Select Board Votes To Expand Early Education Program

ORLEANS – Ashley Bilodeau lives in town with her partner and almost 2-year-old daughter. For the past 12 years, she’s owned and operated her own business in Chatham. But the cost of child care has made balancing life at work and home difficult, she told the select board last week.

“It’s a vulnerable decision to choose mothering or providing,” she said. “It’s incredible the number of people who have asked me if I still have my store.”

Bilodeau said she and her partner together pay approximately $5,400 a month on housing and the two days a week they send their daughter to daycare. 

“And that doesn’t include food or anything else,” she said.

Christina Lee, another Orleans resident, said she pays $960 a month to send her son, Miles, to daycare for just 12 hours a week. Lee runs her own physical therapy practice, while her husband works for a local environmental firm.

“Even with our advanced degrees and professional careers, we are pretty much living paycheck to paycheck trying to make ends meet,” she said. “And part of that is the cost of child care.”

Meanwhile, Bremner Smith, a therapist, said he decided to work part-time so that he could watch his daughter, Cedar, and keep the cost of daycare down.

All three parents said that additional resources from the town would make an immeasurable difference for their families and many others in Orleans. Hearing this, the select board voted Dec. 3 to expand its existing early education and care program to support families with children from birth to 4 years of age. The board also voted to expand this year’s program through the end of the current fiscal year on June 30, while funding remains.

Looking ahead to fiscal 2027, which begins July 1, the board said it hopes to expand the overall budget for the program and to offer it throughout the full fiscal year. Currently, the program operates during the school year from September to June.

“You have a select board that really wants to move this forward, and a very capable staff that can organize this in a way that will be successful,” Select Board Chair Kevin Galligan said.

First adopted through town meeting in 2021, the early education and care program had supported families with children ages 3 and 4. Through the program, eligible families can apply for funding from $7,000 to $10,000 to help defray the cost of childcare services, with the town directly paying childcare facilities.

Alex Fitch, the town’s director of health and human services, said that on average, 33 children have taken part in the program annually since fiscal 2023. But with the rising cost of childcare and other goods, materials and services, she said there is a need to expand the program’s offerings to more families in town. She said the average annual cost of childcare in Massachusetts is approximately $26,000.

“We don’t really need statistics to tell us that it is expensive to live here on Cape Cod,” Fitch said. “Everybody here feels the burden of the rapidly rising cost of living. Housing prices, the cost of food, etc. Families with young children have to deal with that and the fact that Massachusetts is the most expensive state for childcare in the country.”

To be eligible for funding, families must provide proof that they are Orleans residents, that their children are of eligible age and that they are working with a childcare operation that is licensed by the state. With the expanded eligibility, Fitch estimated 54 children would be eligible to participate in the program going forward. 

Michael Herman of the select board in recent years has spoken of the need to expand the program to help more families locally.

“I’m very excited, and thank you for working on this,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to see us do universal child care, and this kind of gets us to that.”

Assistant Town Manager Mark Reil said there is about $45,000 remaining in the program’s budget for the current fiscal year. The board voted to allow families to apply for grants of $7,000 on a “first come, first served” basis until the funding for the year runs out.

“Because I think it would be awful to have unused funding by June 30,” said Mefford Runyon of the select board.

Beyond the current fiscal year, Herman said he supported offering flat grants of $10,000 to all eligible applicants. The program was originally funded at $495,000 annually, a number that has since been scaled back to $300,000. But the board favored increasing the program’s budget to support its expansion.

The board voted 3-0 to expand the program’s eligibility and to make it a year-round program. Board members Mark Mathison and Andrea Reed were absent from the Dec. 3 meeting, but Runyon said that they are in full support of expanding the program.

The vote was met by applause from residents and parents of young children in attendance.