Today, Governor Mills will visit the Creative Explorations Child Development Center in Windham to promote the importance of expanding child care in Maine. The Mills administration's successful child care expansion comes after eight years of Paul LePage, who utterly failed Maine’s children, parents, and child care providers. Here’s a reminder of LePage’s record on child care:
-
He proposed massive cuts to childcare and early childhood education funding on a number of occasions, including one multi-million dollar cut that deprived an estimated 1,700 working Maine families of childcare subsidies.
-
He sought to eliminate collective bargaining rights of childcare workers and vetoed legislation that would have raised the reimbursement rate for childcare providers serving low-income families.
-
Of the nearly $1.9 billion in federal funding that Maine lost during the LePage era due entirely to the Governor’s inability to meet basic eligibility conditions, more than $3 million of it would have gone to helping Maine families afford childcare.
Gov. Mills has reversed LePage’s record of failure during her time in office by:
-
Allocating more than $5 million to public pre-K programs since taking office, resulting in 90 new pre-K classrooms across the state.
-
Expanding access to child care, including by passing a bill from Speaker Ryan Fecteau enshrining long term investment in child care into Maine law.
-
Improving child care worker wages
###