Boys & Girls Club to run child care centers at Plymouth State and Keene

PLYMOUTH — The Boys & Girls Clubs of Central and Northern New Hampshire has plenty of experience merging with child care centers statewide. Now, the organization has partnered with Plymouth State University to taking on those duties at the Center for Young Children, by Sept. 1.

“Our academic year starts in August,” said Nathaniel Bowditch, provost and vice president of academic affairs at PSU. “Our faculty and students are hard at work by the last week in August. My expectation is the opening day will be in advance of that.”

Boys & Girls Club of Central NH said along with PSU, they will be operating a child care center at Keene State College.

PSU's Center for Young Children and Families serves children ages 13 months through 5 years. This includes children of PSU students and staff, as well as families in the area. PSU staff will run operations until the regular closing for summer.

“When it reopens, it will be fully operational and run by Boys & Girls Club,” Bowditch said.

Bowditch said the child care center at PSU has been part of the community for many years. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic made it clear a change was needed.

“The way we were doing things, and done things for a long time, wasn’t going to work and be sustainable,” Bowditch said. “The question we asked was, 'How do we keep this really valuable resource alive?'”

As early as 2023, Bowditch said school leaders discussed how to deal with the issue. This brainstorming led into the summer of 2025, when they decided to find a partner. He said the number of competitive bids the university looked at was “more than a handful, and less than 15,” and he was on the committee who reviewed them. There were presentations from providers ranging from national groups to “mom & pop” local organizations.

“We had a whole spectrum of scale, and over and over, the Boys & Girls Club, there was a sense in terms of their competencies, experience, size and scope, they had everything we needed,” Bowditch said. “And, unlike the giant providers, they know New Hampshire. They know the university system and Plymouth State, and they know who we are, and we know them.”

Chris Emond, chief executive officer for Boys & Girls Club of CNNH, said it is an honor to continue the long-standing tradition of care and teaching in the University System of New Hampshire. He said the organization is committed to creating a rich learning environment to not only benefit children and their families, but also the future of the early childhood workforce.

Emond said the request for bids came from the state university system, and Boys & Girls Club of CNNH was awarded the opportunity to take over the two locations.

The bid process involved input from campus staff, families, and early childhood leaders. According to information from USNH, Boys & Girls Club of CNNH was chosen due to its “commitment to providing mentoring opportunities in a high-quality lab-school setting for college students training to be early childhood educators.”

The Boys & Girls Club also has a mandate to maintain accreditation, as each center is licensed by the state.

Emond said the Boys & Girls Club has similar experience already, as they took over NHTI’s early child care center — the Mary Stuart Gile Early Learning Center — during the COVID pandemic.

The organization has also been involved in its share of mergers. The Boys & Girls Club of the Lakes Region partnered with the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Concord, and in 2019 took on Lakes Region Childcare Services. The Boys & Girls Club also runs the Penacook Community Center Boys & Girls Club, which came to be through a merger.

Bowditch said a huge selling point was this type of experience.

“A compelling part of their pitch that we’re all aware of, and familiar with, is what they did with NHTI,” Bowditch said. “We knew that they’re good at this, and we’ve known that for a long time. In terms of fit, we knew they had experience. We knew they knew the region. The North Country. They know Central New Hampshire. They know what we’re trying to do.”

Bowditch said the center has 51 children, from 43 families, and seven staff. There is also an average of 20 to 25 student workers at any given time. They come in for shifts related to their work in education programs at PSU. It's part of the campus, near Speare Memorial Hospital, in a standalone building on the south side of town, and Bowditch called it a “really great space.”

“It’s got a bunch of different classrooms that cater to kids of different ages,” Bowditch said. “Staffing has proven to be a challenge with us, as it is for child care across the state, especially North Country.”

The center is an experiential learning site for PSU students, and the Boys & Girls Club is committed to working with the university to continue that. Bowditch said there are a variety of programs, from doctorate degrees all the way down to people interested in teaching younger aged children.

The university does not have an early childhood education program, so most students working there are in the Elementary Education and Youth Development program.

“Those kids in that center are going to become their students when they’re teaching K-12, so it is a really nice for them to see that early childhood stage as their preparing to teach K-12,” Bowditch said.

Emond has spoken with parents at both sites.

We “were able to answer any kind of question they had, and there were a lot,” Emond said.

Emond said parents were invested in the quality and experience of the teachers, and they wanted to know the plan for staffing. He explained each center has directors and staff members who have been there for years, and that type of continuity is hard to replace. While interviews are underway, he expects many of the employees already in place will remain.

“They already have a really good, veteran, staff there who can mentor other upcoming teachers, who can go to school to work with early childhood students,” Emond said. “The level of operations there is top notch.”

Bowditch commended Emond for communicating with staff and families, because these groups are especially concerned.

“We are talking about their kids, and we’re talking about their jobs, in these two cases,” Bowditch said. “We wanted to support them, and Boys & Girls Club has just come in, and talked to them proactively, early on.”

Bowditch, while not involved in discussions with staff and families, has heard they are “really relieved.” He said state and national budgetary concerns make higher education operations especially complicated, and difficult to sustain.

One of the things about the Boys & Girls Club that stands out is their reputation, so he knows the center is in great hands.

“It’s not some giant industrial operation that has 3,400 sites around the country,” Bowditch said. “It’s New Hampshire, and it’s local and familiar. I think there’s a lot of gratitude and relief that we figured out a solution that’s going to continue to serve our community and the university.”

Bowditch said the majority of the children in the child care center are from the community, not related to students. The university sees this as a vital part of connecting to the community.

Bowditch said the response from the Boys & Girls Club of CNNH, in terms of competency and strength, aligned “beautifully” with PSU.

“It was fortuitous,” Bowditch said. “We had a lot of options, and they just consistently rose to the top.”