More than care: How early education providers are stepping up to supply the community

A child plays with toys at the Rochester Child Care Center. (Photo by Maya Mitchell/ New Hampshire Bulletin.)

A child care provider is a jack of all trades. It is their job to fill the various roles a child needs to succeed. 

As director of the Early Learning Center in Portsmouth, Tammy Roberge is a businesswoman, an educator, and a shoulder for families to lean on. 

“You’re the teacher, the caregiver, the hug buddy, or when [children] are not feeling well or emotionally have any issues, you’re the nurse. You’re the playground person,” she said. “When you’re all those things to a child, you’re happy to do it if it’s your calling, but it’s exhausting.”

In the state’s Seacoast region, limited child care programs and the presence of families from all economic backgrounds have created a unique situation for child care workers. Beyond their job descriptions, Roberge and other program directors have taken on the role of community connectors, providing families with the resources needed to build a stable life and raise a child. 

“A kid walks in the door, it doesn’t matter where they come from, we’re going to let them in,” Cora Hoppe, executive director for a program in Rochester, said. “Every child deserves a right to be in a safe place no matter what their parents make.” 

In New Hampshire, low wages and high program operating costs have led many educators to leave the field. As a result, there are fewer program spaces for families, higher tuition costs, and a greater risk of employee burnout. 

Amid those challenges, program directors in Portsmouth, Rochester, and Exeter have gone beyond their roles to address the needs of their program families and staff. And they are doing it at the expense of their time, budget, and sometimes even their pay. 

Child care programs have become a place to find community

The Early Learning Center at Temple Israel is a small program. Operating out of the temple’s basement, they are licensed for one classroom of 16 children and received permission to open another, which Roberge hopes to do in September. 

The program’s small size allows Roberge and her teachers to “truly get to bond” with parents and help them build a community among themselves.

“These parents make a great community, and they rely on each other,” she said. “They have to make connections in their community to sometimes be able to have that additional help that they need.” 

Size has also allowed Roberge to be flexible depending on a family’s needs. If a parent needs to add a day of care to their schedule, the program can do so because it is not constrained by licensing ratios. 

“If not everyone comes every day, their slot is still their slot. If six months down the road [a family] needs a fourth day, I’m not like, ‘Oh I can fit you in here,’” she said. “It’s not about making the biggest profit.” 

Roberge said she has seen parents rely on each other for carpooling and babysitting, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Early Learning Center remained open, and Roberge said it enabled her, her staff, and the center’s parents to create a unique village. 

As a child development educator, Roberge is also a trusted source for parenting advice. 

“I have more issues with parents being like, ‘Well they don’t listen to me,’” she said. “What I find is that parents have a hard time with that.” 

In Exeter, Appleseeds Day School has decided to face parenting needs head-on by providing free parenting workshops. 

Daniele Sharpe, the program’s director, said the workshops help parents develop positive routines so that what is taught in the classroom is also followed at home.

“We work very hard to build very strong, positive relationships with families so that they feel comfortable coming to us and asking questions,” she said. 

Parents who attend can have their children supervised by high school or college teacher assistants, paid by Appleseeds, while they attend the workshop. 

“We’ll try to support [parents] and come up with resources or strategies to give them a try at home [if they are struggling],” Sharpe said. “Communication and developing that relationship is key to us.” 

When child care doubles as a social service provider

“Every child deserves a right to be in a safe place no matter what their parents make,” Hoppe said. 

Hoppe is the executive director of Rochester Child Care Center, a nonprofit that offers child care for 6-month-olds through pre-kindergarten, and provides before- and after-school care in Rochester public schools. 

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According to Hoppe, many of the families she serves are low-income and struggling to pay for necessities, including electricity bills, transportation, and baby formula. She tries her best to help because children deserve the best care in their formative years.

“The culture up here is rough, because they play hard, they work hard,” Hoppe said. “There’s a lot of generational trauma, like you feel the trauma when you walk around the town.” 

The center aims to prioritize working with families in need, but Hoppe said the business model of child care does not allow it. More affluent families are enrolling, and Hoppe needs them to keep the multimillion-dollar business afloat. 

Hoppe recalled a relationship she developed with one mother who was suffering from domestic violence and unreliable transportation. Over 20 years, Hoppe helped the mother get back on her feet, during which she slipped her Uber gift cards and gifts during the holidays. 

“Not only do we give care, but we make sure your Christmases are taken care of. We do Secret Santa with businesses who will adopt a family,” Hoppe said. “We partner with the district, so some of the kids within the district will get their services here, or we’ll bus them over. … We make sure they’re fed before taking off from here.” 

“We have success stories all the time,” she said. Still, domestic violence is “one of the biggest issues” Hoppe sees in the community. 

The families of Appleseeds, in Exeter, faced a different issue: a lack of accessible, geographically close child development resources. 

The program’s families have dealt with sparse services for speech and occupational therapy. The local schools offer those services, but parents would have to transport their children there during the day, an option that’s not viable for working parents. 

“In New Hampshire, from our experience, there is not a lot of support for children who have challenging behaviors,” Sharpe said. “It’s very hard.”

To address the need, Appleseeds developed relationships with therapy agencies. The agencies come to the center to treat children, eliminating transportation barriers. The center has also incorporated additional early intervention techniques into its teaching, guided by the agencies. 

Additionally, due to its proximity to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and the Pease Air National Guard Base, Sharpe said military families are a part of the center’s clientele. 

After one family asked if the center would obtain certification so they could pay for care with a military child care scholarship, the center pursued certification and is now an accepted vendor. 

“We didn’t know anything about it until we had a family approach us,” she said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, we can do this.’”

Child care is a difficult business venture

While caring for children is often a labor of love for providers, it is still a business, and a challenging one.

Hoppe struggles to strike a balance between managing the center’s budget and helping families in need who cannot afford necessities, such as food, wipes, or diapers.

“We can’t deny a child a diaper. Which is a good thing, we’re happy to do so,” she said. ‘We’re trying to minimize the damage being done, and it’s getting harder and harder to do so, and it’s not our job to do it.”

When times have been tough, Hoppe has prioritized her staff’s pay over her own. She said that even though she runs a successful business, the margins remain thin. However, she knows her staff’s needs exceed hers.

“We’re mission-driven, and we’re willing to subsidize the cost of child care through our love,” Hoppe said. “Here in the child care center, I am willing to go without pay for my village. That’s how valuable they are.”

Roberge’s business struggles are different. Despite serving mostly wealthy families and having a waitlist, she is struggling to fill and staff her new classroom.

“Marketing is expensive, and this program here has been going for 35 years. We just got our own website,” she said. “People had a hard time finding us and we know that if you have to click more than three times, people give up.”

On the staff side, teachers at the Early Learning Center must be trained in both Montessori care and Jewish rituals, a niche that requires training before a teacher begins. On the customer side, because the program is in a religious center, Roberge is struggling to find a way to advertise without drawing undue attention to the place of worship or creating a safety hazard.

“The parents love us. We have a great program that we give, we’re just kind of a hidden gem.”

Hoppe urges the state to do more to support child welfare and child care businesses. A good place to start is to invest more time and money in child care subsidies.

“This shouldn’t be looked at as a government subsidy, it should be looked at as a right, and that’s where I find my frustration,” she said. “We need a fully funded system in the state that honors working families.”