I have been following the developments relative to the sudden closure of the Child and Family Development Center (CFDC) over the last 72 hours with great interest and empathy, and an occasional wave of outrage.
I am finding that the history of this facility and its original purpose to serve as a training ground for the state’s child care workforce are missing from the Monitor’s coverage and absent from the shortsighted rationale articulated by the NHTI and CCSNH leadership surrounding these events.
I was one of the founding parents and legislative advocates who helped bring CFDC into existence nearly two decades ago – working closely with the late Rep. Mary Stuart Gile of Concord and Gov. Jeanne Shaheen’s Kids Cabinet, a group of state agency leaders dedicated to examining the state’s policy priorities through the lens of children and families.
As more women joined the workforce full time, more families required dual incomes to financially survive, and federal welfare reform initiatives mandated that single parents of young children seek employment, quality early childhood education was identified a critical workforce shortage area in our state and policy makers, advocates and business leaders came together to plan for a solution.
The CFDC was created to help establish a learning laboratory, identify best practices and educate a pipeline of child care professionals to serve throughout the state after graduation. The fact that the center would serve the child care needs of some local families was a necessary component of this learning environment but never intended to be financially self-sustaining.
The original funds to build the CFDC facility came from the state’s capital budget, meaning that all New Hampshire taxpayers shared in paying for this investment. The furniture and educational materials were funded by significant corporate support from Delta Dental and Providian Bank. And community grants were sought to fund the outdoor playground area.
I am dismayed to see the NHTI leadership abandon this valuable and much-needed program without the involvement of any of the key stakeholders. Instead they are seizing on the circumstances of COVID-19 as a pretext at a time when current families are already vulnerable and advocates are limited by public health protocols and social distancing requirements in their capacity to engage in grassroots and political pushback.
I’ll admit this was once a passion project at the intersection of my professional work and my personal life as my now 18-year old son was one of the first infants enrolled at CFDC when it opened its doors in late 2001. Many lifelong parenting and family friendships were formed through this community and I credit many of the skilled and compassionate teachers, a few who have remained on staff since its inception, for helping me and my late husband learn how to raise our young children. Our story is echoed by hundreds if not thousands of capital area families who have passed through these soon to be closed doors, forever impacted by the quality of care.
The NHTI website currently markets the CFDC as a centerpiece to its early childhood degree program bragging that “NHTI has an NAEYC accredited child care center / lab school on campus to meet the needs of all student lab hours required while taking early childhood courses” while NHTI leaders publicly complain that the program operations are running an alleged deficit. Does the new NHTI leadership now expect child care tuition from local families to cover 100% of the costs of a facility that is central to training future child care providers and fulfilling its educational mission? Or is it making a policy decision to no longer support the provision of a high-quality early childhood education setting and masking it as a failure of the CFDC balance sheet?
Families who enroll their young children at NHTI are not only paying market rate tuition for child care services, they are paying it forward by lending their children to an educational model that bolsters our state’s economy and benefits future children they will never know. And this week the gratitude they were shown was an unexpected announcement of program closure and a mere 24 hours’ notice to retrieve their children’s belongings. And don’t let the door hit you on the way out!
The CFDC was once a very successful public/private partnership developed after years of involvement from the Legislature, child care advocates, corporate partners and workforce development leaders.
By announcing the closure of CFDC in such a sudden and callous manner and failing to provide long-term stewardship for the program’s survival, the NHTI/CCSNH leadership has shown a fundamental disregard and disrespect for early childhood education and the importance of child care to our economy and to the success of New Hampshire families. It is a slap in the face to those community leaders, corporate funders, families and teachers who helped build a culture of excellence and a pipeline of child care professionals now employed in every region of our state. I call on our elected representatives, including those who appoint and approve CCSNH trustees and oversee their budget and spending priorities, to demand greater accountability for this misguided decision.
(Jennifer Frizzell of Concord is an attorney, an advocate for women and children, and a proud parent of two CFDC alums.)