For years, early childhood leaders have been asked to solve structural problems with predictable answers: Improve quality. Expand access. Support families. Retain educators. Strengthen transitions into kindergarten.
All of it matters, but none of it can be fully accomplished with our fragmented system, one in which Head Start, child care, public pre-K, special education and K-12 are all funded separately, governed separately and operated separately.
On their own, these programs don’t always fit the needs and realities that many families with young children are actually facing.
That’s why in rural Skowhegan, Maine — a community facing significant challenges, including poverty, transportation barriers and a shortage of care options — we decided not to work around that fragmentation but to fix it. Following the national Educare model, we intentionally engaged in a combination of cross-sector partnerships and public policy change in a local effort.
The result is a broad solution: A new infant-through-grade-five public school that includes babies, toddlers, preschoolers and elementary students on one campus.
Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.
In Skowhegan, we did not want to just build a school; we wanted to build a case for a new way forward that shows what high-quality early education can look like in practice when systems align. Educators in Skowhegan and at Educare have known from the outset that one strong school would never be enough. That’s why we sought to create a replicable structure in which children could learn in inclusive settings and where families could access support through a more connected system.
In our rural state, Educare wanted to influence the broader conditions that shape quality for children and families across communities. That meant starting with partnerships and increasing commitments to early care and education from all stakeholders, including the area’s future workforce.
Such partnerships build trust, and deepening that trust made greater change possible. Through our Educare Maine Lab School and Learning Hub, we partnered with home-based and center-based child care providers in Skowhegan. (Educare Maine was formerly known as Educare Central Maine.)
Educare did not approach that work as outside experts arriving with answers. Educare coaches worked alongside local providers to strengthen quality, stabilize programs and build a more coherent early childhood ecosystem. And our joint work surfaced evidence from other communities. With the University of Maine, we gathered data showing that providers were more likely to sustain their businesses and improve quality when they had coordinated support.
That local pilot program became the basis for statewide legislation: First4ME, a model designed to help communities collaborate around early care and education rather than compete within a fragmented system.
As Skowhegan planned a new elementary school, local leaders rallied, choosing not to replicate the traditional model, and instead aligned the building with Educare Maine’s research model of child development and family needs, professional development and community partnerships.
Because there were already infant and toddler classrooms on the district campus, the superintendent made a compelling case to the state that our youngest learners should be included in the future of this school.
That helped persuade Maine’s Department of Education to do something it had never done before — include infant-toddler space in a new school construction project, a fundamental policy shift signaling that care and education do not need to exist in separate silos.
Families cannot navigate five disconnected systems across long distances with limited transportation and few available providers. Programs cannot sustain quality without shared infrastructure. And communities cannot thrive when early childhood is treated as a private challenge instead of a public priority.
Related: Lessons from the first state in the nation to offer universal child care
What happened in Skowhegan was not accidental. It was built step by step, and it helped redefine what public education can be.
But the fragmentation in our area wasn’t limited to the provision of early education. Too often, early childhood policy discussions focus on isolated interventions — one grant here, one pilot there, one program expansion somewhere else. But families do not experience policies and systems in pieces. They experience them as either connected or disconnected, accessible or burdensome, responsive or impossible to navigate.
If, in other districts, we want systems that work, we have to build them the way we did in Skowhegan. Educare Maine is now continuing this work across the state, assisting communities in recognizing opportunities for both local and broader solutions.
What began as a local necessity in Skowhegan now offers a scalable blueprint for a nation drowning in child care deserts and fragmented systems. By following Maine’s lead — pooling cross-sector funds and rewriting state construction policies to include infants — other states can stop applying temporary band-aids to early education. Integrating infant-to-grade-five care directly into public school infrastructure transforms a private family burden into a shared public asset, proving that the best way to solve a national crisis is to stop building systems in pieces and finally build them whole.
Tracye Fortin is the Educare Maine chief impact officer and former chief operating officer of KVCAP Child & Family Services and Educare Maine at Waterville.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story about public school for infants and toddlers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
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