Editor’s note: We are now offering an audio version of our Sunday features. To access, click on the player above. When Vanessa Hawke’s kids were little, she enrolled them in a pre-K program in Southington where teachers used sensory learning tables, toys, circle time and art projects to pro mote cognitive development, crucial fertilizer for their growing brains. Yet, the program Hawke’s kids attended was for a mere three hours a day, just twice a week. For years, it was the only option she could afford. “In my mind, something was better than nothing,” she said.  Years earlier, Hawke, who had previously worked as an optometric technician, had left the workforce because she couldn’t earn enough to afford full-time child care after her first child was born. She intended to return, but without affordable, full-time pre-K options, she couldn’t afford to. That lasted for nearly a decade; recently she got a job as a child care advocate. Her kids, now 9 and 5, have since been diagnosed with special needs, and would have benefited from more comprehensive early childhood education, she said. Instead, the family took the crumbs of those six hours of preschool a week.  Vanessa Hawke with her son at the capitol on March 26. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror The Hawkes were trapped in a purgatory all too familiar to scores of Connecticut families: her husband’s job as a field service engineer for Thermo Fisher Scientific was too high-paying to qualify the family for the Care4Kids program, which helps low- to moderate-income families pay for child care, but they didn’t earn enough to afford full-time care. Now, state leaders are pushing for legislation that could pay for scores of children to attend preschools for free or at a radically reduced cost. Gov. Ned Lamont has described his own plan as “universal pre-K” and the “biggest investment in early childhood education and day care in the history of the state.” But there is still no consensus on how to fund an expansion of preschool slots; there are proposals on the table that include using surplus state funds and call on employers to volunteer to share costs. How to build upon the existing system of pre-K offerings, which varies from town to town, is also still being determined. Meanwhile, advocates are watching closely, concerned that the wrong move could result in a fallout that decimates Connecticut’s paltry infant and toddler care system, supports too-few households, or depends on a source of money that is vulnerable to shifting economic winds. Commissioner for the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood Beth Bye, second from right, waits to speak at an education committee hearing on March 19. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror ‘How does this work?’ Lamont’s ambitious plan hits at a difficult moment: federal cuts threaten to leech money away from many corners of the budget, and President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Yet, Lamont has held on tight to his commitment to create a “transformative investment in early childhood education,” a centerpiece of his budget announced on Feb. 5. His plan would put surplus tax revenue — up to $300 million a year — into a Universal Preschool Endowment. Of that, $30 million could be spent in the next fiscal year, with 10% of the endowment eligible for spending each year thereafter. Back in February, Lamont made an optimistic, if measured, prediction about how quickly the fund could grow. “Our budget anticipates almost $1 billion in the endowment over the next few years — God, the economy, and President Trump willing,” he said. But Lamont’s fiscal plan to fund preschool, found in House Bill 6867, doesn’t explain how he intends to create more spots — that job has been left to Office of Early Childhood Commissioner Beth Bye, drawing from work that Bye led with a Blue Ribbon Panel created by Lamont in 2023 to study the issue. “What we learned from the Blue Ribbon Panel is that you can’t do a regional system or a statewide system. Every community is so different in how they do preschool,” Bye said. Because Connecticut has a large collection of high quality private and public programs compared to other states, Bye said, it wouldn’t make sense to start from scratch. Rather, the state has to figure out how to work with the resources on offer to build something that works for a broader swath of the population and attract more workers. But the road from that patchwork of programs to a universal plan is hardly obvious: “People are saying, ‘wait a minute, how does this work?’” Bye said.  Well, to begin, Bye’s office would conduct a community needs assessment of every municipality across the state.  For example, in a city like Hartford, which has several magnet schools with pre-K options, the needs assessment may find that working parents would benefit from more full-day slots, Bye said. Whereas in Norwich, where there is a shortage of private programs, “their plan might say, ‘we’re gonna build out our public school programs.’”  When the needs assessment is complete, the Office of Early Childhood would put out a request for proposals. That may include building more infrastructure or transportation.  Once more capacity is built, families making up to $100,000 a year would pay nothing for preschool under the plan. Families making up to $150,000 a year would pay $20 a day. Students would have to attend schools in the Early Start network, which have a larger share of low-income families. Bye said that as the pre-K program is built out, the number of schools in that network is expected to grow, and qualifying families would be able to see what spots are available through an online portal. “This will cover the vast majority of families,” Bye said. The network will take time to build up and some schools may not qualify or choose not to apply. But Bye said that building capacity is a process and, “as we see holes we will fix them.” The plan would also improve salaries in early childhood centers to attract more workers to a system that struggles with high turnover; according to the Blue Ribbon Panel Report, as many as 40% of child care workers leave the field each year. Crucially, the plan would pay workers in private centers on par with public school teachers. Advocates say this would ensure that the plan doesn’t spur a mass exodus of teachers from child care centers as new public school-based opportunities open up. Bye says the program would reduce the cost of an estimated 19,000 preschool spaces by 2028, and create about 20,000 new or extended-day spaces by 2032. Those spots would be spread across child care centers, public schools, group child care homes and family child care homes. And that’s all if there’s enough money in the endowment to fund the program.  Advocates of universal pre-K are optimistic that Lamont’s plan would have widespread positive effects in the state. For families, the plan would put more money back into parents’ pockets. A study in New Haven by Yale researchers showed that, from 2003 to 2022, parents earned an average of an extra $7,200 a year, while saving $4,500 a year, a total in-pocket outcome of $11,700 per year when their children got a free pre-K spot, when compared to parents whose kids didn’t get a spot.  “This proposal is not made up in the governor’s office, it’s not sent to us from some think tank,” Bye said at a recent press conference at an early childhood program in New Britain. “It came from the people of Connecticut, the programs that are in Connecticut, the businesses in Connecticut who participated both as members and in our 10 months of hearings in the Blue Ribbon Panel process.”  The effort to support early childhood care access has found support in the business community.  “We need child care to meet that workforce need,” said Chris Davis, vice president of public policy for the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, or CBIA. A recent report from the association found that 60% of employers said that quality, affordable child care was important for recruiting and retaining talent. “We realize that to meet that workforce demand, we need to have child care options available.”  But the plan also faces skepticism. Eva Bermúdez Zimmerman, the coalition director of Child Care for Connecticut’s Future, said that starting with pre-K is a “backwards” approach to addressing a system where people like Hawke are taken out of the workforce when their kids are born, rather than a few years later when they are ready for pre-K.   When it comes to the governor’s bill, Bermúdez Zimmerman is quick to show support of the overall intent to create a substantial sum of money to support early childhood: “We welcome it, we love it! But it can’t just be that. If you’re going to phase in an endowment or trust, then start with (age) zero and phase in with ages going forward.”  Georgia Goldburn interacts with students at Hope for New Haven during recess on March 26, 2025. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror A crystallizing moment Though Connecticut families and providers have been waiting much longer for real change to early childhood education, including child care and pre-K, it could be argued that the governor’s plan is five years in the making — since the beginning of the COVID pandemic.  Lamont has said that this was a “crystallizing moment:” as soon as the first patient with COVID-19 arrived in a Danbury hospital, Lamont learned that the medical workforce needed child care to go on caring for the sick. He called up philanthropists for help to keep child care centers open near Connecticut hospitals. Later, Lamont put more than $200 million of federal funds into child care to keep the system afloat. There were concerns at the time that those federal funds had created a cliff — when the funding disappeared, the state would need to step in to prop up the industry. But that didn’t happen at first. “After we got through the worst of it, the governor came out with a budget that had no money for the child care industry, and it was a hard pill to swallow,” said Georgia Goldburn, the executive director of Hope for New Haven, a center that serves children from zero to 12 through child care, preschool and after school options. Goldburn and others led a strike they called a morning without child care in March 2022. “We shouldn’t as child care providers be in a situation where we had to rally, a year after we got through a really difficult time for our state, to ask for funding.”  Hope for New Haven founder Georgia Goldburn poses for a portrait outside of her daycare on March 26, 2025. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror Lamont later signed a biennial budget for FY 2023-24 that added money for child care providers and created more infant and toddler spots. The crisis also spurred the creation of the Blue Ribbon Panel. The panel embarked on an ambitious listening tour, hearing from a total of 1,650 community members with the mandate of creating a strategic plan for Connecticut’s child care system.  Their resulting report called for a 5-year plan at a cost of $2 billion and included recommendations to improve worker wages, simplify credentialing for teachers, increase parent subsidies, and open thousands of child care slots, among other provisions.  While the pandemic may have served as clarifying for Lamont, child care and preschool advocates have been building the road to this moment for much longer. COVID, to Bermúdez Zimmerman, “created a dystopian reality” where workers were quitting left and right because child care was simply unavailable. The necessity of child care to the survival of the workforce was suddenly glaring, she said. At the time, she said 30% of the child care workforce disappeared.  “The workforce knew the crisis was there because they weren’t getting raises, and they didn’t see this being a career that they could stay in long term, because they just can’t pay their bills,” she said. “The owners saw the hardships, because they’re already at the brink of closing, and every single month they are figuring out, is this the month that I go bankrupt? The families know because they’re paying the 20 grand, so they’re in the thick of it.”  Goldburn said she is glad that the governor is showing commitment to fixing the broken system. She believes that leaders in the business community have proved persuasive in making the case to Lamont that child care needs to be fixed for industries to fill an estimated 92,000 vacancies across all sectors, according to a recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Lauren Gray sits in her living room with her children, ages 1, 3, and 5. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror ‘Universal’ Yet concerns linger about Lamont’s proposal for the financial assistance eligibility cap to be set at $150,000 a year. Some lawmakers, like Rep. Tammy Nuccio, R-Tolland, say that ceiling is not high enough.  “I absolutely think this is leaving out the middle class,” Nuccio said. “But then again, that’s what we tend to do in this state. All the programs are for low income, and then the middle class just gets to pay the taxes to pay for all of it.” Nuccio said Lamont’s title for the program, “universal,” isn’t merited based on these restrictions.  “If you’re going to open up seats in schools for pre-K and make it available to people, you know, then you make it available to people, and that’s it, right?” Nuccio said. “$150,000 is just not going to capture the working middle class. It’s definitely not going to capture the two-parent working middle class. So why are they any less worthy of having their kids in preschool than anybody else?” Lauren Gray, a mother of three in Orange, supports the intent of the governor’s bill but agrees that more families like hers — who make more than $150,000 a year but still struggle to pay for child care and preschool — should get some relief, too.  Gray moved to Connecticut with her husband from Atlanta in 2012. The change in the cost of living stung — their rent in their Atlanta apartment was $350 compared to $1,500 when they got a similar place in Connecticut. But Gray and her husband had good jobs in careers with high earning potential — Gray works in global communications for the Bic pen company, while her husband works as a broadcast engineer.  As time went on, Gray says that the political climate has cemented their desire to stay. They have kids ages 1, 3, and 5, and the conservative politics and gun laws in the South make her uneasy.  Recently, the family bought a home in Orange, drawn there by the quality of the public schools. But the price of care for their children has pushed their budget to the brink. They pay $820 a week, or more than $42,000 a year, for a combination of child care and preschool. Meanwhile, they’re trying to pay down student loans and a mortgage. Gas and electricity bills, as well as Connecticut’s car tax, have forced them to make lifestyle changes to afford it all. “I mean, kids grow,” Gray said. “You have to be able to buy them new clothes and shoes. But I actually don’t buy new anymore. I go to clothing swaps, we do trades. I shop at Goodwill.”  Gray has changed grocery store chains for her weekly shopping. For enrichment, the family heads to programs at the library. Years ago, Gray would encourage her kids to try new foods. Not anymore. The family only buys what they know the kids will eat. Gray is quick to say that these are privileged dilemmas — she and her husband have found a way to make the payments and buy a home in a good school district. Bye, the commissioner of the Office of Early Childhood, said families like Gray’s, who make more than $150,000 a year, represent 25% of Connecticut families. And while the governor’s plan may not cover them, she said the term ‘universal’ holds: “We believe it gets CT to universal access to preschool because all families will be able to access preschool,” she wrote via email. Meaning, it might be challenging for a family making more than $150,000 a year to pay out of pocket, but they can likely make it work. Lauren Gray and her 1-year-old child look out their living room window. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror To Gray, it’s dispiriting to hear that a ‘universal’ pre-K system wouldn’t provide a family like hers with any relief from their financial struggles.  Gray said she hopes that lawmakers will consider a plan that would offer some financial help to families making more than $150,000.  “Some help is better than absolutely no help,” she said. “I’m not sure why the middle class always gets left behind, but it would be really appreciated to receive some kind of relief.” Hope for New Haven teacher Lifei Duan looks down at her daughter during recess. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror Growing Momentum Lamont’s proposal is joined by other bills which seek to fill gaps in the early childhood system. House Bill 5003 seeks to allow more households to qualify for Care4Kids, expand the child care subsidy fund, provide support to child care workers and help with renovations to child care facilities. Senate Bill 1369 would provide financial assistance for working families to pay for child care through a new 1.5% payroll tax on large, for-profit employers and help streamline the process of enrolling in child care programs for low-income families. House Bill 7044 would create a portal to help parents find child care slots around the state.  Senate Bill 1, which passed through the Education Committee on March 24, would roll out in four phases. The first would use a “tri-share” model, in which the state, parents and their employers would each contribute to the cost of child care. A pilot project that uses such a model has been approved in New London County, though Bermúdez Zimmerman said that so far only one employer has opted in there. Under the plan, parents, regardless of income, would not pay more than 7% of their income, and employers would choose whether to participate. But over time, as more funds build up, the bill proposes to get to a phase where all child care is covered, including toddler and infant care and pre-K. At that phase, families whose employers decline to participate would still only pay 7% of their income to child care, with the state covering the rest. The business community has supported Lamont’s proposal and S.B. 1. But the Senate bill raises questions about how many employers would participate in the initial phase if they’re not required to and how long it would take to progress through all four phases. But to supporters of the bill, the initial phase would offer a chance to capture another source of funds from the private sector. Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, said employers want their employees to have reliable, quality child care and giving employers the chance to chip in, “is a benefit to the state by helping our dollars go further, getting more kids into pre-K and allowing more people to participate in the workforce.” Advocates like Goldburn worry about the potential fallout of S.B. 1 for infant and toddler care, since the plan places emphasis on achieving universal pre-K first.  “The financing of infants and toddlers in a child care business is broken. It doesn’t work,” she said. By creating more spots for preschool in public schools, the only profitable piece of a community based provider’s system, Goldburn worries the law would cause infant and toddler care to collapse. “If you say, ‘eventually we’re going to come back for the infants and toddlers,’ there will be no system because you’re only going to have programs that are operating at huge losses, and community based providers cannot sustain those huge losses,” she said. Merrill Gay, the executive director of the CT Early Childhood Alliance, said the state will get the most bang in for its buck if it invests in the youngest children from low income backgrounds — the kind of children highlighted in a report about Disconnected Youth from Dalio Education. But Gay understands why pre-K is being put at the top of the agenda. “It’s an easier win to achieve because we have less distance to go,” to build-out capacity, he said. S.B. 1 intends to eventually cover child care from infancy, “but when it would actually achieve that is a huge mystery,” Gay said. Gay supports the governor’s plan in part because it would support existing programs, many of which are small, independent businesses. In other states, Gay said, “there was a rush to put preschool in the public schools and they decimated the existing programs.”  Sen. President Pro Tem Martin Looney, D-New Haven, one of the sponsors of S.B. 1, said he’s hopeful that among the plans on the table, there is enough momentum to make something work. “We’ll keep negotiating, keep talking, try to find consensus around the items that tend to generate the most interest and the most momentum,” he said. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans have attacked S.B. 1 on the basis that it would circumvent the budget by using surplus funds.  Sen. Eric Berthel, R-Watertown, Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, and Senate Minority Leader Sen. Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, released a statement following its passage that read, in part: “Early childhood supports are a critical CT workforce issue. But it’s the way the majority Democrats go about it that is so disappointing. They are taking $300 million of taxpayer money and throwing it off-budget. Make sense to you? Is that how you would run your own household finances?” It’s the same criticism Senate Republicans have made about Lamont’s plan. Governor Ned Lamont takes questions from the media during a press conference at the capitol on March 3. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror Federal woes Lamont, speaking from a press event at a child care center in New Britain, said that the issue is among the least controversial right now on the national level.  The previous day Lamont had attended a conference with figures like Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. While there was a lot to disagree about, “there was no discussion and no dispute about the fact that we do not start early education early enough in this country. No dispute about that at all. It’s nice to see the federal government sort of reinforce that. We can’t wait for the federal government, we’ve got to take the lead here in the state of Connecticut.”  Now, as the Trump administration moves to dismantle existing programs with no signs of creating new public opportunities in education, questions emerge about how this effort, to expand funding for preschool, would be impacted. How would federal cuts to Head Start, for example, impact his plan to expand pre-K?   “That affects about 5,000 spaces, and just to put it in scale right now we have 9,000 spaces out for bid in Connecticut,” Bye said. “If that happened, I think we could adapt. It would be a big blow.”  Bermúdez Zimmerman, of Child Care for Connecticut’s Future, supports S.B. 1369, which would create a new payroll tax to support child care. The option is unpopular with the business community, but to Bermúdez Zimmerman, the tax is a way that Connecticut can guarantee support for the sector. As President Trump has proposed dismantling the Department of Education, she says that the state may need to get creative.  “With our federal delegates warning that CT is vulnerable, our state legislators need to ensure we can pay for child care even without federal funding,” Bermúdez Zimmerman said in an email. Both Bermúdez Zimmerman and Goldburn also worry about the ability of the state to contribute to the proposed endowment given the darkening economic outlook and the number of holes federal cuts are creating in Connecticut’s budget. “If we’re using surplus funds, what if we don’t have a surplus? What happens?” Goldburn said. “If things change dramatically and Connecticut falls into a recession again, there will be no funds there.” Even through months of federal upheaval that have left the state’s elected officials guessing, Lamont has remained steadfast on the issue of universal pre-K. Asked at a Connecticut Mirror event on March 26 about what problem he would fix in the state if he could fix anything, Lamont brought up education, specifically for early childhood. Like paying down the pension deficit, Lamont framed the issue as a key part of the legacy he might leave behind.  “I think if you do that, at the end of the day, you’ve left some footprints and made a difference,” he said.  ...read more read less