The Sandbox: Affordability and Access: Navigating the Cost of Early Care and Education
“I truly appreciate the committee for adding the additional half a million dollars for the Working Parents Assistance Program for early childhood education. And just a reminder that when we talk about education, it’s not just MCPS. It’s not. Education starts when the child is born. In this particular industry, the early childhood educators also deserve a raise, they also deserve protections, and they deserve to have funding for working families to put their children into these centers. I hear so many comments from Pre-K teachers who have shared experiences where they’re getting children into the classroom who don’t even know how to use the toilet. They’re not potty trained. And that’s happening because many of our children – especially our low-income kids – don't have access to early childhood education programs. So this money is crucial.”
- County Council President Natali Fani-González
On May 7, County Council President Natali Fani-González said the quiet part out loud. When families in Montgomery County are priced out of high-quality early care and education, children pay the price. In the long term, our community pays the price.
Families and educators already face the consequences of the affordability crisis every day. In Montgomery County, there are 60,000 children under the age of 5. Of those children, over half of them live in families who are struggling to afford access to high-quality early education. Yet we currently serve roughly 12,000 children through subsidized pathways, which is far fewer than the 30,000+ who need support.
The Montgomery County Early Care and Education (ECE) Common Agenda calls for the expansion of affordable access to high-quality ECE programs by reducing the cost and removing barriers for families — all in support of making sure that every child is ready for Kindergarten. Multiple support pathways already exist for families, including Head Start, Montgomery County Public Schools Pre-K, Early Head Start, and EquiCare:
Child Care Scholarship (CCS): Tuition subsidy program to help eligible Maryland families pay for high-quality child care and early education programs. Families and their children must meet several eligibility requirements, including income, work, age, and citizenship.
EquiCare Grant: Free child care for income-eligible families in Montgomery County with infants and toddlers in select private child care programs who participate in the grant program.
Head Start: Health and education services for pre-school children ages 3 and up from income-eligible families, including access to free child care programs in both public and select private school settings.
MCPS Public Pre-K: Expanded high-quality Pre-K options to income-eligible families of 3- and 4-year-olds
Working Parents Assistance (WPA): Tuition subsidy program to help eligible Montgomery County families pay for high-quality child care and early education programs, with a higher income eligibility limit than CCS and no citizenship requirement.
These programs all help families access high-quality care, but this complicated web of systems — all of which provide different levels of supports for different types of families, with varying eligibility requirements — results in a system that’s hard to navigate for both families and child care programs.
The Alliance's vision is to create a unified, efficient system where investments are equitably accessible. A critical first step is to streamline and improve tuition assistance programs funded by the County, including WPA, EquiCare, and preschool contracts. For FY27, the Alliance proposed a systems-level recommendation that would increase funding to WPA and support three policy changes:
Allowing families on the Maryland State Child Care Scholarship waitlist to be accepted into WPA
Increasing the eligibility threshold to be in alignment with the self-sufficiency standard (around 500% above the federal poverty line)
Introducing categorical eligibility, which allows early care and education teachers to receive child care scholarships for their own children
Together, these changes would help more families access affordable care, support the ECE workforce, and expand opportunities for children to benefit from high-quality early learning experiences. Montgomery County Council has approved a final budget for the next fiscal year, allocating an additional $500,000 to the Working Parents Assistance Program during an extremely tight budget year.
But we know that investing in just one program doesn’t solve the whole problem, and we’re continuing to push for broader system reform to help families access care. We also launched Access and Affordability and Family Navigation work groups aligned with the Common Agenda that have met six times over the past year to collectively remove barriers for families and increase access to resources.
We know that our community is struggling with affordability, and child care is part of this equation and conversation. Investing in child care through expanded scholarships is an investment in our shared future. This is a moment that calls for urgency and a recognition that caring for children is not a private burden to be carried alone, but a shared, community-wide responsibility that shapes the future we are all building together. We hope you will join us in thanking your County Councilmember for increasing the level of investment in Working Parents Assistance, while also letting them know greater investment is still needed going forward.