Start Strong NJ releases plan for affordable child care 

Report offers policy blueprint to benefit parents, providers, business 

PRINCETON, February 19, 2026 – The Start Strong NJ coalition of parents, educators, businesses, nonprofits, and other concerned New Jerseyans, today released Blueprint for Affordable Child Care: New Jersey Doesn’t Work Without It – a plan to make affordable, high-quality child care available to every family in the state that needs it. The report was unveiled at a morning convening of advocates, legislators, and policymakers in Trenton that included remarks by Lt Gov. Dr. Dale G. Caldwell and Sen. Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz.

“For too many families, one of the greatest barriers to stability and opportunity is the inability to find or afford high-quality child care,” the report notes. It offers comprehensive recommendations based on three guiding principles:

• Child care must be affordable and accessible for every family that needs it.
• Early childhood educators must be compensated and supported as the    professionals they are. 
• Child care must be recognized and funded as essential economic infrastructure. 

The report, written by Jon Shure and Jayne O’Connor, details the structural weaknesses undermining New Jersey’s child care system. Underinvestment has left the state’s Child Care Assistance Program unable to reliably provide child care subsidies for all eligible families. This led to enrollment freezes that cause financial hardship to parents and child care providers. At the same time, child care is unaffordable for many working families who don’t qualify for assistance but whose incomes aren’t sufficient to absorb rising tuition costs.

Meanwhile, early childhood educators – the backbone of the system – are paid wages too low to sustain a stable workforce, contributing to persistent shortages and high turnover. Combined, these pressures reveal a financing model that is fragmented, unpredictable, and insufficient for a sector that functions as essential economic infrastructure.

“We can’t build a competitive economy on an unstable child care system,” said Start Strong NJ Co-chair Winifred Smith-Jenkins, Director of Early Childhood Policy and Advocacy at Advocates for Children of New Jersey. “Child care is the workforce behind the workforce. Until we fund it with the same seriousness we apply to transportation, utilities, and schools, New Jersey will continue to leave families, businesses, and children behind.”

“No serious conversation about economic opportunity, workforce stability, or community vitality is complete without addressing affordable, high-quality child care for every family that needs it,” said Start Strong NJ Co-chair Meghan Tavormina, Director of Public Policy and Advocacy for the New Jersey Association for the Education of Young Children. “Child care that’s inaccessible, unaffordable, or unstable hampers parents’ workforce participation, businesses’ productivity, and the state’s economy.”

To address those challenges and more, Start Strong NJ recommends such common sense policies as:

Make child care affordable and accessible 

• Fully fund the state Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) to guarantee access for all eligible families and eliminate the risk of enrollment freezes that disrupt families’ ability to work and providers’ ability to operate.
• Update eligibility rules to reflect the state’s cost of living.
• Build on recent expansion of job protection so more parents can use New Jersey’s paid family and medical leave insurance, simplify the application and approval process, improve efforts to raise awareness — particularly among lower-wage workers and fathers — and strengthen coordination of family leave with other child care support.
• Increase the dollar amount and raise the income eligibility level for the state Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit. These steps would help more families afford care by reflecting today’s child care prices and cost of living.

Compensate and support early childhood educators 

• Establish a state-funded compensation framework tied to experience and credentials.
• Create compensation parity based on educators’ role, skills, and experience — not whether they work in a child care center, family child care home, or public preschool setting, nor on the age of the children they serve.
• Make early childhood educators eligible for subsidies to defray costs of care for their own children, regardless of income, and explore refundable tax credits to retain educators.

Recognize child care as essential economic infrastructure 

• Convene a time-limited commission on child care and early learning to deliver a roadmap for improving financing, governance, and other elements of childcare, with a commitment to legislative action.
• Develop a long-term, sustainable financing strategy.
• Create a coordinated governance structure for early childhood education, replacing today’s fragmented system of overlapping oversight across numerous state agencies.
• Fully cover indirect costs borne by community-based providers that partner with school districts to offer preschool. The state should encourage district-provider partnerships, helping to ensure public preschool expansion supports — rather than destabilizes — community-based providers.
• Integrate child care into state economic and infrastructure planning by including child care providers as eligible entities for relevant small business, facilities, workforce development, and community investment opportunities.

Addressing the audience, Caldwell – who was serving today as Acting Governor -- said. “We look forward to working with you and the Legislature to create a model of child care and support for our most vulnerable population.”

Ruiz, who worked as a preschool educator early in her career, described the multitude of state agencies that child care providers must deal with to get permits, licenses, etc. in order to do business and said that no other industry faces similar obstacles. “With a mother in the front office, I’m confident we can change how we deal with child care.”

New Jersey’s child care crisis threatens the entire state economy. Reliable child care reduces absenteeism, improves employee retention, and increases family income, so more parents, especially women, can fully participate in the workforce. When families can’t find or afford care, parents might be forced to reduce hours or leave jobs altogether.

By making work possible, child care functions as essential economic infrastructure — just like roads, schools, and utilities. It supports every other part of the economy. It’s estimated that New Jersey’s child care crisis costs the state’s economy $5 billion a year in lost wages, tax revenue, and business productivity — on top of the everyday stress families experience.

About Start Strong NJ 

Start Strong NJ is a statewide campaign to put affordable, high-quality child care within reach of all New Jersey families. Inclusive and nonpartisan, Start Strong NJ recognizes that child care is an economic imperative for New Jersey rather than a problem that individual families can solve on their own. Led by Advocates for Children of New Jersey and New Jersey Association of the Education of Young Children, Start Strong NJ brings together parents, early childhood educators, business leaders, policy experts, and others who want to give every child the strong start needed for lifelong health and well-being.

Start Strong NJ is supported by funding from the Burke Foundation, Turrell Fund, The Henry and Marilyn Taub Foundation, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Community Foundation of New Jersey, Maher Charitable Foundation, and Schumann Fund for New Jersey.