Can school be a place for lifelong learning?

In the past month we hosted Reimagining and Repurposing School with Superintendent Tim Doak as well as Maine ED 2050 discussions with family care providers and other community members. These events brought to our attention, separately and from different perspectives, a concept worth further discussion: daycare in schools. 

During Reimagining and Repurposing School, Doak discussed his idea to put a daycare at Fort Fairfield Elementary. “Fort Fairfield has no childcare center,” he said. “We do have some space in our school. We do have the behavioral specialists, we do have the food, we do have the ed techs, we do have the professionals. Bringing those kids into our schools is a beautiful stepping stone to going to school full time.” 

The daycare could also address a barrier to attracting teachers, Doak noted. During the height of the pandemic, “we lost teachers who couldn’t teach because they had no daycare.”

The idea of a more education-centered daycare model also came up at one of our Maine ED 2050 discussions with family care providers. Many of them voiced concerns about the trend of daycare for young kids becoming more institutionalized and felt it should be focused on physical care, emotional care, and play. 

"I have a play-based childcare," one participant, Kathy, said. "We learn through playing, taking a walk. Everything we see in our world, we just kind of turn it into a learning thing. And I just love that. I think the kids learn so much just by playing and being exposed to things."

Another participant, Laurie, noted, "I feel like childcare is not a one-size-fits-all. To lump us all into being like a school, I disagree with that. I have my own son and ... he had a half-day kindergarten. He actually stayed home, got to be a kid longer, instead of what they're doing when they're trying to push school. ... I just feel like it might be a reason why we see the kids so stressed. Because in the past, when they didn't go to daycare, they hung out outside. You didn't worry about making sure we're meeting all these different standards. You were just being a kid."

Meanwhile, at a different Maine ED 2050 conversation, a participant lamented the lack of childcare in her town. She shared that the school district had passed on an opportunity to partner with a local preschool on a public pre-K option, and that the preschool later closed due to financial struggles. "We had a missed opportunity," she said. "That preschool could still exist for parents if it had just had a stable funding stream, which could have happened through a public pre-K partnership."

These are all important perspectives that lead us to ask: What should daycare look like for young children, and how can schools and communities work together to offer the best options for families?