Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Bill Stritzler, managing director of Smuggler’s Notch Resort. He is past chair of the Vermont Business Roundtable, and he has been actively involved in promoting quality early childhood education.
Early childhood programs nationwide have been challenged with poor funding and low standards, while more and more research shows the benefits to young children and society in the long run. In Vermont, there has been recognition of the need to improve quality standards and add funding, most recently through pre-K and home visiting legislation.
The Vermont Legislature is debating an unusual bill that could undermine the work on quality improvement by allowing home-based child-care providers to collectively bargain quality incentives against the state.
It may be in the interest of the businesses to collectively bargain for the highest possible payments for the lowest possible quality standards, but it is certainly not in the best interest of the children we wish to benefit from early childhood education.
Vermont has adopted a program called Step Ahead Recognition System (STARS), which is a five-level voluntary quality rating system to provide financial incentives to increase quality of child-care programs. STARS is professionally administered by the Department for Children and Families, and it allows home-based providers to earn up to a 40 percent premium on state payments to their businesses.
Collective bargaining has historically played an important role in our society by allowing employees to join together to bargain for higher wages and better working conditions. But this legislative proposal is very different because it would be businesses bargaining – not employees – and they would bargain for their own quality incentives, and not for wages and benefits.
It may be in the interest of the businesses to collectively bargain for the highest possible payments for the lowest possible quality standards, but it is certainly not in the best interest of the children we wish to benefit from early childhood education.
The bill would allow collective bargaining of the financial incentives the state pays to providers at each of the five STARS quality levels resulting in a shift of payments for high quality to lower quality providers.
The incentives established by the state to promote high quality child care should be determined by the professionals at DCF and not by professional collective bargaining negotiators.
Vermont’s STARS program has gone a long way towards improving the quality of care that our young children receive. Let’s hope the Legislature doesn’t take a step backwards and allow the state’s quality incentives to be the subject of collective bargaining. That’s not in the best interest of our children; shouldn’t that be our most important concern?
