By Mary Alice Murphy
On Tuesday morning, the Community Partnership for Children (CPC), of which Terry Anderson is the coordinator, hosted a breakfast and presentation on shared services by expert Celissa Hoyt of New Hampshire.
The CPC is working on a shared services pilot program for Grant County childcare services. CPC is a not-for-profit organization that promotes excellence in the care and development of young children.
Anderson said the organization has been in the community 13 years.
She noted that District 38 state representative, Rebecca Dow, would attend through Zoom. District 39 representative, Rodolpho "Rudy" Martinez, and District 28 senator, Howie Morales, were in attendance, as were Silver City Mayor Ken Ladner and Grant County Manager Charlene Webb.
Hoyt is one of 10 founding members of the Seacoast Early Learning Alliance (SELA) in New Hampshire, a shared services model for early childhood programs to strengthen business practices and enhance program quality so that more resources are directed to quality for children. She is the full-time State Early Learning Alliance of New Hampshire director. She is consulting with the CPC on its shared services network.
"It's an exciting time to be in early childhood education and a challenging time," Hoyt said. "The CPC work is inspiring and has already had a strong impact on the community."
She explained that shared services is a powerful framework for strengthening early care. "There is always one more thing we can do. With the model, you can provide technical assistance. Our founders also work to shape policy."
Hoyt showed a PowerPoint slide that said: The Challenge: Parents can't afford to pay; Teachers can't afford to stay; and There has to be a better way.
Across the board in most states, early childhood program do not receive enough funding. "Nationally, early childhood education programs have struggled for years. Programs are vastly under resourced and have tried to solve it alone."
She said she believes that the ECE workforce shortage is worse than perhaps for the past 30 years. Hoyt said early childhood care and education is important because from birth to age 5 is the time of the most profound brain development. "And businesses in our communities need their employees to have reliable, affordable, high quality care so they can work. We have to do business differently; we must and we can."
She showed a graphic with the early childcare and education provider with the shared staffing, assets and expertise, which would improve quality with lower costs and save time and get more clout.
Hoyt gave a definition of what shared services is—a framework that allows a network of centers/homes to share staff and costs; a way to strengthen an organization's pedagogical and business capacity by pooling needs and sharing resources. Shared services can be led by a "hub" agency, which supports shared leadership and decision-making among participating programs.
The goal is to work smarter, not harder. Shared services networks provide economies of scale, such as in bulk purchasing; economies of specialization, by restructuring jobs so staff can focus on what they do well; and commitment to quality, by directing more resources to the classroom, providing better wages and benefits, more job satisfaction and better results for children and families.
"The CPC is a treat to work with," Hoyt said. "They have accomplished quite a bit. They have come together to share their ideas and best practices. They have set goals for strengthening their programs and quality and they have secured small pots of money."
She said the best situation would be for them to get a multi-year commitment of funding, so they can focus on building services and less on finding funding to continue their work.
Hoyt again bragged on the Community Partnership for Children. "They took on one of the most difficult services for shared services to take on. They call it the Relief Squad, which is a substitute pool. They broke down barriers with the Children, Youth and Families Department Child Care Licensing, so staff files and fingerprinting can be managed by CPC."
She said the group also found funding for ProCare software, which is leading ECE software to manage functions and a way to network together. She said CPC hired a part-time business manager and a part-time mentor/facilitator for the beginnings of a hub.
Anderson pointed out the logo on the PowerPoint presentation, that has LINKS in the middle of Grant County Community Early Care & Education. "We have community partners."
"Hats off to you for getting this done," Hoyt said. "They worked tirelessly when a center in the community was at risk of closing. It did close because of space and turn around time barriers. I know they're not done working on it. It is also developing a plan to strengthen their work with programs and centers."
She showed a couple of graphics tying pedagogical leadership plus business leadership to produce high quality early childhood education.
The pedagogical leadership gives site directors more time and energy to serve as instructional leaders and shared, embedded quality improvement staff support teachers, plus giving them time to think and plan. The result is the children receive the individualized, reflective teaching they need to succeed.
The second graphic of business leadership focuses on the "iron triangle." With full enrollment every day in every classroom and full fee collection, which produces the revenues that cover per-child costs.
Shared services as part of the business leadership bring a centralized, dedicated staff focusing on specific tasks, such as fiscal management, enrollment and fundraising. Automation and technology reduce time and errors. Skilled business leadership can track trends, forecast fiscal challenges and opportunities and ensure sustainability. With more time and more funds, the centers can attract high quality staff.
Hoyt pointed out what is required is a commitment to change. "Alliance partners must be willing to look deeply at how they currently provide services and be open to new ways to work; share financial and program information and lead the staff, board, parents and other key stakeholders through a successful change process."
"The design of any particular shared services alliance is unique," Hoyt said. "They all share the goal of strengthening business and pedagogical leadership across sites by creating intentional structures to share staff, information and resources."
The various permutations for a shared services alliance can have a range of approaches and entry points, including a web-based ECE "knowledge hub," a peer group sharing best practices, one or two shared resources, a shared back-office, and/or shared core values.
Hoyt led participants through the web-based New Mexico Early Childhood Alliance, newmexeca.org, with the different perks that teachers can utilize to cut costs and that leadership can use.
Examples of centralized services can include financial and accounting functions, enrollment, training and professional development, classroom observation and assessment, food program administration, funding development, vendor negotiation for discounted services, human resources and staff recruitment, maintenance and building needs, and grant writing.
Hoyt said deeper sharing could be structured in numerous ways—as an initiative of an existing organization, such as the CPC, which coordinates and provides services. With a large nonprofit, a multi-site program or a hub can provide management services to other independent programs and centers or a consortium of programs with a central administration, which functions as one business, can still keep the small, local neighborhood culture.
Results of shared services could be the shoring up of finances, reduced staff time on administrative tasks, operations or human resources, teachers with better wages and benefits, including a career ladder, family support and stronger child outcomes.
She talked briefly about what made the difference in New Hampshire, with a funder's vision, commitment to quality early care and education, a convener and capacity building, creating the space and conditions for collaboration and for innovations and sufficient, stable, multi-year funding. The Child Development Bureau of New Hampshire provides funding to customize the shared services website and funding for staff infrastructure.
What is next for CPC, Hoyt asked and answered: "more planning, looking for multi-year funding and community involvement and support."
A woman in the audience asked if shared services could work with a domestic violence shelter, which usually has children in it, as well as adults.
"We believe in ways to collaborate," Hoyt said.
Anderson said because of the childcare crisis in Grant County, with the Little Lambs program closing, " a way to stay connected is important."
A community member asked if the outcomes were being tracked.
"Yes, was have small programs in the New Hampshire model, that can save $6,000 to $10,000 a year," Hoyt said. "The large programs are saving $50,000 to $60,000 a year. A new tool has been developed that has a Google document dumping into a spreadsheet. And we also hear anecdotal successes."
Anderson said CPC wants to collect data. "We're fairly new, only three years into shared services. The purpose of this meeting is that I need your great minds. We need you to work collectively with us. I give credit to Con Alma for funding us for two years. And the Freeport-McMoRan Community Foundation has funded us for two years. The Thornburg Foundation funds our substitutes, the Relief Squad. That is bringing jobs. We have built a cohort of eight, and one has already gotten a full-time job."
ProCare software was funded by another foundation. "We keep ourselves going by piecemeal funding."
"In a perfect world, we would like to see state funding," Hoyt said. "That is part of our quality improvement work to get programs to where they can get to the point where they can pay to participate. If you can get pay from outside, it's better for the schools."
The Grant County Community Health Council director asked Hoyt if her group has experience in bringing in businesses to partner. "What is the vision of a broader partnership?"
Anderson replied: "We're a network of groups working together. We need to fill two slots on the board. We can't do this program in isolation. We want the Legislature involved. We are the only community in New Mexico in shared services for early childhood education. Other entities use shared services."
Hoyt said in New Hampshire what guided the process was that everyone partcipating shared a success and a challenge. One who had a success in what another group faced as a challenge got together to network. Each group has to determine what its needs are. For instance, in New Hampshire a property management vendor helped groups address their points of pain to connect and solve them. A commercial insurance vendor waived his commission. "You must find champions."
Anderson said all the childcare centers in Grant County have food programs. Someone could bring in a new business to serve them all. CYFD subsidizes childcare. "We need all processes to go through a one-stop center. That way CYFD would have one point of contact. It's what our partners want that will work. Conversations have to keep going. It's just in Grant County now, but we hope to branch out."
Sen. Howie Morales said when you're talking about permanent funding, New Mexico has the permanent fund, but that's another conversation.
"I'm surprised to see the fragmentation of child-care centers across the state, but not in Grant County," Morales said. "You still have to overcome some people's needs for autonomy."
Hoyt said there is a menu of items that each group can choose.
Anderson said Head Start has a work force shortage, "but they have an openness to come to the table. Sometimes it takes a while, and some get it early. The barriers are territorial and work load, along with different priorities."
The participants in the workshop stayed and worked with Hoyt for the rest of the day.