Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Student Selena Erata and her mother, center, with some of the nursery school’s teachers.
United Community Nursery School, a beloved, social justice-oriented institution that has lived on Temple Street in New Haven since the ‘60s, will be shutting down due to Covid-19-related financial woes.
The United Church held its annual budget meeting on Sunday, June 21, during which it voted to close the school for good. It had been shuttered since the pandemic began in March, with hopes of reopening.
Baisden said the school has been “a great gift to the community” and described the closure a “hard pill to swallow.”
She added that establishing a balanced budget has been a struggle since she first took on the role of school director.
“The teachers certainly don’t get what they deserve,” Baisden said of the six teachers who worked at the school this past spring, “but it’s always been about good quality of workplace and life. The teachers are working with little kids and families, and if they’re stressed then that’s going to come out.”
When the School Readiness Program, a state-funded initiative administered by the Office of Early Childhood, launched in 1997, Baisden was thrilled to be able to reach out to more families who would previously have been unable to afford to attend UCNS.
The program offers a certain amount of money per child each month based on parental income and the number of people in each household. This year, Baisden said, UCNS was serving an especially high number of low-income families.
When the pandemic took hold in March, a few families left the school. With the class no longer filled to capacity, a significant amount of funding went out the window.
The school was serving 26 families through the pandemic. They typically work with around 30 each year.
Prior to the pandemic the school had actually been planning to expand. Baisden said that they were hoping to launch a full-day toddler program in the fall, as many families with children under three years of age had expressed a need for child support.
“It would have worked were it not for Covid,” Baisden said.
United Church’s pastor, Rev. Jocelyn Gardner Spencer, who had a child at the nursery school, called the closure “a great loss to us all. The school has served hundreds upon hundreds of families in greater New Haven. … I believe the school’s legacy will live on in the children who have passed through our doors for so many years.”
She added that the church has, over the past couple of months, worked through “as many models and projections as we could as far as what it would look like to keep the school open.”
“As the state released its Covid-19 guidance for child care centers, it became clear that to comply with those requirements and run the program in a way that protects health and safety for children, teachers, and families, would not only be extremely challenging from a pedagogical and child developmental perspective, but would also be financially unviable due to the limits on group size.”
Though she is uncertain about the possibility of UCNS reopening at some point in the future, she said that “the church’s commitment to serving children and families in Greater New Haven, and to promoting social, racial, economic, and gender justice, remains as strong as ever. We just have to live it out in new ways now.”
She named partnerships with like-minded community organizations as one way of doing so. She added that the church will be providing a referral list of local centers with openings for students in the fall.
“As a Christian, my faith teaches me that death is not the end of the story — that new life can be born even out of heartbreak and loss. I pray that we will find our way to resurrection, too.”
“I know the church is really heavy-hearted about it,” Baisden said.
“We all do hope that we’ll be able to reopen; I know the teachers would love to see that. But it would either take a huge donation or a guarantee from the state or federal government to offer enough funding to cover the expenses of running a quality pre-school program.”
Baisden estimated that the school would need around $50,000 to $100,000 to reopen in the fall.
As Baisden mourns the school’s closure, she’s also busy trying to find out which schools and daycares have openings not only for children but for teachers.
“I’m in the process of trying to serve all my colleagues,” she said.
“We can’t collect because the church doesn’t pay unemployment, but they were willing to give us a generous severance package depending on how long we’ve been at the school,” she explained. Most of the teachers have worked at UCNS for multiple decades.
Laura Brown, whose son, Giulio, had attended UCNS, described herself as “personally devastated” about the school’s closure.
“More so I’m angry,” she said, “because I feel the response to Covid-19 hasn’t included thoughtfulness about what families will do as we reopen. The childcare crisis has gone mostly unnoticed.”
Brown pointed out that non-attention to this issue will disproportionately impact people of color. UCNS itself is a school designed to serve and prioritize students, families, and teachers of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
“It’s sad that we weren’t able to value it enough,” Brown said, highlighting a systemic lack of support for affordable early childhood education.
Brown said her son was lucky to be offered a seat at a public Pre‑K program. They are also considering sending him back to the daycare program he went to before he started school at UCNS.
Brown said she long knew of United as a New Haven institution, and she loved how her son engaged with the play-based curriculum.
Throughout the pandemic, the school has offered important structure for Brown’s family, especially as Brown and her husband have been working to manage full-time jobs while taking care of their child 24/7.
“Ask any parent and they’ll tell you there’s no getting used to it. Homeschooling a child and working full time is not tenable. It’s an impossible task,” Brown said.
While she knows of other pre-schools that have been holding Zoom meetings, Brown said her son is simply “not attentive to Zoom, or even FaceTime.”
Instead, Baisden, who is also a well-known puppeteer in the community, has been posting one or two videos a week of skits featuring puppet regulars like “Roxi Fox” to keep kids busy, engaged, and entertained.
Teachers at the school have been posting resources and materials on a private Facebook page and preparing “activity bags” every week that parents can pick up at the school.
They’ve also been actively calling families and working one-on-one with those who do not have Facebook pages or stable internet access.
“There are beautiful moments being home with my child and being able to spend this time with him. But at the same time I’m plagued with guilt that I’m not working and accomplishing more right now,” said Brown.
She also remarked that while the past few months have been a “huge challenge” for her, what makes her most upset is to think about the “many other people who have much larger challenges” and no childcare support.
Brown has yet to tell her son about the school closure. She said that Giulio is still “just waiting for the school to open back up.”
“We are waiting until we have a clear idea of what the options are, until we understand ourselves what’s happening. If we have any choices, we’ll give him a choice,” Brown reasoned.
“But,” she added, “we may not have a choice.”
On June 26, Baisden and the teachers gathered behind the school for a final activity bag give-away and to say goodbye to parents and students.
“It’s also so hard to think about ending my daily routine,” Baisden said. Every morning before work Baisden stopped by Willoughby’s for coffee. On Friday morning, she picked up coffees and muffins for herself and all of the other teachers.
At the school, Baisden looked through the last activity bags she and the teachers had put together. “The theme is summer fun,” she said.
Baisden unpacks “activity bags” she and her colleagues put together for students.
Inside were bubbles, coloring books, and other treats. The Children’s Museum, which has donated copies of a different book for each of the give-aways, sent over a stack of a picture book titled Summer Verano.
Baisden holding a copy of the “Goodbye Book.”
Baisden also leafed through a “goodbye book” that the teachers had put together, full of photos from trips and events that the school had organized earlier in the year.
The last in-person event that the school held was an open house for prospective students in March.
Vonceil Floyd, right, stands by as UCSN school teacher says goodbye to student Selena Erata.
Afina Erata, whose 5‑year-old daughter Selena will be attending kindergarten in the fall, said that she and her husband had been hoping the school would open up in the summer before they learned of the closure.
“We’re just hoping that there’s some way to solve the situation,” she said. “They are all super cute people! We were so lucky to find this school.”
This was Erata’s family’s first year in the U.S. after moving from Turkey to Connecticut. Her husband said that UCNS was far more affordable compared to other early childhood programs, and that the teachers were “so supportive throughout the enrollment process.”
Afina Erata with husband and daughter, Selena.
Nichole Daegele, whose two sons, Quincy and Dominic, both attended the nursery school, struggled to accept the closure as a reality.
Quincy, who is now 9 years old, attended the school when he was only 2. Daegele remembered helping build the nearby playground alongside other parents seven years back.
“I was a single mom recovering from cancer treatments,” Daegele said. “Everyone at the school was so supportive; they’re my extended family.”
Throughout the years, Daegele has continued to attend book fairs and school events, even as Quincy graduated to new grades and school systems.
“I definitely plan to stay in touch,” she said, “but the closure is very depressing.”
“Thankfully I have the means to support my family through this time, but many families do not. I did not a few years ago!” she added.
Nichole Daegele with her sons, Quincy and Dominic.
Teacher Vonceil Floyd identified “the unknowing” as the most “nerve wracking” part of the whole situation.
Teacher Vonceil Floyd (left) speaks with mother Nichole Daegele (right).
“I’ve just been hoping things would change and we’d be able to stay open,” Floyd said. Instead, this week she found out that the school’s closure will be effective June 30.
Floyd described the school as a “landmark,” and said that the “diversity of the school is really what mattered to so many families.”
“I’m seeking new jobs, but they’re so scarce in the field of childcare and education,” Floyd said. Other schools and daycares are preoccupied with trying to keep their own staff and faculty employed.
Floyd worked at UCNS for 23 years.
“We don’t just want to fade into the night,” Baisden said, teary eyed. “We want to thank everyone who’s helped us do this for so long.”