Legislative Action Center

Welcome to your tool for virtual access to the Vermont State House. Your representatives need to hear from you about how child care is essential to Vermont. Use the Legislator Dashboard below to search for your legislators and send them an email to introduce yourself and share that now is the time to take action on child care.

We always encourage you to use our Legislator Dashboard but our MOST URGENT NEED RIGHT NOW is for you to contact your Vermont legislators and governor to thank them for supporting H.171, the Child Care bill. Click here to contact your policymakers.

SAMPLE TALKING POINTS:

• Child care is essential for Vermont families, but even before the pandemic, 3 out of 5 of Vermont’s youngest children did not have access to the care they needed. COVID-19 has only exacerbated already pressing challenges for families and early childhood educators. Without equitable access to a high-quality and affordable child care system, Vermont cannot fully recover and grow its workforce, support young families, or set its youngest residents up for future success in school, relationships, work, and life.

• Vermont doesn't work without child care. If we want to attract new young families to live and work in Vermont, affordable access to high-quality child care is key.

• The first five years, when the brain is developing most rapidly, provide the best opportunity to help children build a strong foundation for all future learning and development. Giving every Vermont child access to high-quality early care and learning experiences prepares them for success in school, work and life.

• Most families rely on two incomes to make ends meet. In a recent statewide survey, 4 out of 5 families reported needing child care on a regular basis.

• Right now, even families eligible for financial assistance are paying up to 30% of their income on child care.

• Stable, high-quality child care enables parents to make the best choices for their families and careers. It also allows working parents to retain their jobs and be productive at work—which benefits VT businesses.

• The quality of an early childhood education program is inextricably linked to its early childhood educators. By establishing fair compensation standards for early childhood educators & investing in workforce development, Vermont will grow its early childhood education workforce to meet the need.

• Expanding Vermont's early childhood system would yield a return of $3.08 for every $1 invested, which would accrue to $1.3 billion over the working lifetime (65 years) of the children served. Benefits include increased lifetime earnings and associated tax revenues of parents and the children served, in addition to savings in social welfare, special education, health care, crime and substance abuse costs.

For more data points, check out our 2020 Stalled at the Start report and our 2020 Early Childhood Education Workforce report.