Without much ceremony and with just minutes to spare, the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare on Friday advanced a child care bill that would make a historic investment in Vermont’s ailing child care sector and create a new parental leave benefit.
A deep-pocketed advocacy push and the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on an already beleaguered sector combined to make child care a banner priority for Democrats in Montpelier this year.
The health and welfare committee’s members advanced S.56 on a 3-2 vote, with Republicans opposed, on the final day of the Legislature’s mid-session “crossover” week, when all policy bills must leave their committee of jurisdiction or die on the vine.
A full fiscal analysis for the bill, which has undergone several major revisions this week alone, is not yet available. But Nolan Langweil, an analyst with the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office, told lawmakers Friday that preliminary estimates pegged the combined annual cost of paid leave and child care subsidies at about $190 million in 2025, which would be the first full year of operation. (Roughly 90% of that price tag would be attributable to child care.)
The bill has undergone a major rewrite since it was first introduced. Gone, for example, is a centerpiece of the original legislation: free, full-day pre-K in public schools for all 4-year-olds. The bill now simply calls for a study on the subject.
A last-minute addition, meanwhile, would create a 12-week paid leave benefit for the parent of a new child. The upper chamber has long been lukewarm on paid parental leave, and key Senate Democrats have argued this year that child care should be the priority. The leave amendment is generally viewed as the Senate’s rebuttal to H.66, a push in the Vermont House to enact one of the most generous paid family and medical leave programs in the country, to the tune of over $100 million a year.
One parent per two-parent household would be allowed to access the parental leave benefit outlined in the Senate legislation, and weekly reimbursements would max out at $600 a week. Families at or below 600% of the federal poverty level — $180,000 for a family of four — would be eligible.
The upper chamber’s leave proposal does not include benefits for any other types of time off — such as medical or caregiving leave — though those are included in the House bill.
The economics of child care are broken in two ways: Families can ill-afford the cost, and workers can’t make ends meet. The median income for early childhood teachers in Vermont is less than $40,000; for assistant teachers, it’s around $22,000, according to a 2021 state report. Child care workers typically also go without basic benefits such as health insurance, paid sick time or retirement plans. The average cost of care, meanwhile, is over $26,000 a year.
A report commissioned by lawmakers estimated that Vermont would need to spend between $179 and $279 million to shore up salaries and make tuition affordable for most families.
The Senate bill extends help to more families than contemplated in the report. But it also increases reimbursements at a lower rate than recommended and does not guarantee that all families receiving subsidies would pay less than 10% of their annual incomes toward child care.
“We don’t want to sacrifice the good for trying to get to perfection,” Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden Southeast, the panel’s chair, told her colleagues Friday. “We’re trying to do some good in terms of moving ahead as much as we can.”
Currently, Vermont’s child care subsidy program pays the full cost of tuition for families living at or below 150% of the federal poverty level. (That’s $45,000 for a family of four.) S.56 would eliminate co-payments for those making up to 185% of that threshold ($55,500 for a family of four) and extend partial subsidies to families making up to 600%, mirroring the cut-off for the paid leave program. In the current system, child care subsidies end for families with incomes above 350% of the federal poverty level.
In a statement, Aly Richards, the CEO of child care advocacy group Let’s Grow Kids, wrote that the panel had “made history” on Friday by advancing the legislation.
“This bill brings Vermont closer to solving the child care crisis by making child care more accessible and affordable for thousands of Vermonters and by improving compensation for early childhood educators,” she wrote. “We applaud members of the committee for their hard work strengthening this bill.”
S.56 must next go to the Senate’s appropriations and finance committees before hitting the floor.