Shannon Tremblay, Marianne Barter, Lynn Ouellette and Jackie Firmin are respectively director, chair, vice chair and secretary of the New Hampshire Child Care Advisory Council. The Council is a legislatively enacted body that advises state and local leaders on issues impacting child care.

The recent decision by the University System of New Hampshire to explore privatizing its campus-based child care centers, including the Child Study and Development Center at UNH, raises serious concerns for families, educators and the future of early childhood education in our state.

Let’s be clear: Early childhood education is not a luxury. It is an essential infrastructure.

And it should be one of the last things on the chopping block, not the first.

The Center and its counterparts at Keene State College and Plymouth State University are more than just child care programs. They are nationally respected lab schools where future early childhood educators receive hands-on training. They are inclusive spaces where children of university faculty, staff and students, including those with special needs, receive high-quality care from experienced, credentialed professionals.

They are embedded in our state’s higher education system as examples of what is possible when education, research and child development come together.

Privatizing these centers risks unraveling all of that.

Parents and faculty at UNH have already voiced what many of us know to be true: Handing over these programs to a private operator could mean higher tuition for families, increased staff turnover and reduced access to the kinds of specialized supports that make the Center so unique.

It also fractures the pipeline that prepares early childhood educators in a state already facing a child care workforce crisis.

New Hampshire is working hard to strengthen access to affordable, high-quality child care, something the governor’s office and legislative leaders across the political spectrum have prioritized in recent years. We’ve made progress in addressing workforce shortages, expanding subsidies and raising public awareness. Allowing one of our flagship public universities to privatize and potentially weaken a model child care program moves us in the wrong direction.

The financial pressures the University System is facing are real, and we do not discount the complexity of budget decisions. But when we talk about cost savings, we also need to talk about cost shifting, because those costs don’t disappear — they land squarely on the shoulders of working families, faculty with young children, students trying to complete degrees and a child care system already strained to its limits.

At the New Hampshire Child Care Advisory Council, we believe it is time to reaffirm a core principle: Early childhood education should be funded, protected, and expanded, not outsourced, defunded or destabilized.

We urge the University System to pause the current Request for Proposals and engage families, faculty, staff and state leaders in a meaningful conversation about sustainable alternatives. Solutions are possible, whether through public-private partnerships, revised tuition models, philanthropic investment or enhanced state support.

The children and families who rely on these programs, and the future teachers learning within them, deserve nothing less.