Page 39 - BusinessWest December 8, 2021

EARLY EDUCATION & CHILD CARE FACILITIES
RANKED BY CAPACITY
19
20
23
25
CENTER
MAKE WAY FOR DUCKLINGS
455 Island Pond Road, Springfield, MA 01118
(413) 732-2182; www.makewayforducklingsnurseryschool.com
CREATIVE KIDS INC.
1251 East Mountain Road, Westfield, MA 01085 (413) 568-9822; www.creativekidswestfield.com
WOODSIDE CHILDREN’S CENTER
155 Woodside Ave., Amherst, MA 01002
(413) 253-2604; www.woodsidechildrenscenter.org
ARMORY SQUARE CHILD CARE INC.
One Armory Square, Springfield, MA 01105; (413) 755-4955 www.stcc.edu/studentservices/childcare.asp
CAPACITY AND AGES
82
33 months to 6 years
75
33 months to KG
74
6 weeks to 6 years
74
3 months to 7 years
65
2 years, 9 months to 12 years
41
Infant to 8 years
36
2 months to 5 years
20
33 months to 6 years
HOURS
18 LONGMEADOW MONTESSORI INTERNATIONALE 777 Longmeadow St., Longmeadow, MA 01106 (413) 567-1820; www.longmeadowmontessori.org
20 BRIGHTERBEGINNINGS
411 Granby Road, South Hadley, MA 01075 (413) 532-5303; www.brighterbeginningcc.com
22 SIDE BY SIDE PRESCHOOL & CHILD CARE CENTER 27 Streiber Dr., Chicopee, MA 01020
(413) 532-2388; www.sidebysidepreschool.com
24 HAMPSHIRECOLLEGEEARLYLEARNINGCENTER 893 West St., Amherst, MA 01002; (413) 559-5706 www.hampshire.edu/elc/the-early-learning-center
7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
6:45a.m.to 5:30 p.m.
7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
8:15a.m.to 4:45 p.m.
Mary Jo McNamara
Lillian Krause-Ely
Lisa Martin
Romit Ben-Shir
Montessori-based preschool and kindergarten program promoting creativity, independence, and self-confidence, preparing children for a lifelong love of learning
Infant, toddler, preschool, full-year child care
Outdoor playground, providing children with a positive and supportive learning atmosphere; year-round educational programs; before- and after-school and summer programs; open enrollment; small classroom setting
Reggio Emilia-inspired campus; early-childhood program
She has some other advice for as well — to follow her lead when it comes to taking risks, something one needs to do to succeed as a leader.
“I’m a risk taker,” she told BusinessWest, referring to everything from that first gambit in Ludlow, the one that paid her $18 a week, to her partnership with MGM Springfield on a new facility in Springfield, to her involvement in the new Educare program that opened in 2019. “You can’t sit back; you have to go out there and take risks, and that’s what I tell those that I mentor. I tell them, ‘if you don’t take risks, you will not succeed.’”
Learning Experiences
“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning.”
That’s one of those quotes from Mister Rogers that Santos used to help encourage and inspire staff dur- ing the darkest times of the pandemic.
It’s more than that, though. It’s one of the pillars on which early-childhood education is built and one of the critical points Santos has spent a career trying to drive home to a wide range of constituencies.
With a little help from COVID, there is a now a bet- ter understanding of the importance of early-child- hood education and perhaps better odds for univer- sal pre-K to become policy in this country.
In the meantime, most have stopped referring to early-childhood educators as babysitters. And at a time when Santos is being honored by a number of groups for her many accomplishments, that is prob- ably the biggest. u
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
Part- and full-time hours (school calendar only)
Ann Rogalski
Preschool and kindergarten classes; gym and music programs; half- and full-day care; Bodies in Motion, tae kwon do, and dance; instructional basketball and soccer in Springfield
7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Frances Frere Sherri Morini
Educational preschool programs; spacious indoor activity room; open year- round; full-day program; summer adventures
8a.m.to5p.m.
Susan Dexter
Full-year educational program that provides infant, toddler, and preschool programming
7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Charity Provost
SERVICES
Nonprofit facility on the campus of STCC; providing children with a positive and supportive learning environment
Santos
Continued from page 37
the dream of being a pre-
she said. “I wanted people, and educators, and the community to know the importance of those years.”
She would become the director of Holyoke Chi- copee Springfield Head Start in 1979 and also go on to serve on the National Head Start Board of Direc- tors for 14 years, which gave her the opportunity
to not only advocate for the nation’s most vulner- able children, but make the case for early-childhood education.
Over the years, she would meet three American presidents and lobby countless elected officials on the importance of pre-K and the need to improve the wages of those in that profession. She has pictures of herself with then-U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, then- U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, sev- eral governors, and many other elected leaders.
But as important as her time with those elected leaders has been — and it has been vitally important to moving the needle on early-childhood education — Santos said the most valuable time she spent was with children in the classroom and with teachers and other staff members as a mentor.
She has taken on that role with countless individu- als over the years, including the woman chosen in
a national search to be her successor at HCS Head Start, Nicole Blais.
To say these two go way back is an understate- ment. Indeed, Santos was Blais’s preschool teacher in Ludlow in the ’70s.
Santos said she has been working with Blais dur- ing the transition, and has some pointed advice for her based on nearly 45 years of being in that job — and also advice provided by those who mentored her.
“One of them told me, ‘you have to take a bold, respectful approach,’ and I’ve never forgotten that,” she told BusinessWest.
school teacher.
It was there, and then, that a young man in her
class who was from Holyoke Chicopee Springfield Head Start encouraged her to start a facility in Lud- low. She did, eventually opening the Parkside Learn- ing Center in that aforementioned basement of the Boys & Girls Club, in 1973. But as she would eventu- ally learn, nothing about getting that facility off the ground — from securing the space to securing the funding — was going to be easy.
She recalls that Head Start was struggling finan- cially as an organization and was not able to actually pay her a salary.
“They offered me $18 a week in Commonwealth Corp. money, and I took it,” she recalled. “I had no benefits, no nothing, and I took that for about three years until my site started to generate some income.”
But what she also learned, rather quickly and much to her dismay, was that there wasn’t much respect within the community, and within the broad realm of education, for what she was doing with her life and her career.
“The perception was that we were babysitters out there, and I felt that people just don’t understand that these are critical learning years for children,” she said. “And the other piece is that children in that age group learn through play; some of my friends would visit and say, ‘why don’t you become a real teacher and go teach kindergarten?’”
Instead of listening to that advice, she spent a life- time convincing others that she was a real teacher and that early education was vital to young people, their families, and society in general.
“I was determined to change those perceptions,”
EDUCATION
DECEMBER 8, 2021 39
ADMINI- STRATOR
BusinessWest