Big gains for little learners

Catholic schools embrace demand for early childhood program

In the early days, the preschool program at St. Joseph School in Vancouver operated out of a single classroom in the old church hall, a small building on the north side of campus.

Back then, preschool was mostly for parents who wanted to give their children an introduction to school before sending them off to kindergarten. Few were interested in all-day options. But times have changed. With a growing need for childcare in Western Washington, demand for early childhood education is on the rise.

“There’s just so much need and not enough space,” said Laura Veasy, director of St. Joseph’s preschool program. Her classes have an ever-growing wait list.

St. Joseph’s preschool now inhabits several classrooms and an enchanting play space for little ones to congregate at recess. The school is at full capacity with 72 students, including three full-day classrooms and a brand-new summer program.

Veasy said if she added more classes, she has no doubt they’d fill up.

Her program is not an outlier.

Around 2,000 students attended 56 different preschool programs at archdiocesan Catholic schools last year. Eighteen of those programs have been added since 2019.

Early childhood education has become a growing priority for the archdiocese’s Catholic Schools office, which even has staff — funded by the Seattle-based nonprofit Fulcrum Foundation — dedicated solely to early childhood development.

“The archdiocese really saw early childhood education as an opportunity to extend our ministry to more students and more families,” said Nicholas Ford, the archdiocese’s superintendent for Catholic schools.

Expanding preschool programs, Ford said, aligned three purposes: spreading the Gospel to more people, serving families already enrolled in Catholic schools and responding to the larger community need for childcare.

The boom in early childhood education programs in the archdiocese has added some 500 seats in the past decade, driven in part by support from the Fulcrum Foundation.

Fulcrum was founded in 2002 under the leadership of Archbishop Alexander J. Brunett and Father Stephen Rowan as a separate nonprofit to support Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Seattle. During the 2022-23 school year, Fulcrum provided around $3 million in tuition assistance grants to Catholic school students.

Led by their Catholic faith and research about brain growth before the age of 5, local philanthropist Dick Abrams and his late wife Sharon started the Fulcrum Early Childhood Education Fund in 2019. Since then, more and more donors have joined the cause.

Now the Fulcrum Early Childhood Education Endowment funds curriculum and supplies as well as small capital improvement grants for preschools around the region. The average grant for the last school year was $2,130.

St. Joseph received a grant several years ago, helping to pay for a second full-day preschool classroom.

“There is a huge need for quality programs for that age,” said Amy Hall, Fulcrum’s advancement director.

Dave Mayer, director of early childhood education for the archdiocese’s Office for Catholic Schools, works individually with the Catholic preschools to help them with things like licensing and expansion.

“To see the great work that's been happening has been pretty inspirational,” Mayer said.

St. George School in Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood serves a diverse set of nearly 300 students in grades Pre-K through 8.

“Especially with working families, there’s a lot of need for childcare,” said Monica Wingard, who has been principal at St. George for 13 years. During her tenure, demand for preschool spots has grown. The school has added around 10 seats in that time — putting its program at full capacity.

There’s value in that preschool education, Wingard said.

“It provides them a solid foundation to get ready for kindergarten,” she said. Early childhood education levels the playing field for students from different backgrounds so that all of them end up with the same understanding of basics like numbers, the alphabet and classroom etiquette, she added.

“The holistic element for us has been watching students grow and thrive from that early age,” said Ford, the superintendent.

Many parts of Western Washington, including areas in Clark, King, Kitsap and Snohomish counties, are considered “extreme childcare access deserts”— regions with an insufficient supply of licensed childcare for children younger than 5, according to the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families.

Demand for childcare is, in part, paving the way for more early childhood education options at Catholic schools. And though the archdiocese’s early childhood education expansion hasn’t solved the childcare dilemma, a decade of focused expansion in preschool capacity archdiocese-wide has surely helped.

“To be able to do that is really significant for us and for the state,” Ford said.

And the decision to embrace early childhood education has “strengthened our schools,” Ford said. Campuses are used more fully, and schools are more focused around intentional growth, he added.

“It's really allowed the rest of the ministry to thrive,” Ford said.

Wingard said St. George’s preschool program feeds her whole school.

“Parents fall in love with the program and the community,” she said. “They want to keep their children in that.”

That’s a phenomenon seen in other Catholic schools as well, as preschool programs have helped boost enrollment.

“It's a fabulous place for our families to experience Catholic education,” Hall said.

This article appeared in the August/September 2024 issue of Northwest Catholic magazine. Read the rest of the issue here.