Childcare providers want to pursue quality for their programs, but hurdles are mounting

With over 30 years of teaching experience, Amy Upton prides herself on setting the bar for high-quality early education and childcare. As the executive director of East Side Learning Center in Concord, which operates both early childhood and school-age childcare, quality care is important to her and her business. 

So when the state unveiled its new continuous quality improvement program in 2022, she knew her program would join. 

The program, named Granite Steps for Quality or GSQ, is a state-run, nationally recognized, continuous quality improvement program available to New Hampshire’s childcare providers. It focuses on elevating a program, its teachers, and its classrooms through training, leadership and professional development, coaching, and assessments. 

According to the state’s Bureau of Child Development and Head Start Collaboration, continuous quality improvement “aims to improve the overall quality of early care and education and out-of-school-time programs in the state, thereby improving outcomes for children and families.” 

Upton and other directors whose childcare programs are in GSQ say they see improvements through that involvement. Their teachers learn skills for working with children with different needs, and their classrooms become more catered to what is best for child development. 

But they also say the program’s limited options and design make it difficult for them to understand and implement what’s required. They also say the incentive payments they get for being in GSQ do not cover the true cost of quality improvement, resulting in them using their limited financial resources to keep up. 

Data from the bureau shows that about a seventh of New Hampshire’s childcare programs are in GSQ, and some believe that low percentage is why issues with the program are overlooked and new funding rejected by state leaders. 

For providers in GSQ, frustration on all of those fronts is mounting.

It’s a ‘nightmare’ due to its design

Childcare providers’ issues with GSQ stem from its limited options that are hard to implement. 

Participating programs pick one of two “pathways” to pursue quality improvement and are provided with training, coaching, and other resources to try to increase their “step” in the pathway. What step a program is at is determined by the percent a program elevates its staff qualifications through credentialing and improvement of its learning environments. 

The Pyramid Model pathway is available to programs that offer early childhood care and education to children between the ages of 0 and 5. It focuses on improving teaching around social-emotional skills, challenging behaviors, and nurturing caregiving. 

The Environment Rating Scales pathway is available for both early education and out-of-school-time (before and after school for grade-school students) programs. It focuses on improving how a program’s experience and learning environment affect child development, including interactions between children, space, staff, and materials.

After a rebrand of GSQ in 2022, Upton said she chose to pursue the Pyramid Model pathway due to her experience being an assessor for programs using Environment Rating Scales. She said that after the pandemic, she noticed that her students’ behavior had become “super challenging,” and she wanted a way to address it. 

“I’ve never had complaints about kids, and I’ve been going all over the state for years, going in and making recommendations. Now my own program is in chaos,” Upton said. “I said to our admin team, we need to switch to the Pyramid Model because it builds on social-emotional.” 

Leanna Lorden, chief operating officer of White Birch Center in Henniker, said their early care program had similar reasoning when they decided to join the Environment Rating Scales pathway. 

“We were kind of using that Pyramid Model approach in our behavior policies (already),” Lorden said. “So we went the ERS pathway to really improve environments, and there was coaching support available at that time.”

Upton said their perspective on each pathway is that the Pyramid Model pathway provides teachers with “more tools in their toolbox,” while the Environment Ratings Scale is a “checklist” type of quality inspection. 

Programs might want to improve their quality beyond those two pathways, but do not have another option through GSQ. Additionally, for school-age programs, their only quality improvement pathway option is the Environment Rating Scales, as the Pyramid Model does not extend past age 5. 

“When you have only one pathway for school age, then you’re excluded,” said Ana Byers, administrator at East Side and Upton’s daughter-in-law. “You’re not meeting all of the needs.”

Providers also say moving through their pathway’s steps is incredibly difficult. 

Caitlin Gelinas is the educational supporters coordinator at Rochester Child Care Center. A large part of her job is making sure teachers at the center are up to date on the N.H. Early Childhood and Out of School Time credentials and that the program is on top of its GSQ work. She said it was a “huge problem” due to the complexity of the program’s design. 

“None of it lines up, which is a huge problem because to get a credential high enough to meet GSQ standards is a nightmare, and it doesn’t align with licensing,” Gelinas said. “There’s so many hurdles to get through.” 

Under credentialing, childcare licensing rules, and GSQ – all of which are administered by the state Department of Health and Human Services – the work experience and title of an educator is different across the three systems. 

For example, under licensing, a “lead teacher” is someone with a high school degree, 18 industry-related college credits, and a minimum of 1,000 hours of work in a licensed program. Someone who qualifies as a lead teacher under licensing has different work qualifications and a different title under credentialing and GSQ. 

Gelinas also said the 2022 rebrand ended up lowering the status of providers in Rochester who had years of experience under their belt, and as a result made it harder for the center to increase what step of the pathway they were at. 

“I can get somebody to have their CDA (Child Development Associate), which makes them legally allowed to be left alone with children in all states and many countries, but for New Hampshire, if they don’t (take a class in) Child Growth and Development, they also can’t credential high enough,” Gelinas said. 

This makes administrative work more difficult, and few programs have nonteaching staff like Gelinas who have the time to figure it out. 

East Side Learning Center does, and is currently at step 1. However, Upton’s coach told her it is unlikely for her program to move up a step in less than a year or reach step 4 before 2028, the year current funding for the Pyramid Model pathway is up for renewal. 

“I’ve been here for 36 years, and it’s going to take me four years,” Upton said. “That’s an irony, and not just me, but my staff that are doing this with me.” 

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A ‘perfect storm’ of issues

New Hampshire is not new to quality programs; the state’s former system started in the 2000s. But the 2022 implementation of a new quality recognition and improvement program coincided with a handful of other changes to childcare in the state that made it more difficult for providers to get a handle on it. 

Around the same time the rebranded GSQ started, New Hampshire’s childcare sector was experiencing a lot of changes. First, an influx of federal pandemic-era funding resulted in a large amount of administrative work for both the state and providers. The Bureau of Child Development was also experiencing a leadership change, on top of changes to state laws around the childcare scholarship and credentialing. 

Byers said a “perfect storm” of things caused GSQ to be overlooked.  

“The timing almost matched up perfectly. We have started GSQ at the same time,” Byers said. 

As a result, Byers, Gelinas, Lorden, and other providers said they believe the bureau does not understand how complex the program they created is. They all said they do not entirely blame the agency for the problem, but it impacts their business because it has become a provider’s job to navigate it. 

“Right now, it’s literally just them making you jump through hurdles for a system they designed that they don’t understand to get some money sometimes,” Gelinas said. 

State officials at the Bureau of Child Development do not directly work with programs to help them increase their GSQ step. The state contracted out the work to early education-based companies to facilitate it. Through the contracts, childcare programs are provided with coaches based on their pathway to help them reach their quality goals. 

Lorden said her coach through the Environment Rating Scales pathway was “amazing” and helped her not only meet her quality requirements but also with the administrative paperwork as well. With her coach, Lorden and her program had monthly meetings to develop leadership teams and goals to work toward. 

The majority of funding for the Environment Rating Scales pathway ended in June 2026 after the state rejected a contract that would have continued coaching for the pathway and brought everything under the same company that operated the Pyramid Model Pathway. 

Without her coach, Lorden said her place in GSQ is “stagnant.” 

“We always set goals, but the real lofty goal is getting to step 3, which there’s a handful of other things we would need to do, and it’s not realistic,” she said. 

Providers have also complained that the cost of being in GSQ is not accurately reflected in the incentive payouts, resulting in providers paying more to be in it. 

Programs get three types of payments for being in GSQ, depending on their step: an additional percentage ranging from 5%-10% back on their childcare scholarship billing, a quarterly incentive up to $5,700, and an annual quality award. 

Lorden said for her program, it came out to about $10,000 a year, but about $8 a month per child. She said that because most professional development happens outside the hours of care, the benefit does not cover the cost of staff overtime, let alone other costs associated with completing the quality work. 

“It’s helpful funding, but it doesn’t come close to covering the true cost of when you’re looking at GSQ and the requirements, staff time, professional development, administrative work,” Lorden said. 

Cora Hoppe, executive director of Rochester Child Care Center, said that while she sees the quality improvement in her staff by being in GSQ, the downsides are starting to outweigh the benefits of being in the program. 

“In my eyes, (GSQ) really highlights the work that they’re doing and puts us out there as a quality provider. But it’s just the money at this point, and being able to access certain kinds of education and stuff like that, but that doesn’t even work now,” Hoppe said. 

With parts of GSQ unfunded, Upton said being in the quality improvement program is “costing even more money” because formerly free training now requires payment. Byers, who helps Upton manage their participation, says she’s worried because it is taking away from the direct care of children. 

“Everything is being held together by sheer luck, good thoughts, and glitter,” Byers said. “To truly answer the fundamental GSQ question, we will not improve quality if the administrative burden is 100% on the providers.” 

A state funding fix

The Department of Health and Human Services is aware of some of the core issues childcare providers have with GSQ. Twice in the past year, the department has proposed a new contract to the Executive Council (the elected body that approves contracts between state agencies and third parties) that would fully fund the quality improvement program and give the company the state’s contracting with direct authority to make changes to the program. 

The most recent contract proposal, which was rejected by the council in May, would have brought coaching and resources for both pathways under one company, the Pyramid Model Consortium. Previously, support for the Environment Ratings Scale was split between multiple different contracts. 

The rejected contract would have also revived coaching for programs like Lorden’s, while also providing “streamlined administrative support for GSQ revision, development, and implementation” and “access to tools and leadership planning to increase childcare program  quality and sustain and advance progress within GSQ.” 

“This expansion amendment of this contract would have someone to then take provider feedback, implement it, change up, look at those things, and continue to improve it. Also, it could have then looked at maybe adding some more pathways for school age,” Byers said.

Byers has been petitioning the council to change its vote, advocating that the next time a similar contract is proposed, they vote “yes” because of what it could do for programs in GSQ. Earlier this month, two councilors said they would continue to reject the contract despite its implications for the program and the state’s compliance with federal rules. 

Lorden said that in a perfect world there would be a “shared understanding” of what quality means statewide with a shared understanding of how to implement it. 

“New Hampshire is known for individual silos, duplicating work, and then coming back to the table and talking about the work that’s been duplicated and feeling frustrated,” she said. “We don’t have a common definition of what quality is across the board. We understand what that looks like and know that it’s going to take work but it’s possible.” 

Gelinas said she hopes that credentialing qualifications change to accurately reflect the education and experience of the teachers in Rochester Child Care Center’s early childhood and school age programs. She wants GSQ’s steps to be reset to make it “more of an even playing field” to make it easier for programs to progress, and reflect the reality of what it means to be a quality childcare program in New Hampshire. 

“The part that people forget is that literally, if we don’t have childcare then you can’t have workers. Our economy literally depends on having safe, quality childcare in whatever that looks like,” she said. “Those people making those decisions forget that not everybody is lucky enough to have a rich parent that can stay at home and watch their children.”