Now Showing: Cinema Becomes Daycare

Coming soon to a theater near you is a classroom of babies learning ASL alongside their ABCs.

That is, a former theater — the old Cine 4 movie theater at 25 Flint St., which on Monday will reopen as four infant-and-toddler classrooms as well as a new administrative hub for Friends Center for Children.

Dozens of educators, advocates, parents, and politicians gathered on Friday morning for a ribbon cutting in honor of the newly-renovated building. They filled the plush seats of the building’s one remaining movie screening room, which will continue on as a community film-watching space, according to Friends Center founder Allyx Schiavone. 

Then, after an array of speakers and a short movie about Friends’ teacher-housing program, visitors had a chance to explore bright, nature-centered classrooms with cribs and changing tables, blocks and books and toys, cubbies and whiteboards. 

The building now contains four classrooms as well as administrative offices and a staff lounge. It will create 13 new jobs, according to a press release, and open up 32 infant and toddler childcare spots (not all of which have been filled yet).

A future phase of the renovation will bring even more classrooms, along with a library and mobile bookspace.

“From blockbuster movies to building blocks for kids: look at what you have done,” said Mayor Justin Elicker.

On Friday, Schiavone framed the center’s expansion as one step toward a more sustainable model for childcare that works for staff and families of all income levels, not just the wealthy.

She described a daunting tightrope that many childcare providers aim to walk: compensating employees fairly while making tuition affordable to families, often with limited governmental funding. According to Child Care Aware, the average wage in the childcare field is $32,700 in Connecticut — almost exactly the amount it costs, on average, to send two Connecticut children to a childcare center.

She said that buying and rehabilitating an old building, as opposed to paying rent for classroom space, is a step toward minimizing costs for the childcare center — and enabling solutions to that scarce-funding bind like a new rent-free teacher housing program, a weekly food rescue operation, and a sliding-scale tuition structure.

Over the course of Friday’s remarks, politicians and administrators repeatedly sung the praises of Friends educators and all childcare workers — who typically earn very low wages while caring for kids at their most critical developmental stage, years that have the potential to shape kids’ future health, academic, and criminal justice-related outcomes. 

“They are brain builders,” Schiavone said of early educators. A field that overwhelmingly hires women and people of color, the workforce faces ​“longstanding biases” that devalue their profession.

For the last several weeks, a trio of teachers — Val Shaw, Ann Moore, and Kiyla Anderson — have been preparing their classroom for what will eventually be eight young children.

“I’m just ready to get the kids in,” said Anderson, a new teacher at Friends.

Anderson and Shaw have been visiting the homes of their future class. 

The home visits help with transitions, ensuring that kids see a familiar face when they go to daycare for the first time. They’re also helpful for the teachers: ​“You learn the temperament of the child,” Shaw said. She connects especially well with the shy and nervous kids. ​“I believe in observing a child’s energy and feeding off of how they’re doing.”

Shaw, who’s been a Friends Center teacher for the last 11 years at the organization’s East Grand location, brings a love of American Sign Language (ASL) to the classroom. Back when she operated her own in-home daycare, she recalled, ​“I wanted to find a way to bridge communities.” She earned her ASL certification — and now incorporates the language into her day-to-day work as an educator.

One of Shaw’s co-teachers, Moore, has been helping to set up the classroom with sign-language blocks, labels, and magnets. 

She’s thrilled about the idea of learning ASL. ​“I’m excited for that!” she said. ​“I’m gonna be learning as well as the new babies. I think that’s awesome.”

Moore is a new teacher at Friends, having worked for 38 years at a hospital-affiliated preschool that recently closed. By now, her earliest class of students are in their forties. She’s seen some of them get married, have children; she likes to keep in touch. ​“That’s the best part,” she said. ​“To watch them grow up.”