The early childhood program at Sara Holbrook Community Center in Burlington will close in August, the organization announced Tuesday.
The youth education nonprofit said in a press release that “Ongoing workforce shortages and financial losses related to lack of adequate state and local reimbursement for such programs has hastened this decision.”
The child care center serves 19 kids at its Old North End location, according to its development director, Sarah Daluisio. But with nine of those children moving on to kindergarten after this year, only 10 kids will have to find another program through Champlain Valley Head Start, which the Sara Holbrook center partners with, Daluisio said in an interview on Tuesday.
In 2019, after moving into a new building on North Avenue, the early childhood program at Sara Holbrook expanded to a full-day program and increased enrollment. That push “further taxed the organization’s ability to really sustain the program,” Daluisio said. At the same time, it faced “stagnant state and local contract rates, changes in funding priorities and a multi-year workforce shortage.”
Aly Richards, CEO of Let’s Grow Kids, a prominent child care advocacy group, called the closure “just the tip of the iceberg.”
“It’s indicative of what is happening throughout the state and things are only going to get worse without significant state support and investment,” Richards said in an interview on Tuesday.
(A bill that would make historic investments in the child care sector has passed the Vermont Senate and is under consideration in the House.)
Sara Holbrook was seeing an annual loss in the “six figures,” according to Daluisio. The organization considered ways to raise more money to keep its child care program open, she said, but as a Head Start partner, it is subject to federal requirements that limit funding options.
According to the press release, the center’s leadership team chose to focus its programs on school-age children.
“While it is heartbreaking to close the early childhood program, we need to maintain our focus on sustainability and overall impact,” Kristin Fontaine, the center’s board chair, said in the release.
Daluisio said many parents were not surprised by the announcement of the closure, which will occur on Aug. 18. The center has previously had to close temporarily due to staffing shortages, she noted.
“We were really transparent about what was happening and why we needed to make the decision,” Daluisio said. The center has been working with Champlain Valley Head Start to make a plan for each family.
Sandra Graves, director of the Head Start program that serves Chittenden, Franklin, Grand Isle and Addison counties, said the program has a number of options for the families affected by the closure, including other Head Start partner sites around Burlington.
One concern that Graves said Head Start staff have raised with the leadership team at Sara Holbrook is that some families walk to the North Avenue location in Burlington’s Old North End, and other options may not be as close.
Graves added that finding slots for the preschool-age children will be easier because there is more capacity. There are fewer openings for toddlers, “but we are doing our best to find a slot for each of those children,” she said.
The closure of Sara Holbrook’s early childhood program comes as lawmakers are poised to make significant investments in the state’s child care sector. Last week, a House panel advanced S.56, a bill that would raise reimbursement rates for home-based child care providers and expand eligibility for subsidies provided to families. It would cost $135 million in the first year of operation.
Richards said the child care sector can’t keep up with wages and benefits for early educators through tuition alone, but she hopes the child care legislation will make the system more sustainable. She said Let’s Grow Kids regularly hears from child care centers that are financially strained financially and at risk of closing.
“This crisis has never been more dire,” Richards said.
