“We need to increase our public investment in early childhood education across the board,” said Senator Alexander.

Providers and stakeholders also need to think more about the collaboration and wraparound care that families with children in daycare often need, he said.

Alexander is the executive director of the Catherine Hershey Schools for Early Learning, a spinoff of the Milton Hershey School. He made his comments Tuesday during the United Way of Lancaster County’s “Access to Early Childhood Education in Lancaster County” Zoom forum, the latest in the “Conversations about OUR Community” series.

Catherine Hershey Schools sponsored the session. Founded in 2020, the school is in the midst of a $350 million initiative to build six high-quality early education facilities in central Pennsylvania, with three of them scheduled to open in Lancaster County starting in 2026: CHS Elizabethtown, CHS Lancaster City and CHS New Danville.

All six facilities will serve underserved households and provide early childhood education and life coaching and outreach to families. Children who need additional services such as physical therapy or speech therapy can receive these on-site.

“Our biggest goal is really to break the cycle of poverty and create more prosperity for families in the long term,” Alexander said.

On Tuesday, he was joined by three other early childhood education professionals: Lili Dippner, vice president of education and child development at the Community Action Partnership of Lancaster County; Lisa Eckert, director of early childhood education at the Pequea Valley School District; and Lorita Valente, executive director of community programs at Luthercare. The moderator was Kate Zimmerman, president of United Way.

Dippner opened the event with a presentation documenting the large gaps in access to publicly funded early childhood education. In Lancaster County, she said, 82% of families eligible for preschool programs (ages 3 to 5) are not served.
(She noted that the data reflects only programs that receive some level of state or federal support; it does not include fully private operations and unlicensed facilities.)

Dippner said she sees an opportunity in particular to expand home visiting programs, which currently serve only 2% of eligible households. They are very effective, she said, and can benefit every family that uses them.

The industry faces difficult economic challenges. Government reimbursements do not cover the cost of high-quality early childhood education, and even with discounts, many families struggle to afford it. Due to revenue constraints, salaries are low and few providers can offer health insurance, which, combined with the workload, leads to rapid burnout and high turnover. The average tenure for field and administrative staff is about five years, according to Dippner.

Too often, the facilities just can’t get the numbers right. Pennsylvania saw a net loss of 600 programs between 2020 and 2023, Valente said, citing the Pa. Child Care Association.

“This is huge,” she said.

Access often reflects socioeconomic status: A wealthy family seeking a preschool program will have more options. Many families fall “in between,” Eckert says: They earn too much to qualify for publicly funded preschool programs but cannot afford them on their own.

Eckert said Pequea Valley has made progress through collaboration. The early learning program is a partnership between CAP and The Family Ministries, as well as support from the local business community, including Urban Outfitters. Initial funding included a collective grant from United Way of Lancaster County.

“We need to make sure families have what they need,” she said, “and when everyone recognizes that, an amazingly good relationship can develop.”

Among other things, the partnership with Pequea Valley has reduced CAP’s transportation costs from $85,000 per bus per year to $6,000, Dippner said. Those savings can go directly toward educating more children.

There are opportunities for collaboration and innovation, she said. Her suggestions include: centralized enrollment centers that would allow parents to review programs and grants and find the optimal care for their children; and policies that would allow companies to pay for reserved childcare spots that they could then offer to their employees as an employee benefit.

As for advocacy, stakeholders need to make it clear to lawmakers how acute the provider shortage is and how important it is to the well-being of families and the labor market, Valente said.

Nonprofit funders like the Steinman Foundation and the Lancaster STEM Alliance help spur innovation by investing in new programs, Heppner said. That serves as “seed capital,” and when lawmakers see positive results, they’re willing to provide permanent funding.

Ultimately, the problems of early childhood education are complex, but the solutions are probably not, Heppner said.

“It’s just difficult to bring everyone to the table,” she said.