it through pandemic-era child care stabilization grants.

Kershaw said the Department of Early Education and Care saw an increase in salaries and compensation through the C3 grants.

“Salaries are still too low, and we have additional work to do to really make this a career pathway that our talent can choose and stay in,” she said. “But we’ve made significant progress.”

Meanwhile, the Board of Early Education and Care is expected to vote this winter on a Healey administration proposal to hike the reimbursement rates for child care providers that accept child care financial assistance. The governor’s team announced a plan to put $22.5 million from the fiscal year 2025 budget toward another step in the direction of payment levels and a rate structure that is more closely tied to the cost of providing care. Gov. Maura Healey’s office said the proposal would also address increased operational costs for all care providers.

The median wage for early care educators falls below 97% of all other occupations in the U.S., according to the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment.

Kershaw said her office is working to address the workforce issue by increasing the pipeline through apprenticeship programs, making higher education opportunities available through scholarships, and creating a credentialing and career pathway.

Apprenticeships

Binal Patel, chief program officer at Neighborhood Villages, said addressing low wages and supporting apprenticeships programs are needed to improve the workforce.

“I’m not going to pretend like apprenticeships will solve the workforce crisis,” she said. “Because what we have is not a workforce crisis, but a wage crisis. … If we really want to solve it, we’re going to have to be talking about wages and salaries, too.”

Apprenticeship programs provide educators with hands-on training that allows them to gain practical experience in teaching and caring for children while earning a wage. Jones said the task force is focused on using registered apprenticeship programs to advance the workforce and build the pipeline for early educators.

A sample of child care centers in Massachusetts reported that 39% of providers experienced a turnover rate of 20% or more, which is the level that the federal government considers “high turnover,” according to a 2024 report from The Boston Foundation. Of this sample, 37% respondents who left early education cited low wages as the reason for their leaving. Meanwhile, 20% cited opportunities for growth and 18% reported long hours as their reasons.

Neighborhood Villages, a nonprofit that advocates for affordable early childhood education and care, launched an apprenticeship program almost two years ago with grant funding. Patel, of Neighborhood Villages, said they’ve seen “tremendous success” from the program because it pairs training with work experience, but all under the guidance of a mentor.

“A mentor ensures that the training and the learning you’re getting matches up with the practice that you’re implementing in person,” Patel said. “You have somebody and a resource to ask questions to and to get guidance from … so that you don’t burn out really quickly, which we see happening a lot in this field.”

Neighborhood Villages became the largest early childhood education registered apprenticeship program in Massachusetts last February when it graduated 68 apprentices, according to the organization’s annual report. Of the February graduates, 72% of them reported an increase in their compensation and 61% gained new roles or greater responsibilities within the same role after completion.

Sarah Besse, co-founder and executive director of BOPN, said she would advise policy makers to look into the timing of apprenticeship and certifications.

“It’s essential that teachers who come in at the assistant teacher level can get teacher certified quickly,” she said. “How quickly can they get that teacher certification? Even if they get it two months earlier versus two months later, that matters to your center directors.”

The Department of Early Education and Care works with and funds 15 public community colleges to support early childhood educator career goals. In the Early Childhood Career Pathways Program, colleges provide academic services to educators, including coursework, textbooks and mentoring for free.

If courses were free and virtual, Besse said this could help with the waiting list.

“It would be transformative to have courses that are free and asynchronous and open to everybody,” she said. “The Pathways Program is great, but not everyone gets in [and] you have teachers who want to take courses to advance their license level, and unfortunately, they get waitlisted.”

Besse, who has a master’s degree, said she has had to turn qualified candidates away as they didn’t have their license, despite some having Ivy League degrees in early childhood education.

Kershaw said Massachusetts will work with the new administration to see their priorities on early education and child care.

“Massachusetts is leading in early education and care across many areas, and our intention, and the governor’s intention, is to continue to be that leader,” Kershaw said. “We have many of those important building blocks in place.”

Sydney Topf writes for the Athol Daily News through the Boston University Statehouse Program.