‘We’re excited’: Three western NH early education programs talk plans for federal funding 

The intersection between religion and community services is Maggie Monroe-Cassel’s niche. 

Monroe-Cassel grew up in upstate New York, where she saw her childhood church fall into disrepair when the community could not find a way to keep the doors open. When The Well Collaborative, a nonprofit that had taken over the First Congregational Church on Pleasant Street in Claremont, reached out to her for help revitalizing the space, she began fulfilling a lifelong dream. 

With a clergy background and prior experience in various community organizations, such as Habitat for Humanity and TLC Family Resource Center, the 70-year-old retiree had the skills to get the wheels in motion. After some time with the organization and help from other members of the Claremont community, she secured a $1 million grant to renovate the facility to include a community kitchen, child care facility, and public meeting space over the next three years. 

As state funding for child care continues to be debated in the Legislature, early education programs and community groups in Keene and Claremont looked to the federal government for some extra, but necessary, cash. 

In December, The Well Collaborative, along with Keene Day Care Center and Rise For Baby and Family in Keene, received more than $2 million total in funding from the Northern Border Regional Commission, a federal-state partnership that encourages business retention and expansion, tourism, and public infrastructure investments in New York, New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont’s “most distressed counties.” 

“You don’t have to do some date driven study to look at a post-industrial town and know it needs decent, safe, affordable housing, it needs transportation and it needs child care and it needs businesses to move in,” Monroe-Cassel said.

The Well Collaborative was given $821,000 from the federal government and is working to finalize the remainder through another organization. 

Grants like those given out by the Northern Border Regional Commission are exclusive. Many people do not know they exist, and those who do have to meet very specific qualification standards and navigate confusing grant language. All three New Hampshire recipients learned about the grant through word of mouth. 

Monroe-Cassel found out about the grant after meeting someone during a winter craft event at the church in 2023, who knew Claremont’s former mayor and made the suggestion to apply. Usually, churches are not eligible for these types of federal grants, but under the second Trump administration, the rules changed. 

“Ironically, we live in a culture now in which it’s not just assumed that because it’s a church, it’s not going to get federal funding,” she said. “And I never thought we would really get it. I spent hours and hours and hours of my life doing pre-application, and we got through that process.” 

The hope is to convert the former sermon area into a weather-friendly public community space for “educational events, seminars, music, and other arts and activities,” modernize the pre-existing kitchen into a commercial cooking space for small businesses, and renovate the basement into an ADA-friendly child care or preschool center. 

When the church was still operating, a small child care licensed for 15 children operated upstairs off the main room. Monroe-Cassel got the basement pre-screened by someone from the Child Care Licensing Unit, and up to 35 children could receive care there. However, during the renovation, they will have to deal with a major issue: the lack of egress in the basement. 

While funding goes through the finalization process, vendors are using the space for yoga, sound baths, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and small community events. As she continues to work to revitalize Claremont, Monroe-Cassell acknowledges that there is still more to be done.

“We’re a piece of that puzzle, but us alone will not provide the incentive for people to move to Claremont.” Monroe-Cassel said. 

Over in Keene, executive director of Keene Day Care Center, Suelaine Pooling, is looking forward to the building renovations and staffing increase that the Northern Border grant will bring to her center. 

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Initially, Pooling wasn’t looking for a $893,000  grant to improve the center’s facility and hire more staff. She was looking to have the building’s furnace fixed. Child care programs, including Keene Day Care Center, usually have slim profit margins due to high operating costs and often are not located in buildings designed to house young children. 

The building that houses Keene Day Care Center was built in 1940, and its infrastructure reflects that. When a company told Pooling it would cost more than $25,000 to fix the old furnace, she reached out to a student’s parent, who is the director of the Southwest Region Planning Commission. He told her about the grant and helped with the application. 

“[The grant] grew out of a random need,” Pooling said. “Because we don’t have that kind of money.”

The grant and additional funding from the Community Development Finance Authority are paying for a $1.8 million project to help Keene Day Care Center “preserve and expand affordable child care in Cheshire County.” To do this, the program will aim to return to full enrollment by updating the facility to better retain staff and students and by recruiting more teachers. 

In the child care industry, maintaining employees’ salaries and student enrollment is a fine balance. Without staff, more children cannot be enrolled because programs need to maintain safe, legally required staff-to-child ratios. However, programs often lack the funds to hire additional staff without enrolling more children. 

During the pandemic, the center lost 25% of its staff to higher-paying fields and has been operating at a lower capacity since. Keene Day Care Center is licensed for 90, but has had an enrollment of about 70 children since 2023. The funding for the project will allow the center to hire entry-level teachers and train them for three years without adding more students. 

“Our best technique is to get people here and just develop that love, the passion for the profession and grow their skills as they’re here,” Pooling said. “Right now, our hurdle is that we just don’t have enough lead teachers to hire qualified staff to be able to fully open all our classrooms.”

The hope is that by hiring teachers without increasing student numbers, new teachers will be able to learn from seasoned professionals in a less stressful environment. During the three years of employment covered by the project, teachers will receive on-the-job training, professional development, and mentoring, and will be encouraged to pursue early education certifications. 

Recruiting new teachers might be challenging, as the number of early education professionals entering the field has declined over the past 10 years. However, Keene State University is just down the road from the center, and Pooling said the center will “try whatever way we can” to find new teachers to grow into qualified professionals. 

Pooling plans on working with Rise for Baby and Family for the professional development part of the project with the new staff. Rise for Baby and Family in Keene is another organization that received a Northern Border grant. They were given over $288,000 to continue their work supporting inclusive communities and will use that money to mentor and coach child care providers to bring inclusivity and training into the classroom. 

“We want to continue to support the statewide and regional efforts around teacher professional development and helping teachers be caring; helping to support all basic knowledge of caring for children in child care and those children with special needs,” said Alicia Deaver, executive director of Rise for Baby and Family. 

Keene Day Care Center will also use the grant to make building improvements. 

A new HVAC system will be installed, along with new windows, to make the building more efficient, Pooling said. The current HVAC system does not produce enough heat for a New Hampshire winter, and the center lacks air conditioning for the hot summer months, resulting in complaints from parents and staff. 

Additionally, a new sprinkler system will be installed. In New Hampshire, child care programs are required to have a sprinkler system unless a building’s construction predates a certain year. Keene Day Care Center is “grandfathered in,” meaning it does not have to have a sprinkler system, but Pooling said not having one is making it harder to do other construction projects. 

After the local fire chief’s “eyes lit up” at the suggestion of installing one, and their insurance company supported the idea, Pooling knew that she would make it a priority. 

“If we focus on improving the health and safety and comfort level of our building, that becomes a retention tool. It benefits not only the staff, but also the children,” Pooling said. 

Even though the grant award was announced at the end of last year, the wheels are still in motion for the three programs to receive their money and start their projects. The projects are scheduled to be finished in 2029.