[W]ith enrollment continuing to dwindle, school officials in the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union recently reorganized the districts’ three smallest elementary schools. But since all three buildings remained open, administrators still had plenty of empty space left to fill.
RNESU Superintendent Jeanne Collins, meanwhile, noticed another trend – many parents told her they couldn’t use the district’s free, half-day pre-kindergarten program, because they couldn’t drive back in the middle of the day to pick up their children.
So Collins decided to look for private providers that could partner with the district on full-day care. The idea was simple: the district would continue to pay for 10 hours of pre-kindergarten, as reimbursed by the state’s universal preschool law, offer free space, and cover the costs of utilities. The private provider would operate and staff the rest of the day, and offer infant and toddler care in the school’s leftover classrooms.
She found partners in Amanda Russell and Rebecca Kerr, who both ran home-based daycares in nearby towns. This fall, A.R.K. Childcare opened its doors at the Whiting Village School.
“This is a way of giving back to the community and increasing resources, really at little expense to the taxpayer. But really at great benefit. And it also forms that relationship early on with the schools. To me, it really is a no-brainer,” Collins said.
It wasn’t long before the program was at capacity. And Kerr, its director, says they’re still fielding calls from anxious parents.
“Because Middlebury is full, or Rutland is too far. And people are driving to us from all aspects of the county, whether it is Addison or Rutland because there is no care,” she said.
Now, the district is looking to expand, and looking for new partners to launch similar programs at elementary schools in Pittsford and Chittenden.
Most early education partnerships between schools and private providers wrap-around public preschool programs. Only a small handful of communities, at this point, are actively planning to use under-utilized public schools to host infant and toddler care as in the RNESU.
Janet McLaughlin, chief of programs at Let’s Grow Kids, an advocacy group that offers technical assistance and grants to child care providers, said the organization knew only about a few partnerships in the works right now.
Among them are Bridgewater, where a community nonprofit is planning to open a child-care program for kids 0-5 in the former Bridgewater Village School, and Jericho, where administrators are talking to providers about possibly locating in the Underhill I.D. School.
“Bridgewater, as a community, currently doesn’t have any licensed or registered child care programs. And it’s near Woodstock, and the programs in Woodstock all have long waiting lists,” she said.
But while such partnerships are nowhere near the norm yet, McLaughlin thinks they’ll become more popular. As districts think about what to do with soon-to-be-shuttered schools, she says infant and toddler care is increasingly coming up.
“It feels like communities are much more aware of the capacity crisis with child care,” she said.
Kerr said getting to use the school space allowed her to dramatically expand capacity. Between her home-based program and Russell’s, the two women could only serve 12 children at a time. In the Whiting School, they can currently serve 59, and are planning to open another classroom in the fall, to serve another 8 to 10 children.
That allowed parents like Heather Barry, in Benson, to get off Kerr’s waitlist. Barry said she had been searching for child care since she found out she was pregnant in December of 2017. She estimates she was on upwards of 15 waitlists – as far away as Ferrisburg – when Kerr called last summer to say she’d be expanding and had a spot for her newborn.
The news came as a huge relief to Barry, who’d started contemplating going back to work part-time at Addison County Home Health and Hospice to take care of her son.
“I have a child who’s 14. And I’m a single mom. It would have been very, very difficult,” she said.
Kerr said the Whiting space also allowed the center to skip start-up capital costs of renting a space or renovating to get up to code, which meant she was able to raise wages and hold the line on tuition.
“This partnership allowed us that financial freedom to start up and start up at a reasonable place for everybody,” she said.
Still, Kerr says, partnerships like this alone won’t solve Vermont’s child care crunch. She says she still can’t pay her staff what they’re worth. And families still struggle to pay what she charges.
“It doesn’t solve the overall care that is needed. It doesn’t solve regulations and the hardships that those bring on. It only helps bandage things,” she said.
