"We are still struggling to find, attract, and retain workers in this field," says Laura Perille, CEO of Nurtury, a Massachusetts nonprofit that provides child care for some of the state's poorest children.
And that's not just a problem for Nurtury, which has had to close an entire facility and several classrooms in others due to staffing shortages.
It's a problem that's been plaguing the state's child care industry for decades, the Boston Globe reports, with sky-high prices, persistent staffing shortages, low worker pay, and not enough spots to meet parent demand.
And the dysfunction in the system ripples outward, affecting children's development and plaguing businesses when their employees can't find reliable child care.
For decades, very little has been done about it.
But for the first time in recent memory, all three key decision makers on Beacon Hill have explicitly said they want to tackle the issue, expressing support for legislation that would infuse the child care sector with public funding, much like K-12 schools already receive.
It aims to create a five-year blueprint to provide child care and preschool for all families, and bump up the value of child care subsidies awarded to the state's neediest families.
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HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes says “…social tools are getting more broadly adopted across organizations. It’s not just marketing anymore, it’s sales, public relations, human relations, everywhere.”