This preschool in Alaska changed lives for parents and kids alike. Why did it have to close?

WASILLA, Alaska (AP) — She was a teenager, and the mother of a 2-year-old, when a knock came on the door of the trailer she called home. Two women were there to tell her about a federally funded preschool program called Head Start that was opening near her home in Chugiak. Would she be interested in enrolling her daughter?

Then pregnant with her second child, Kristine Bayne signed up. She hoped it would make a difference for her daughter. What she didn't know: It would shift the trajectory of her life, too.

Bayne, who finished high school through correspondence courses after she got pregnant at 16, would go on to take a job with her child's Head Start. Her confidence buoyed, she returned to school to earn a bachelor's degree and a counseling certificate from the state. She would rise through the ranks of CCS Early Learning, the nonprofit that ran the region's Head Start centers, and would retire as a family partnerships coordinator, lending the same kind of help to families that she and her husband received.

“I learned so much," says Bayne, now 65. "How to take care of my children, how to advocate for them, how to have a voice for myself. ... They take you where you’re at, and they help you move forward to become a better person.”

In this part of Alaska, countless parents tell stories like Bayne’s. Head Start has helped them earn degrees that put them on track for better jobs. As drug addiction ravages the community, it has helped parents in recovery and educated children who have ended up in foster care. It has done this while readying youngsters for kindergarten, conditioning them for the school day's rhythms and teaching them how to be good friends and students.

Which is why it was so wrenching when CCS Early Learning closed the Chugiak Head Start, where Bayne had sent her children. In January, it announced it was shuttering another center — this time in Meadow Lakes, where Bayne's granddaughter Makayla, who is now in her care, was enrolled.

The impending closure is not for lack of need. This is the fastest-growing part of the 49th state, and the nonprofit's Head Start program has a waiting list. It can — and did — fill Meadow Lakes' three classrooms to capacity.

The problem is with the grownups.

Specifically, there are not enough of them who want to work at a Head Start. Not when they can make more money working at the nearby Target, which hiked its pay during the pandemic. And not when, with the same credentials, they can get a better-paying job at the local school district.

As a teacher shortage grinds on, what is unfolding in this corner of the state — a region that contains both massive tracts of untamed wild and a booming Anchorage bedroom community — offers a preview of what other programs could face.

Head Start teachers, 70% of whom hold a bachelor’s degree, earn an average of $39,000 a year. In 2022, nearly a quarter of them left their jobs, some retiring early and others lured away by higher-paying work in retail or at school districts.

Without those teachers, the preschools cannot serve as many students as they once did. It means fewer options for parents who want to return to work but cannot afford child care, and fewer early learning opportunities for children from the neediest families. In rural communities, Head Start might be the only child care center for working parents.

The number of children and parents served by Head Start has tumbled precipitously since its peak in 2013. That year, it served 1.1 million children and pregnant people, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which analyzed federal data. Nine years later, its enrollment stood at around 786,000.

Some of the children who would have enrolled in Head Start instead migrated to state-funded preschool programs, which have expanded. There are also fewer babies being born. Still, the percentage of children in poverty heading to preschool has been unchanged for two decades, which concerns researchers like Steve Barnett, of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.

“The fewer resources (children) have at home, the more they benefit from high-quality environments” like Head Start, Barnett says. Without it, he said, they show up in kindergarten further behind their classmates from middle- and upper-income households.

In Wasilla, the regional Head Start group decided to raise employee pay to keep more staff from leaving. To do that, it had to close one center. Mark Lackey, executive director of CCS Early Learning, found he was competing for employees with the service sector, which raised pay during the pandemic to lure back reluctant workers. Last year, CCS Early Learning was paying teacher aides with two years on the job about $16 an hour, while Target was offering more than $17 to entry-level employees, Lackey said.

“It’s just tragic,” Lackey says. “There’s so many more kids we could be serving.”

Lackey was hopeful the state would provide some financial relief. Lawmakers hiked Head Start funding by $5.2 million in this year’s budget. But Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, vetoed half the funding increase at the end of June.

Meadow Lakes’ Head Start was tucked into a strip mall off a four-lane highway, its pine green facade sandwiched between a charter school and a laundromat that offered showers. The kids who arrived there were sometimes smiling, sometimes crying, often carrying tiny backpacks to fit their small frames.

They came from households where their caretakers were often struggling with problems too complex for them to understand: poverty, illness, financial strife, homelessness. Their caregivers included teen parents daunted by the responsibility of raising children, and grandparents who had unexpectedly taken in grandchildren.

Head Start was there to help all of them.

Its pioneering, multigenerational approach sought to build healthy environments for the children it served — and that meant supporting the adults in their lives, too. Many of the parents who sent their kids to Meadow Lakes attended Head Start themselves, like Cha Na Xiong, who had a child at the school. The son of Hmong refugees, he went to Head Start to learn English, allowing him to get a grasp on the language before he started kindergarten.

Kendra Mitchell, whose mother had her at 16, also went to Head Start, and sent her son Wayne to the Meadow Lakes school. He’ll head to kindergarten next year, but she said she’s seen how it’s shaped both his life – and hers.

“He’s actually, you know, verbalizing his emotions and learning how to regulate his emotions at such a young age, which is extremely hard,” Mitchell said.

Wayne's childhood has been marked by instability as Mitchell struggled with addiction and sent him to live with relatives. Wayne returned to live with her when she started recovery. When she enrolled him in Head Start, she said staff embraced her without judgment and helped connect her with resources as she got back on her feet. She told staff she was living in a cabin without running water; they got her a voucher so she could take Wayne to the neighboring laundromat for showers and laundry.

“They weren’t just lifting our son up. They were lifting us up as well,” Mitchell says.

In May, the Meadow Lakes children came and went for the last time. Class started with routines that had become familiar. The children sang a song to learn the days of the week, set to the tune of the “Addams Family” theme. They talked about the weather — that day it was rainy — then lined up to wash their hands before sitting down at a pair of long tables for breakfast.

In a school day, there was so much more than met the eye. Every activity was loaded with lessons large and small. As they talked about the calendar — it was May 6 — they practiced saying “sixth.” Teacher Lisa Benson-Nuyen instructed them to “pretend your tongue is a little turtle head, sticking out of the shell.” She taught them, too, that the last day of school could bring a mix of emotions.

“For some people, that’s a happy face. For other people, … that’s a sad face,” Benson-Nuyen said.

At breakfast, the children learned blueberries do not belong in their ears. Then came tooth-brushing and play time. All these routines were built to help children feel secure and learn responsibility. And every conflict with a classmate marked an opportunity to teach children how to interact with one another and how to manage their emotions. It’s why the classroom had a “comfort corner,” a cozy space with pillows where at least one student was often curled up.

That last week, there were small signs things were coming to a close. The classroom walls, still brightly decorated, were no longer draped with student art. Teachers began talking about what to do with class pets. On the final day, staff tried to keep things cheerful and celebratory, even as they struggled to maintain composure. They painted the students' hair bright colors and had a dance party.

Eryn Martin, the program office assistant, called out to Mitchell as she left for the last time: “Good luck, Kendra! You’ve been working really hard and I’m proud of you.”

Martin, herself a Head Start graduate and alumna parent, had been crying on and off all day, and her cheeks were once again wet with tears. Willow Palmer practiced what she learned in the classroom — when people are upset, she can help comfort them. The 5-year-old rushed back into the classroom, then reemerged with a neon-green stuffed frog. She gave it to Martin. Then she leaned in and gave her a hug, too.

On the playground that day, some students released butterflies they had been watching for weeks inside their classrooms, as they emerged from cocoons. Now they were full-grown. They flew away in the crisp spring air — away from the school, and into the unknown.

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