The Common Start Coalition is a statewide partnership of organizations, providers, and individuals working together to make high-quality early education and child care affordable and accessible to all Massachusetts families. Our goal is to ensure that all children in our Commonwealth have the same, strong start and enter school on a level playing field. We are a diverse coalition including community, faith-based, labor, business, and early education and care organizations, as well as early educators, parents, networks, and direct service organizations.

We recognize that in order to provide children with an equal start in life, meet the needs of working parents and the 21st century workforce, and strengthen our economy in a way that also reduces racial, gender, and income inequality in our state, Massachusetts families need affordable, accessible, high-quality early education and child care. While Massachusetts is a nationwide leader on early education and child care and we’ve made important progress in recent years, the current system remains broken and access to quality early education and care remains out of reach for too many families. The quality of early education and child care options, although good overall, varies substantially and is not consistently of the high quality that parents and families need and deserve.

This year, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted just how important child care is to the Massachusetts economy. Without safe access to affordable, high-quality early education and child care, parents and other caregivers are either unable to work, or struggle to balance work with caring for their children. Vulnerable children miss out on the learning environments, structure, and stability that sets them up to thrive. And our entire economy suffers as businesses struggle to reopen and recover because the workforce lacks child care options, or because the productivity of their employees is compromised.