ELECTRICITY. WATER. Internet access.

To this list of fundamental services that enable us to have a strong and growing economy, we’d add another critical service: childcare.

Over and over again, as experts in workforce development and job training and placement, we have seen how often quality, affordable, dependable childcare is the single biggest factor determining whether workers–especially women with young children–can participate in the workforce. With tens of thousands of jobs continuing to go unfilled in our COVID-rattled economy, need for quality childcare has grown more pressing. On both the demand side and the supply side, this is disproportionately a crisis for women in particular: Women have lost and left jobs at twice the rate of men during the pandemic, and more than 90 percent of early educators identify as working women, and far more than half identify as working mothers.

Currently, Massachusetts is the second most expensive state for childcare. In many areas of the state, including Boston, child care costs as much per year as in-state tuition for public college. On average, Massachusetts families contribute between 20 and 30 percent of their household income to childcare. That’s not sustainable.

Over the last year, American Rescue Plan Act emergency funding has played a crucial role in enabling many childcare and early education centers to stay in business, even if with reduced staff, hours, and available slots. In the face of our economy-wide worker shortage, childcare providers primarily have used ARPA funding to increase the salaries of entry-level workers. If that ARPA money goes away, childcare providers will lose thousands of staff to better-paying competitors.

We applaud Gov. Maura Healey’s proposal to use $475 million in Fair Share Amendment funds to fill the giant gap that will open up in childcare funding when ARPA funds run out, through the Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) initiative. Just as one daycare provider in Needham recently told the Globe, we “can’t even fathom the destruction” that would ensue if ARPA funds don’t get replaced—the hundreds of childcare jobs that would suddenly be cut, and the thousands of working parents who would face the crisis of having to choose between earning a living and caring for their children.

We also urge the governor to extend a COVID-era provision allowing providers like Little Sprouts to offer employee discounts for their own children to receive childcare from their employer, above and beyond discounts provided to families who enroll with state-funded subsidies. These employee discounts have proven to be fair, equitable, and crucial tools for us to recruit and retain enough workers to ensure we meet the demand for childcare.

Additionally, we encourage all childcare providers to consider taking advantage of JVS Boston’s “Job Quality Benchmark Index” (JQBI), a survey that allows providers to see how they compare to peers on pay, benefits, working conditions, and advancement opportunities. Along with properly funding care and workforce development for the early educator profession, opportunities to improve job quality for workers at childcare centers will help ensure we have a sustainable early education system.

We encourage residents and employers, business, non-profit, and community leaders across the state to urge their state lawmakers to approve full funding for the governor’s C3 initiative. When we properly fund childcare and invest in training its professional workforce, we fund one of the critical utilities–just like electricity or water or Internet access–that helps keep workers in the workplace and makes our economy thrive for everyone.

Mandy Townsend is senior vice president of employer engagement at JVS Boston, one of the largest community-based providers of adult education and workforce development services in New England. Amanda Goodwin is director of communications, enrollment & talent acquisition for Little Sprouts LLC, which operates 25 early education and child care schools in Eastern Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire. Wayne Ysaguirre is chief workforce innovation officer at The CAYL Institute, whose mission is to organize, equip and empower people to create change on behalf of children.