This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for Chalkbeat Detroit’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system and Michigan education policy.
After five years of living paycheck to paycheck, Haylee Fettes is getting something most early childhood educators could only dream of: free housing in Battle Creek for teaching in a preschool program.
Fettes is one of the first two early childhood teachers to move into free housing as part of First Home, First Teacher, a new initiative in the city that eventually seeks to provide housing for 30% of educators like Fettes, who often earn minimum wage salaries.
The new program is giving Fettes, who works at Stars and Stripes Learning Center, some financial freedom and will allow her to save more money.
“I can just breathe, honestly — it’s like a weight lifted,” she said. “I’’ve never wanted to leave [early childhood education], but I have thought about it because of money,” she said. “I don’t have to think about how much I am going to get paid on Friday, and where it needs to go, because it’s typically spent before it comes.”
Low pay for early childhood educators is a perennial problem in Michigan and across the nation, leading to instability in the system as providers struggle to find workers willing to work for such low pay. It’s led to innovative efforts like the one in Battle Creek. The state has also tried to address the low pay with an ongoing pilot program that is providing $300 monthly stipends for early childhood educators.
Related:
- Gov. Whitmer has vowed to boost literacy in Michigan. Here’s where we stand
- Michigan tests expanding free ‘pre-K for all’ to home child-care providers
- Small grants made a big difference in rural Michigan. Then the money stopped
But low pay is hardly the only challenge facing the industry. Transportation is another, with many working parents struggling to get their children to and from childcare while they also get themselves to and from work. Another innovative solution unveiled this week: In Grand Rapids, a new early childhood education center is opening at the city’s transit hub.
Battle Creek program takes inspiration from Connecticut
Battle Creek’s Pulse, part of the research nonprofit for W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment, was on the hunt for an innovative solution to issues with early childhood workforce shortages. Their search turned up the Friends Center for Children’s Teacher Housing Initiative in New Haven, Connecticut, which purchases properties for early childhood teachers with the help of supporters.
To date, the New Haven program has purchased properties for 12 teachers with a goal of providing 24 teachers with free housing by 2028.
After a site visit to Connecticut, the Battle Creek advocates built a program modeled after the New Haven effort, but aimed at supporting the entire city’s early childhood workforce as opposed to a single school. First Home, First Teacher was launched Monday through a partnership that includes Pulse, Neighborhoods Inc. of Battle Creek, Community Action, Battle Creek Community Foundation and United Way of South Central Michigan. Support paying the rent will come from Local Initiatives Support Corporation, or LISC, Kalamazoo for the first two years.
As part of the launch, Fettes and her fellow early childhood educator were welcomed to their new home, which was fixed up and furnished by several community organizations and volunteers.
“We don’t have enough professionals doing this work because of the low pay, so we’re trying to make sure we’re addressing the root cause of the vulnerability of the childcare sector, which is their work force,” Pulse Co-Executive Director Kathy Szenda Wilson said. “It’s not because those folks don’t want to do this work — they deeply want to do this work. It’s because it’s really hard work to do for $14, $15 an hour, and survive and support your family.”
Program invests in people who invest in the community’s children
Neighborhoods Inc., a nonprofit that owns and manages 50 rental properties in the Battle Creek area, saw an opportunity to support early childhood care providers by partnering with First Home, First Teacher, to provide its first home.
President and CEO Whitney Wardell said the project provided a unique opportunity to invest in the people who invest in the community’s children every day.
“For Neighborhoods Inc., the decision to participate was more than about providing housing,” Wardell said. “It was about removing barriers, creating stability and supporting a workforce that is essential to the success of our community. By offering quality housing at no cost to participating providers, this program creates an opportunity for them to strengthen their financial position, reduce housing-related stress, and focus on the important work that they do for the children and families of Battle Creek.”
While Neighborhoods Inc. donated the first duplex property that will benefit two Battle Creek early education teachers, the goal for First Home, First Teacher is to set up a trust for as many as 105 total housing units.
“This is just the beginning,” Szenda Wilson said. “The more we can help people understand what this is and what it looks like, we think there will be more [opportunities] available.”
In Grand Rapids, a solution to transportation challenges
Nearly 70 miles away from Battle Creek, similar discussions were being held in 2022 about a different early childhood education challenge, and were fueled when Tracie Coffman learned that the top floors of the transit center in Grand Rapids would remain vacant after plans to move administrative offices fell through.
Coffman, a program officer at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, immediately began texting with her team to see if there was interest in converting the 12,000 square feet of space inside Rapid Central Station into a childcare center with easier access for families without reliable transportation.
The Rapid CEO Deb Prato had been looking for the right tenant to fill the space that had been vacant for more than two decades.
More than four years later, Coffman, Prato, and several Grand Rapids community partners celebrated the ribbon cutting June 8 of a new state-of-the-art early childhood center that will serve 100 children from infancy to preschool.
Dubbed the Central Station Early Childhood Center, Coffman said the center’s immediate access to public transportation for working families who rely on it has paved a new path for how a city can reuse an existing building to increase access to affordable childcare and transportation.
“This center is a model for how communities can look at their public spaces and ask themselves, ‘What more could we be doing for the public good?’” Coffman said. “This concept exemplifies the strength of public-private partnerships where the needs of children and families always came first and the traditional roles we played in the working world took a back seat.”
Research from Michigan State University shows that 79% of Michigan’s ZIP codes, including Grand Rapids, are childcare “deserts” for children ages 0-5, meaning there are at least three children for every available childcare spot.
With an estimated shortage of more than 7,000 childcare spots in the Grand Rapids area, those who worked to realize the vision of Central Station Early Childhood Center acknowledge it won’t solve the area’s childcare shortage. Instead, the cross-sector partnerships and outside-the-box solution sends a message about what is possible.
“Transportation leaders like me always hear about the three most difficult things: Finding a job, who’s going to take care of my kid and how am I going to get there?” said Prato, a single mother with triplets. “We’ve combined this opportunity to solve two of those issues.”
The Rapid offered rent-free real estate while the Kellogg Foundation contributed $5.8 million in funding toward the $9.1 million project, which was funded by 18 different philanthropic foundations and businesses. The YMCA of Greater Grand Rapids served as the lead developer and will operate the facility, while Grand Rapids Public Schools and Head Start for Kent County will also occupy the center, with public funding accounting for 75% of the slots.
The early childhood facility occupies the second and third floors of the building, with spaces for the metro YMCA’s infants ages 0-12 months, Head Start for children 0-3, the Great Start Readiness Plan for ages 3-5, and pre-K space. The space also includes a ground floor outdoor playground and one on the roof of the building.
On top of the convenience of on-site transportation, being co-located with other organizations in one facility helps each benefit from the center’s resources and allows them to help more families, Head Start of Kent County Executive Director MaDonna Princer said.
“Head Start works with the whole family, whether that’s access to referrals for stable housing or employment service,” said Princer, who noted Head Start will have 26 of the center’s 100 slots. “By being co-located here, we’re able to spread that out amongst families who maybe don’t get an opportunity in a program like Head Start because either we’re full or they’re just above the income levels for head start.”
The reimagining of the transit center space into a childcare center didn’t come without its share of obstacles, from $1.5 million in added costs in the budget for fireproofing every steel beam in the facility to experiencing issues with the state’s newly-rehauled licensing system that led to extended timelines.
Despite some setbacks, having wide-ranging philanthropic support and cross-sector partnerships ensured the project’s success, W.K. Kellogg Foundation CEO La June Montgomery Tabron said.
“It’s a powerful example of what becomes possible when a community comes together with a shared vision and a willingness to do things differently,” Tabron said. “Let me be clear, this was not a simple project. Transforming a transit hub into a high quality early childhood center required new thinking, new partnerships, and at times, a willingness to navigate systems that weren’t designed for innovation.”
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
Thank you to our Education Watch sponsors
Bridge Michigan Education Watch is made possible by generous financial support from our sponsors. Sponsorship supports our independent journalism mission but does not constitute sponsor endorsement of individual articles or editorial content. Bridge Michigan journalism remains fact- and data-driven and independent at all times.
Please visit the About page for more information and to subscribe to Education Watch. Interested in becoming a sponsor? Contact Emma Carr.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under our Republication Guidelines. Questions? Email republishing@bridgemi.com
You must be logged in to post a comment.