WASILLA, Alaska — She was a teenager and the mother of a 2-year-old when there was a knock on the door of the trailer she called home. Two women were there to tell her about a government-funded preschool program called Head Start that opened near her home in Chugiak. Would she enroll her daughter?
When she was pregnant with her second child, Kristine Bayne signed up. She hoped it would make a difference for her daughter. Little did she know, it would change the course of her life, too.
Bayne, who graduated from high school via correspondence courses after becoming pregnant at 16, would land a job at her child’s Head Start. Her self-confidence boosted, she would return to school to earn a bachelor’s degree and a state counseling certificate. She would rise through the ranks at CCS Early Learning, the nonprofit that ran the region’s Head Start centers, and would retire as a family partnerships coordinator, providing the same kind of services 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 get you where you are and they push you forward to be 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 the path to better jobs. As drug addiction ravages the community, it has helped parents in recovery and educated children in foster care. It has done this while preparing youngsters for kindergarten, conditioning them for the rhythms of the school day, and teaching them how to be good friends and students.
That’s why it was so painful when CCS Early Learning closed the Chugiak Head Start, where Bayne had sent her children. In January, it announced it was closing another center — this one in Meadow Lakes, where Bayne’s granddaughter, Makayla, now in her care, was enrolled.
The threatened closure isn’t for lack of need. This is the fastest growing part of the 49th state, and the nonprofit’s Head Start program has a waiting listIt could — and did — fill Meadow Lakes’ three classrooms to the brim.
The problem lies with the adults.
There aren’t enough of them who want to work at Head Start. Not if they can. earn more money work at nearby Target, which raised its pay during the pandemic. And not when they can get a higher-paying job with the same qualifications at the local school district.
As the teacher shortage continues, what’s happening in this corner of the state — a region that’s home to both vast swaths of pristine wilderness and a thriving bedroom community in Anchorage — offers a taste of what’s to come for other programs.
In 2022, almost a quarter of Head Start teachers have left their jobs, some have retired early, and others have been lured away by higher-paying jobs in retail or school districts. Without those teachers, preschools can’t serve as many students as they once did. It means fewer options for parents who want to return to work, but can’t afford childcareand fewer early learning opportunities for children from the most needy families. In rural communitiesHead Start may be the only daycare center for working parents.
The number of children and parents served by Head Start has plummeted since its peak in 2013, when it served 1.1 million children and pregnant women, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which analyzed federal dataNine years later, enrollment was approximately 786,000.
Some children who had enrolled in Head Start have instead gone to government funded preschool programsthat have expanded. Fewer babies are being born, too. Yet the percentage of children in poverty who attend preschool has remained unchanged for two decades, a concern for researchers like Steve Barnett of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.
“The less resources (children) have at home, the more they benefit from high-quality environments” like Head Start, Barnett says. Without Head Start, he says, they show up in kindergarten fall further behind their classmates from middle- and high-income families.
In Wasilla, the regional Head Start group decided to raise workers’ pay to keep more staff from leaving. To do that, it had to close a center. Mark Lackey, executive director of CCS Early Learning, found himself competing for workers with the service industry, which raised pay during the pandemic to lure reluctant workers back. Last year, CCS Early Learning paid teaching assistants with two years of experience about $16 an hour, while Target offered more than $17 to entry-level workers, Lackey said.
“It’s just tragic,” Lackey said. “There are so many more kids we could be helping.”
Meadow Lakes’ Head Start was tucked into a strip mall on a four-lane highway, its pine-green facade wedged between a charter school and a laundromat with showers. The children who arrived there sometimes laughed, sometimes cried, often carrying backpacks small enough to fit their tiny bodies.
They came from homes where their caregivers were often struggling with problems too complex to understand: poverty, illness, financial problems, homelessness. Their caregivers were teenage parents who were daunted by the responsibility of raising children, and grandparents who had unexpectedly welcomed grandchildren into their home.
Head Start was there to help them all.
The groundbreaking, multigenerational approach sought to create healthy environments for the children it served—and that meant supporting the adults in their lives, too. Many of the parents who sent their children 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, mastering 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 be starting 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 them at such a young age, which is extremely difficult,” Mitchell said.
Wayne’s childhood was marked by instability, as Mitchell struggled with addiction and sent him to live with relatives. Wayne moved back in with her when she began her recovery. When she enrolled him in Head Start, she said the staff embraced her without judgment and helped her find resources as she got back on her feet. She told the staff she was living in a shack without running water; they gave her a voucher so she could take Wayne to the adjacent laundry room to shower and do laundry.
“They didn’t just pick up our son. They picked us up,” Mitchell says.
In May, the children of Meadow Lakes came and went for the last time. Class began 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—it was raining that day—and then lined up to wash their hands before sitting at a few long tables for breakfast.
There was so much more to a school day than met the eye. Every activity was packed with lessons big 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 its shell.” She also taught them that the last day of school could bring a mix of emotions.
“For some people, that’s a happy sight. For other people, that’s a sad sight,” Benson-Nuyen said.
At breakfast, the children learned that blueberries don’t belong in their ears. Then came brushing their teeth and playtime. All of these routines were meant to make children feel safe and responsible. And every conflict with a classmate was an opportunity to teach children how to get along and how to control their emotions. That’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 that it was over. The classroom walls, still brightly decorated, were no longer covered in student art. Teachers began to discuss what to do with the class pets. On the last day, the staff tried to keep things cheerful and festive, even as they struggled to stay calm. They dyed 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 worked really hard and I’m proud of you.”
Martin, a Head Start graduate and alumna parent herself, had been crying on and off all day, and her cheeks were wet with tears again. Willow Palmer practiced what she’d learned in class: When people are upset, she can comfort them. The 5-year-old ran back to class and returned with a neon green stuffed frog. She handed it to Martin. Then she leaned in and gave her a hug, too.
On the playground that day, a few students released butterflies they had been watching in their classrooms for weeks as they emerged from their cocoons. Now they were adults. They flew away into the fresh spring air—away from school, and into the unknown.
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