Early Ed Center Rebounds From Pandemic

Wearing a unicorn-decorated shirt bearing the message ​“Kindness Is Pure Magic,” 3‑year-old Chloe danced through the ribbon-cutting for a reopened toddler classroom on Olive Street — as a leading childcare provider recovered from a pandemic-imposed setback.

The ribbon-cutting, tour, and press conference Friday morning at the Hope Child Development Center at 81 Olive St.

Chloe is one of five students in a newly reopened classroom for toddlers at the Wooster Square early education hub. 

The classroom had been closed since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic four years ago to the week, said Georgia Goldburn, the site’s founder and executive director and a citywide advocate for quality affordable childcare.

The toddler classroom, with its warm blue carpet and wooden blocks and box of handheld musical instruments, is the last of the Olive Street site’s eight classrooms to reopen since Covid.

It’s been a long path to getting back to Hope’s full pre-pandemic capacity, Goldburn said as she led Gov. Ned Lamont, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Mayor Justin Elicker, state Office of Early Childhood Commissioner Beth Bye, and New Haven Public Schools Asst. Supt. Keisha Redd-Hannans from brightly colored room to room filled with playing children and mindful teachers.

That path has been beset by the public health hazards and initial government-imposed classroom restrictions that followed the onset of the pandemic, which reduced Hope’s number of open classrooms from eight to three and dropped its student enrollment from 73 to 19. Hope has also faced the headwinds of teacher shortages and a nationwide crisis around the funding and affordability of childcare.

With Friday’s ribbon-cutting, all eight classrooms at Hope — which serves kids between the ages of 6 weeks and 13 years old — are now open. This latest toddler classroom, focusing on 3- and 4‑year-olds, has five students to start. Goldburn hopes to enroll another five soon.

Hope currently has 11 teachers, whose pay corresponds to a state-set salary scale that ranges from $17.50 an hour for educators with high school degrees to more than $31 an hour for those with master’s degrees.

Goldburn said her organization was recently able to hire a 12th full-time credentialed teacher, thereby allowing this final classroom for toddlers to reopen. She plans to hire another two teachers to help the center serve more than the 66 students currently enrolled.

As Goldburn told Lamont and Elicker and Bye and reporter after reporter throughout Friday’s event, Hope has faced the early education teacher shortage head on — finding ways to build up the workforce and get qualified, credentialed early ed teachers into (re)opened classrooms.

She spoke about partnerships her organization has forged with the New Haven Public Schools district to train high schoolers to work in the early education field. They’ve also partnered with the refugee and immigrant women job training organization Havenly.

All of these teacher training and credentialing efforts have helped Hope ​“achieve a vision of having a multiracial, multilingual, multigenerational workforce,” Goldburn said. 

“Georgia, you are an inspiration to all of us who work on childcare issues,” DeLauro said during Friday’s press conference, held outside in the middle of Hope’s playground. ​“Childcare is essential to the success of this country.”

Goldburn cautioned the local, state, and federal officials that government at all levels needs to continue to invest in childcare in order to make the industry viable for workers, parents, and students alike. It currently costs $340 per week for infants, $320 per week for toddlers, $260 per week for preschoolers, and $130 per week for after-school students to attend Hope, Goldburn said. But those prices have been in place for some time, and will almost certainly be going up soon as some state and federal pandemic-era subsidies expire, she added.

Amid ongoing funding and teacher-shortage challenges, the joy of having a reopened toddler classroom was on full display on Friday as Chloe and her classmates took turns dancing in a circle as teacher Lauren Safady and site director Michelle Reyes led the kids in song.

“Good morning, Chloe. Good morning, Chloe. Good morning, Chloe, we’re glad you came to school,” the group sang to the sounds of maracas and clapping hands. ​“Chloe came to school today, school today, school today, Chloe came to school today, and God loves you.”