Today, Governor Janet Mills announced nearly $3 million in new grant funding for the creation or expansion of pre-K programs across the state. The grants are just the latest early education investment for Gov. Mills, who has allocated more than $5 million to public pre-K programs since taking office, resulting in 90 new pre-K classrooms across the state. In addition to prioritizing additional funding for public pre-K, the Mills administration has also invested heavily in childcare, significantly expanding access and improving childcare worker wages. The governor’s successes have been a welcome departure from the record of her predecessor, Paul LePage, who time and again failed Maine’s parents, children, and childcare providers.
LePage spent his eight years in office fighting to make childcare and early childhood education more expensive and less accessible for Maine’s families. On a number of occasions, he proposed making massive cuts to childcare and early childhood education funding, including one multi-million dollar cut that deprived an estimated 1,700 working Maine families of childcare subsidies. He also 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. And 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.
“Childcare and early childhood education are foundational investments not just in our children and their future, but in support of our working parents,” said Drew Gattine, Chairman of the Maine Democratic Party. “Governor Mills’ work to expand pre-K programs and to make childcare more affordable and accessible is what Maine families deserve, particularly after eight years of neglect under Paul LePage. We can’t let LePage drag us back to a time when Maine’s governor worked against our families, rather than for them.”
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