GRAND RAPIDS — Leaders of the Itasca Area Schools Collaborative have known for years they would need to make significant cuts to the early childhood program.
Early EDge — formerly Invest Early — serves nearly all of Itasca County, with 18 preschool classrooms throughout the Grand Rapids, Greenway, Deer River and Nashwauk-Keewatin school districts.
The program started 20 years ago, when the Grand Rapids-based Blandin Foundation made a 10-year, $1.5 million commitment to early childhood education, particularly for at-risk children. The intent was to discover if “investing early” better prepares kids for kindergarten and beyond. Then, it committed another $21 million over the next decade.
The Blandin grant makes up half of Early EDge’s budget.
“About five years ago, I believe, we were notified from Blandin that the grant would be ending,” said Jackie Skelly, IASC executive director. “Which makes sense for the fact that nobody gets a 20-year grant.”
To maintain the same quality of programming, Skelly said cuts are needed. Next year, Early EDge will have a minimum of eight preschool classrooms in the Grand Rapids, Deer River and Nashwauk-Keewatin districts. Greenway, which has five classrooms, chose to run its early childhood program independently.
“This community was blessed in a way that no other communities have been blessed by having access to that kind of funding,” Skelly said. “And part of that was because the purpose of the funding was not only to identify that it pays to invest early, but then, this is a community need.
“So how do we make sure now our community sees there’s research that says it pays? How do we make sure we have the right people at the table engaging in the process to make early childhood sustainable?”
IASC: Reducing classrooms, expanding care opportunities
As of May 1, Early EDge will have eight preschool classrooms for the 2025-26 school year. Early EDge Director Darla Rahne told the Grand Rapids School Board that the program will serve about 180 students rather than 300.
The program will continue to be funded by state and federal dollars and tuition.
But Skelly told KAXE the program is still enrolling students, and there’s still the potential for additional classrooms if there's enough demand.
Every 4-year-old applicant has been accepted, Rahne told KAXE, and every 3-year-old has been accepted in Deer River and Nashwauk-Keewatin.
“Grand Rapids — it’s a bigger population, so we have more kids, more families,” Rahne said. “But at this point, we’re running the same level of 3-year-old programming that we have offered in the past.”
This year, 4-year-old classrooms had 17 kids and three staff, one teacher and two education support professionals, or ESPs; 3-year-old classrooms had 16 kids and three staff. Next year, Rahne said there will be 17-20 kids per class, with three staff for part of the day and two for the other part.
IASC also reduced the number of days of preschool programming, but Rahne said that will be offset by increased extended care options, where parents can pay for after school, before school and Friday care.
“There’s actually more care next year than there is this year. It just isn't compensated by a grant,” Skelly said. “ ... Are we reducing preschool program classrooms? Yes. Are we expanding opportunities for kids to have care more? Yes.”
'We want people to have jobs’
A Grand Rapids ESP — whose name is being withheld because she fears retaliation — told KAXE she loves her job. But she doesn’t think she’ll have it next year.
“We work with these kids that just need us much, much more than the typical child would,” she said. “Developmentally, they need us, or mentally, socially, emotionally. They just have higher needs, and I love working with those children.”
The ESP said she planned on working for Early EDge for a long time. And then she and her coworkers were told they no longer had jobs.
It started with the teachers, she said. In early March, they were given a few hours' notice of a teacher Zoom meeting, and then at that meeting, were told they were all fired.
“If they wanted to have a job there, they could reapply, re-interview, and they would hire eight out of the about 20 teachers,” the ESP said.
Shortly after, ESPs were given a seniority list and a rough estimate of how many positions there would be next year. About 30 would be without jobs.
Based on her position on the seniority list, the Grand Rapids ESP doesn’t think she’ll have a job next year, and it’ll be challenging to find another role in child care.
Staff knew there would be some cuts, the ESP said, but they didn’t think it’d be this drastic.
The Grand Rapids Herald-Review published a similar version of events April 26, saying the layoff announcement was shared with minimal notice to staff in a “hastily scheduled” Zoom meeting.
But Skelly said that is inaccurate. The Herald-Review has since published an article including information from Skelly and Rahne.
Skelly explained they began having monthly meetings with staff in February — not long after the Greenway School Board decided to no longer be part of Early EDge — and said that form of communication was well-received.
“I also explained at that point if something happens that feels like it’s kind of drastic, it’s going to impact you, I’m not going to make you wait three weeks and stew on it until our next monthly Zoom,” Skelly said.
Layoffs were first mentioned at the March 7 meeting. Skelly said they knew there would be classroom reductions, but they did not have all the details yet on what the layoffs would look like for teachers and ESPs. The Early EDge teachers are not part of a union, but the ESPs are.
The seniority list is required to be sent to ESPs each year, per their contract, Skelly said. Seniority will play a part in who is hired to fill positions, but location, hours and preferred age of students will all play a role.
Early EDge decided to post the teaching jobs internally, lay off all the teachers and hire them back as it added classrooms, because at the time, the organization had not started enrolling kids for the next school year.
“And so as that developed through March, we thought we need to pull this group together,” Skelly said. “ ... We need to pull them together and let them know because we also knew Greenway was posting for their early childhood positions, and some of those staff were like, ‘Do I apply for that? Do I wait and see what happens here?’”
An extra complication was the large geographical area in which Early EDge has classrooms. A teacher in Keewatin may not want to fill an opening in Deer River.
They had interviews the following two Fridays, and Skelly said she told applicants before every interview that openings were as of that day and another classroom could open.
“But we also want you to take care of yourself. So, if you’re like, ’You know what, I didn’t get offered. I don’t have a classroom yet, and I want to apply in Greenway, or I want to apply in Remer,’ ... do that,” she said.
"We said, ‘We support you. We’ll write you letters of recommendation.’ We want people to have jobs.”
The Grand Rapids ESP said she had to get a second job after Early EDge cut its hours. That alone won’t be enough to support her.
“If I had known three weeks prior, I could have been full time at my other job,” she said. “They just rehired everything they were short on.”
Skelly said it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Early EDge knew it would need to cut classrooms but estimated the realization started to set in last spring or fall.
A Grand Rapids parent, who asked not to be named, said she learned of the cuts after her child got accepted for the next school year, but at a different location in the city. She asked one of the classroom staff about it, who explained the reduction.
“I was just completely shocked,” she said. “Because I wasn’t expecting that answer.”
Early EDge sent formal communication to parents April 30. Skelly said they were waiting for a plateau in applications, but there had been communication with those who applied and were accepted for next year.
“We want to reassure you that Early EDge is not closing,” the letter stated. “ ... While we are making some additional reductions and some changes to programming due to changes in funding, these decisions have been made thoughtfully while staying within our available resources.”
New model needed for a struggling industry
Early EDge tried to keep cuts away from the classrooms as long as they could, Skelly said. Mental health services were reduced. Extended care, including summer care, and infant/toddler care were cut after the 2023-24 school year.
A toddler classroom will be returning to Deer River next year, thanks to fundraising led by the Deer River Chamber of Commerce.
Child care capacity in Greater Minnesota has been declining for decades. Part of the issue is that in rural areas, the economics of child care just don’t work, according to the state Center for Rural Policy and Development. Skelly said the same, noting infant and toddler care are especially expensive.
Greenway’s decision to run child care independently was also a financial one, Superintendent David Pace said. District leaders think it will be cheaper to run an in-house program.
The district has hired two staff to run the 4-year-old prekindergarten program, which is capped at 40 slots, with plans to add some kind of 3 and under programming. Pace said they hope to have decisions made by mid-June.
Blandin’s Invest Early initiative began around the same time child care availability began to worsen. The decision to not renew the Invest Early grant was part of a larger organizational shift to focus on capacity building and sustainability, said Kyle Erickson, director of rural grantmaking.
“I think it’s really important to understand that this is not [that] we’re cutting an organization off from funding. ... This does not mean Early EDge or IASC are not going to get funding anymore,” Erickson said. “ ... We really need to emphasize capacity building and sustainability and resilience, whether it's here in the home giving area, in Itasca County, or across rural Minnesota, just because community needs have changed.”
Skelly expressed interest in expanding child care options beyond preschool in the future through some type of community partnership.
“We don't necessarily have to or need to do child care, but we're willing to do what will help meet the needs of the community if we don't have what we need in the community,” she said. “But we can't do it at a school district’s financial loss.”
The Invest Early project was a blessing, she said, and now it’s time to build from it. That’s part of the reason they rebranded as Early EDge, to show it is a new program.
They haven’t had a lot of community input in the process, despite hosting engagement sessions. But local businesses are interested in helping find a solution and building a new model.
“There’s hope. ... It does take workers to come to the table and do work,” Skelly said. "... We’re school district employees, but our goal is to connect with the community and serve them.”
Editor’s Note: The Blandin Foundation is one of the organizations that provides funding to KAXE. The foundation granted $500,000 to the station over three years in support of its expanded local news operation.
