AMHERST — Holding 17-month-old Romare Finch in the Early Learning Center’s outdoor infant space, Olivia Clement Finch still struggles to understand how a place so beloved by families — and so difficult to replace — could soon close for good.
“This is a very sweet place,” Clement Finch said about the center located at the West Bay Road edge of the Hampshire College campus, screened from the neighboring Applewood Apartments by a line of trees. “It’s a really big loss. We were on so many waitlists since I was pregnant, and to get infant care that is so thoughtful, nurturing, progressive and community-minded, it felt like we were so lucky. This has been the most amazing care.”
“He loves his teachers, and now we’re scrambling to find out what we will do for care over the summer. We’re calling places and getting back onto waitlists.”
The Early Learning Center’s impending closure is scheduled for early June, just two months after Hampshire College announced it would end operations later this year. The move threatens one of the Valley’s most distinctive early childhood programs — a center known for its outdoor education and Reggio Emilia philosophy that serves infants through preschoolers and has long been intertwined with the Five Colleges community.
Clement Finch is not alone in expressing shock about the center’s future. Kiara Badillo of Chester, who was a Hampshire work-study student at the ELC from 2017 to 2020, is now a parent affected by the looming closure. Badillo’s life has been shaped by the work in early childhood education.
“One of the greatest things that affected me here is to see myself as a parent,” Badillo said. “A lot of student teachers get to see what relationships with children, with students, look like.”
For Badillo, this meant seeing the children as “autonomous beings” and opened her eyes to how humans see the world and invest in relationships.
Badillo’s own children, Camilo, 3, in the toddler room since last August, and Selena, 4 months, who was supposed to start in the fall, won’t get the full opportunity at the ELC.
“My kids aren’t going to have the personal connections with the teachers here, who love our kids as their own,” Badillo said.
Outdoor education
The Early Learning Center, which dates to 1981 and opened its own building in 1988, uses the Reggio Emilia approach, with the day running from 8:15 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and as much time spent outside as possible.
Originally conceived as a place for Hampshire faculty and staff who would get first priority, many of the 34 students are now associated with the Five Colleges. Parents on campus are often able to drop in, such as those who may need to nurse their children, while the children have chances to walk through the campus or be brought to the nearby Eric Carle Museum for story time.
The large outdoor space features a garden designed with native plants — including fruit-bearing varieties for seasonal picking and species chosen to attract butterflies — alongside a mix of play structures, a slide, Duplo building blocks, and picnic tables.
Ronit Ben-Shir, the ELC’s director, points to the logs that children might use as a spaceship, or a house. “Kids can use their own imagination and knowledge out here,” Ben-Shir said.
Each classroom in the building has direct access to the playground, and inside are spaces right-sized for little people.
“We visit every child at home each year,” Ben-Shir said, explaining what is part of knowing about the whole child. “That’s a big commitment, but we find it’s really, really important.”
One of those children is Brian Dunne, 5, who makes a loudspeaker from the Duplo blocks. “I really like it because it’s so cool,” Brian said.
He also recently wrote and drew pictures for a chapter book about a frog having an adventure with a rabbit. That chapter book, with each chapter four pages long, was read aloud before nap time.
His mother, Ella Dunne of Leverett, is a lead teacher in the toddler room and the ELC has been a place for both Brian and his younger sister Ruth, 3. Dunne said the mostly outdoor education helps protect their childhood, which was important to her and her husband. “It’s really where they come into their own,” Dunne said.
Closure is ‘crushing’
Kim Lee Ripley, lead teacher in the infant room for 26 years, works with children from 6 to 8 weeks to 14 months old. She said she and other staff have been hit equally hard by the looming closure.
Filled with emotions, Ripley said she doesn’t know what she will do after June 5, but takes pride in her daughter, Cecelia, who graduated college and is an assistant teacher in the infant room.
“I nurtured my baby here, and look at her now,” Ripley said.
But as she smiles about the memories, Ripley sheds tears about what the place has meant. “We’re all leaving jobs but dreaming of a way we can all come back together,” Ripley said.
“We see children as full citizens,” Ripley said
Ripley said those on site work really hard to make transition times sacred, with an infant schedule that evolves over the course of the year. Nap time may last from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., then the children wake up slowly with a snuggle. There are usually four adults in each room, along with assistant teachers, and 12 to 15 work-study students.
“Everything we do is sharing space in an empathetic and democratic way,” Ripley said.
Each day, about 75 to 100 photos are sent via email to families, as staff believes wholeheartedly in building rapport with parents, Ripley said.
Many of the staff could be directors or lead other programs. In the infant room, one of those is Michelle Sullivan, with 30 years of experience and 25 years of working with children under 3, who “knows respect is an act of love.”
“Working with infants even at 8 to 10 weeks, in a group, is a rare opportunity. They are young kids, but they are connecting with language other than words,” Sullivan said. “It is hard to find places that can afford the respect these infants deserve, that everybody deserves.”
“Crushing” is how she describes the feeling of possibly having to leave her field. “I know the work I do is important, to support new parents in this way,” Sullivan said.
For fellow teacher Paul Murphy, it is also about working with the Hampshire College students themselves in an authentic collaboration. “It’s really rich for them and the kids,” Murphy said.
“There’s been so much support and outpouring of love from the current families working with us to help us through this,” Murphy said.
Emily Tareila of Millers Falls, who works at Amherst College, calls the ELC “pretty extraordinary” as one of the few places in the Valley to offer infant care through preschool in the Reggio Emilia framework that emphasizes children’s autonomy.
Tareila moved from the Bay Area 10 years ago. “This has such an incredible reputation in the Valley,” Tareila said. She appreciates the social and emotional learning, respect and international pedagogy and also how it aligns with her family values.
Tareila’s son, Sandy Carter, started at 9 months and is in his third year.
“I’m really blown away by how this school inspires slowness, presence and nurturing children’s needs,” Tareila said. “There are profound ways of being in this world, and know this will have lasting effects on people.”
“They like the emphasis on community here, leadership are attuned to connect families with each other,” Tareila said.
That community is critical as they share resources and mutual aid, financial help and job applications in the closing days of the program.
“This has been a laboratory for other early childhood learning centers that want to learn about this. I feel like this is a great part of living and legacy will be rippling out,” Tareila said. “The seeds being sown here are the world I want to see,” Tareila said.
Even as photos and emails and regular updates are sent throughout the day, the connection between staff and families starts before children ever arrive at the Early Learning Center.
“They come to your house and meet your child in their own home,” Clement Finch said. “It’s very thoughtful in the way they work with parents to get to know your children’s needs.”
Badillo has found in-home daycare spaces in Northampton, where both children will be going next fall, though summer remains unknown.
“To be put in this predicament is unfortunate and devastating,” Badillo said. “The most frustrating part is why not try to save the one safe space, that is salvageable and could have financial stability.”
“This is uniquely designed to keep the part of Hampshire pathway for littles,” Badillo said. “They come into this knowing they are Hampshire students.”
Some of the children, understanding this idea, have quipped that they will be the last Hampshire alums.
“You’re never going to find another space, at the cost we offer it,” Badillo said.
One of those who graduated from the school is Cecelia Ripley, an assistant teacher in the infant room. Ripley observes that this was a place where she was present even before her birth.
“This place means my mom’s job — I was in utero while in this building,” Ripley said. “It means my preschool, and where I grew up. And it was where I spent every snow day dropping in and babysitting for ELC students. This place means all of those things to me.”
She has returned to her Easthampton home after graduating from college, reflecting on a time when she would drop by during winter and summer breaks.
“This was my safe place to be nurtured by young children,” Ripley said. “You don’t have to be anything but present with them.”
She intends to go to graduate school and the questions she wants to ask all start with young children after learning through osmosis.”This place has been my own intellectual playground,” Ripley said
“There’s something unique about this place, maybe it’s intangible, but it’s true, and everyone feels it,” Ripley said.
Responding to closure
Drew Richard of Northampton is one of the parents organizing efforts to respond to the closure. A graduate of Goddard College whose 4-year-old daughter, Salem, is in her first year at the Early Learning Center, Richard said the program has been a “head trip” for her after previously being enrolled in a French preschool in Rochester, New York.
“It’s been a really important transition for her. She’s been given the space to form friendships, and really fast, and has allowed us to build community,” Richard said.
The scenarios he sees are fundraising for the ELC (https://www.gofundme.com/f/elc-staff-bridge-fund) and securing a zero interest loan, working from a budget developed by Ben-Shir to become an independent entity.
“Everybody has been really interested in finding ways for the ELC to persist,” Richard said. “People care about keeping it for the summer.”
There has been confusion around the lack of flexibility from Hampshire administration for not shutting for the summer and the lack of dialogue about how it could be severed from the campus, similar to how the Carle and Yiddish Book Center exist.
Before the center closes, it will have the usual bridging ceremony that concludes each year.
Recently, Sen. Jo Comerford and Rep. Mindy Domb, Town Manager Paul Bockelman and Kristen Elechko, the director of Gov. Maura Healey’s western Massachusetts office, and Amy Kershaw, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care, dropped by for a special meeting.
Ben-Shir said those discussions centered on if there is a way to carve off the ELC. “We want to separate ourselves from the college and we’re talking about different scenarios,” she said.
Those could include becoming a cooperative, or becoming part of a different college. Ben-Shir asked Kershaw about short and long-term support that would be needed and whether they could physically exist in another place, even though the playground was built with a $100,000 grant.
“What makes this place is the people,” Ben-Shir said.
“We have a vision to come back in here,” Ben-Shir said. “We need to believe it will come back. If you don’t believe in something, you won’t be able to work on it.”
