BOSTON -- Two retired U.S. Army generals plan Wednesday to tour a child care center in Boston and later talk with House Speaker Robert DeLeo about the link between child care in Massachusetts and national security.
The Army officials -- retired Brigadier Generals Jack Hammond and Gary Pappas -- are touting a new report showing that more than two-thirds of Massachusetts young adults between 17 and 24 are unable to qualify for military service because they are too poorly educated, too out of shape, or have a record of addiction or criminal behavior.
"From our military experience, we know that training is critical to success," said the report, which was produced by Mission: Readiness, a nonpartisan organization focused on ensuring American children stay in school and stay physically fit. "Without improvements to the child care system, as well as adequate training and professional development opportunities for those who work in early care and education, our nation risks an even smaller recruiting pool in the future."
The retired generals plan to tour the Ellis Early Education Center in Boston on Wednesday morning, where they will read to the children before holding a roundtable discussion about the new report. Sen. Sal DiDomenico, who led the Senate's Kids First working group, will join the generals for the morning event.
In Massachusetts, the parents of 72 percent of children under the age of 6 and living in the child's home work, the report said, putting many of those 304,000 kids into child care with non-relatives. The report identified three main problems with child care: access, cost and quality.
Just more than half (53 percent) of Massachusetts residents live in a "child care desert," where there are more than three times as many children as there are licensed child care spaces, the report found. And the average annual cost of center-based child care in Massachusetts ($20,415) is higher than the average annual cost of in-state college tuition, putting child care out of reach for many families.
The report also points to research showing that high-quality child care programs help to address obesity, educational deficits and physical fitness by "laying the foundation for successful learning, encouraging children to live active and healthy lives, and teaching social skills that prevent later behavioral issues."
Hammond and Pappas are expected to urge state lawmakers to prioritize efforts to attract and retain well-qualified child care providers by building upon recent bipartisan investments in the early education rate reserve.
"To achieve high quality, child care providers must be well-trained, both before they start teaching and once they are on the job, and adequately compensated," the report says. "However, child care providers in Massachusetts earn much less (average annual wages $29,020) than kindergarten teachers ($71,790)."
Afterward, the retired Army brass plan to meet with the House speaker to discuss the issue further.
In recent legislative sessions, DeLeo has championed increased funding for the early educator salary and benefit rate reserve. In 2016, he created the Early Education and Care Business Advisory Group, which argued that high-quality early education and care benefits businesses by increasing the talent pool available to meet employer needs.
In 2017, DeLeo said the early education and care workforce was "in crisis" and had reached a "tipping point" with about 30 percent turnover and an average salary that hovers just above the federal poverty guideline for a family of four.