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Early Childhood x Gering, NE

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Advancing Community Solutions: A Spotlight

By Mark Swartz | Photos by Jeff van Patten

September 4, 2024

'We Don’t Want Anyone to Leave'

The town of Gering, Nebraska (population 8,564 in the 2020 census), nestles up against a range of hills known as the Five Rocks in western Nebraska’s 11-county “panhandle.” Gering was a stop along the Oregon Trail, and the town celebrates its heritage every year with an Oregon Trail Days festival (“Nebraska’s oldest continuous celebration”).  The Oregon Trail Lounge closed years ago, but Learning Wagon is blooming in its stead. Soon, the establishment will serve baby bottles instead of beer bottles, and the music will be more “Sesame Street” than the Eagles (band member Randy Meisner, 1946-2023, is perhaps the area’s most famous son). 

“People have a lot of memories here,” says Staci Castro, owner-operator of the new child care center. “And don't get me wrong, I felt bad, but at the same time, you know what? The community is different now and has different needs. And we have plenty of bars.”

As Castro shows off the new space, remodeled by her husband, Vladimir, she points to the infant room, the kitchen, and the outside play area and reflects on what her business means to the families signing up for the waitlist. “I know how hard it is and how scary it is to have to leave your kids when you have to get to work. We’re not getting rich doing this, but we’re providing a safe space for kids. We’re providing employment, and we’re allowing people to stay here in Gering. We need that. We don’t want anybody to leave.”

Castro says Gering has a “tight-knit community vibe.” She adds, “Everybody's nice here. This is a place where you're driving down the road, and even if you don't know someone, they'll wave at you through their windshield.” 

Like a lot of small towns, it is fighting to hold on to its population, especially the families with young children. This is the demographic that patronizes restaurants and businesses, which, in turn, make the community more attractive to the high school graduates who might or might not return after college or early work experience. Across the North Platte River, the town of Scottsbluff (population 14,283) has more jobs as well as a community college and a hospital.

Building the Demand

Gering is one of 67 small rural towns participating in the Communities for Kids (C4K) initiative of Nebraska Children and Families Foundation

“We’ve learned that, in Nebraska, talking about brain development isn’t what gets people to the table,” says Marti Beard, Nebraska Children’s vice president for early childhood. “We talk about thriving communities, keeping families in town, and that’s how we build a demand for high-quality child care.” C4K’s collective impact model involves engaging local leaders, developing and communicating an early childhood plan, and facilitating a peer learning network for turning the plans into reality.

Not surprisingly, even true believers in educating young children need reliable and sustainable funding to accomplish their mission. Beard says private foundation dollars enable them to add about 10 communities every year; the Gering partnership launched in 2019. The partners raise matching dollars for the initiative. Local communities have leveraged over $10 million to fund projects and planning in their communities, and $14 million in federal funding has been awarded to local teams through C4K to plan, implement, and sustain local increases in access.

Officer Nelson

Nelson Mejia-Torres wants to be a police officer, but first he has to wait for his adult teeth to grow in.

“He’s the sweetest little thing,” says Kyla Knight, who was one of his teachers at summer camp for preschoolers at the Scottsbluff Family YMCA. “He wants to engage with his peers, and he wants to love them. If he has a safe space where he can make friends and get the resources he needs, he will flourish. And I think a school building is the best place for that.”

Paraprofessional Jessica Hernandez describes what Nelson can expect in kindergarten: “He’ll learn everything from how to sit to how to think. Helping those kids just brings me love, because I teach them things they didn't know.”

Nelson’s mom, Yesenia Torres, is assistant administrator at an Alzheimer's unit. During the pandemic, she caught COVID-19 three times—not an unusual occurrence for frontline workers. She was enrolled in nursing school, but then she had knee surgery and had to take the semester off. Grandma lives nearby and frequently watches Nelson and his older brother and sister.

Torres credits the Community Action Partnership of Western Nebraska (CAPWN) for the support she and her family rely on. “They help out with rent,” she says. “They help out with food. They help with the school supplies and everything.”

“When folks come in,” explains Sarah Ochoa, the agency’s director of community services, “we do a screening and figure out how to address today’s need and for the long run.”

Ochoa tells a story showing how much of a lifeline the schools are for low-income families. Just before a three-day break, one of the preschoolers started crying because there wasn’t any food in his home. “It was literally an hour before the end of the school day,” she recalls, “and within the hour, we did a check-in with Mom and made sure she had groceries.” That link led to further services, including parent education.

A New Generation of Advocates

Empowering Families complements CAPWN’s direct services with advocacy by and on behalf of the region’s Latino and Indigenous residents. “The immigrant story here has been pretty buried,” says program director Maricia Marquez. The U.S.-Mexico Bracero Program of 1942-64 brought laborers to work in the sugar beet fields, and more immigrants arrived from south of the border in subsequent decades. 

“Our generation,” she says, “has a strong connection to our roots and our culture, but we’re also very strong Americans as well.” (Marquez’s cousin Marty Ramirez is a legendary activist in the state.) She adds that recent immigrants from other parts of Latin America have undergone trauma in their home countries and on their journeys.

Empowering Families is conducting research on feelings of “belonging” in the area, and the preliminary results show alarmingly low levels. The organization aims to increase feelings of belonging through education and civic engagement.

 School and Family Partnerships

Jennifer Sibal, director of communications and engagement, Gering Public Schools, compares the experience of so-called child care deserts to homelessness, saying, “In our rural community, challenges look different. Homelessness doesn't look like people on the streets or sleeping under a bridge. It looks like couch surfing. The absence of child care doesn’t look like abandoned kids. It’s older siblings taking care of younger ones, rather than taking part in school activities. It’s children spending tons of hours on screens.”

Until recently, when town leaders discussed economic development in Gering, two issues would come up again and again. “They were talking about housing and workforce, housing and workforce,” Sibal remembers. “But nobody was talking about the third leg of that stool: child care.” 

She continues: “But I kept talking about it, and made it very clear that I was not going to stop."

Jordan Diedrich, executive director, Twin Cities Economic Development for Western Nebraska, experienced the intensity of Sibal’s campaign. “We used to help the occasional day care get started,” he admits, “but we didn’t invest our time in child care until I sat down with Jennifer at the Mixing Bowl (a local café) and learned about Gering Communities for Kids. She's very persuasive.” 

The father of two young daughters, Diedrich now has personal experience with the importance of child care for a professional trying to work a full day, and the issue is now part of Twin Cities’ mission. “It’s an investment in families right now and in our future workforce,” he asserts.

Of course, new sites for early education don’t count for much without qualified and dedicated staff. Knight (one of Nelson’s teachers last summer) relishes evangelizing for the profession, telling friends who might be unsure if it’s for them: “The second you walk into the room, those kids love you. Sometimes all they need is somebody to talk to. Once you try it, you’ll discover a whole new world of possibilities.”

CAPWN’s Ochoa mentions a teacher’s aide at her child development center. “I asked her, ‘Do you ever see yourself going to college?’ And she said, ‘No, I'm not college material.’ But with our encouragement, she earned her associate’s degree, and now she has a bachelor’s.”

Sixpence helps to ensure the quality of early education in the state. Program coordinator Renee Miller describes her job as “getting to be that person who has the backs of those who are teaching our kids.” Kalyn Tisue, who works with Nebraska Children’s Rooted in Relationships initiative, adds, “We remove all the barriers. We do the trainings when they want the trainings done. They don't have to pay.”

Mutual Advantages

City Manager Pat Heath, great-grandfather of two, has been working to make Gering more affordable and welcoming for new families with young children. Given high interest rates and the high price of construction materials, that means introducing multifamily homes and more rentals. He also sees affordable child care as an enticement. The local YMCA and the school district often work in tandem. Byron Olsen, director of student services, Gering Public Schools, notes, “Parents know their children are being cared for by YMCA staff.  They are well fed and getting good services. It's not just running around; it’s planned activities.”

Gering Schools Superintendent Nicole Regan adds, “The best success we’ve had is when we ask for help within the community and find mutual advantages.”

According to YMCA CEO Conrad Bostron, “Partnerships with public schools are extremely common in our movement, especially where resources are limited.” The Y has 6,500 individual members, of whom nearly a thousand are on a partial scholarship for things like early education.  

YMCA Associate Director Trevor Teichroeb describes a single mom who didn’t think she could afford the summer program. “I gave her that scholarship application,” he says, “and she broke down in tears.”

Olsen mentions a classmate of Nelson’s, a preschooler with disabilities who wouldn’t have had any formal learning without the YMCA program. The program included busing, which allowed the child’s father to work a full day. “I recently observed the preschool,” Olsen reports, “and he's just a different little kid now, which is kind of neat to see.”

Enrollment at Northfield Elementary had been declining, so the school decided to simultaneously boost numbers and meet a community need by building early childhood classrooms. Seniors from Gering High School (the alma mater of Sibal and her children) were involved in the construction.

“It’ll be cool to come back here and see something we built being used by the younger kids, seeing how it helps them,” says Hayden Bennett, 18, who plans to study physical therapy in college.

“Families were loud and clear about the need for full-day preschool,” says John Weideman, Northfield’s principal. “And that’s what kickstarted the plan to offer an experience for students at 3 years old and then to keep them in our district.” Two teachers, he says, jumped at the chance to teach the younger children.

Superintendent Regan acknowledges the way the Nebraska Department of Education financially supports creative ideas in rural districts. “We’ve had to learn how to advocate for ourselves,” she says. “They have been a great partner for us, as long as we’re telling our story.”

Statewide Philanthropy, Local Dynamics

“Listening to communities is something we really value,” says John Scott of the William and Ruth Scott Family Foundation. “When their vision sounds like something that can be accomplished with our help, then we're prepared to move forward. We don't really bring an agenda.” John Levy, the Scott Foundation’s president, adds, “Communities for Kids doesn’t do ‘one size fits all.’ Their team understands the local dynamics of each town, realizing that two towns, 15 minutes apart, can be vastly different.”

James Hubbard of the Sherwood Foundation notes that despite the differences between communities, many have come to believe that early education is the best investment they can make. “It's beyond having a place where kids can go for the day so parents can go to work,” he says. “This is how you get furthest upstream for all the issues our society faces.”  

Nebraska Children’s Rachel Sissel entrusts the Panhandle Partnership to coordinate the various players in order to make the delivery of services efficient. She particularly appreciates their all-for-one spirit, citing an incident where the organization told a funder it wouldn’t accept a grant unless children in all three areas of the panhandle were included.

“The entire region is a community,” Sissel says. “There’s a Western spirit here, a fighting spirit.”

Faith Mills, executive director of the Panhandle Partnership, says, “We couldn't do what we do if we didn't have Nebraska Children as a partner. They've got a big-picture national view, which lets us focus on high-quality programming and being innovative in our rural and frontier areas.”

“It’s community healing,” she says. “It’s community growth.”

We Have What It Takes

Sibal, who grew up here and now works for Gering Public Schools, remembers how neighbors supported her when she was a pregnant 19-year-old. “This community raised me,” she says. “It’s my life, and it’s where I’m raising my kids, and I absolutely don’t want it to shrivel up and die.

“Sometimes it feels like it could go either way, unless we act with intention,” she admits, before pausing, taking a deep breath, and quietly insisting: “We have what it takes for everyone to flourish here.”

About the author: Mark Swartz is a regular contributor to Early Learning Nation. The author of the children's books Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, Lost Flamingo, Magpie Bridge and The Giant of the Flood, as well as a few novels, he lives in Takoma Park, MD, with his wife and two children.