(The Center Square) – Maine's child-care workers and early educators could be getting a pay raise under a plan that's aimed at easing chronic staffing shortages.
The legislation, filed by House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, D-Biddeford, calls for spending $5 million a year to ease the shortage of workers by boosting wages and training for early childhood educators. On Tuesday, the bill was unanimously approved by the Legislature’s Committee on Innovation, Development, Economic Advancement and Business.
Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, said she supports Fecteau's proposal and praised the committee for advancing the legislation.
“We know that lack of quality affordable child care prevents people from taking jobs, from starting new businesses, from moving to rural communities, and it deprives kids of important developmental care," Mills said in a statement. "We’ve worked hard to train more child care workers and to pay them what they deserve, and we’ve built new child-care facilities and created more child-care slots to better serve Maine families, but we can do more."
Fecteau's proposal, which must still be approved by the full House and Senate, would also create new scholarships and apprenticeship programs to attract more child-care workers.
Funding for the proposal would come from Maine's $1 billion share of American Rescue Plan Act funds. Overall, the state is getting about $120 million in federal funding for expanding child care programs through the pandemic relief law.
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