Early Childhood Center plans to close after 93 years
By Mia Timlin
On Thursday, Feb. 15, an email went out informing the student body that the Early Childhood Center will be closing after 93 years of service to the St. Catherine University campus and the surrounding community at the end of the ‘23-24 academic year. According to the email sent on behalf of Tracey Gran, St. Kate’s senior vice president and CFO, closing the ECC is an unideal but necessary response to “staffing challenges and enrollment instability” as well as operations and finances growing “increasingly difficult to manage.”
The ECC will be closing on five full-time and one part-time employees and 19 enrolled children. There are currently no St. Kate’s students or faculty with children enrolled in the program, and the ECC is not currently tied to any Early Childhood Education curriculum.
While the ECC is not serving campus students or faculty, there has been some pushback from community members who do use the center. There is currently a petition online with over 300 signatures calling on people to “save the St. Catherine’s Early Childhood Center.” The petition states that the families and staff of the ECC are “shocked and devastated” by the closure, and no conversation involving how to move forward with the center was ever brought to “ECC stakeholders (parents, teachers, ECC staff).” You can find the petition here.
Supporters of the petition have left a number of comments, detailing their own experiences with the ECC and advocating for the people who will be impacted by the closure.
A comment left on the petition by Katie DiCarlo Carter says that “closing a historic center which has consistently provided quality care shouldn't be the first line item during budget cuts. At the very least, parents, teachers, and staff should have been allowed the respect of being involved in the process and possibly finding other solutions/ways to stay open aside from unilaterally being shut down.”
Families aren’t the only ones who find the shut-down to be disappointing. Some students feel as if the decision doesn’t align with St. Kate’s mission.
“I heard about the closure from the email sent out in February. I didn’t know too much about the center or the programs it offers but I definitely feel for the kids and families that will be affected by this,” said Teji Hunt ‘26 (Data Science). “I feel like it’s another one of those unfortunate cases of education and child care not getting the support it needs, whether that’s from the place they are located or state funding. St. Kate’s is supposed to sort of uphold this mission of strong women leaders and being a positive impact on future generations. Having to close something like the ECC, where a future generation is supposed to get support, kind of goes against that mission, which is sad to see.”
In a conversation with the Star Tribune, Sarah Voigt, director of communications for St. Kate’s, says that the closure is “not a surprise, given the things we have seen in the local news and national trends.”
Voigt attributes the closing to an overall decline in enrollment (the center has seen an average of 30 students in the past) as well as “changes in state funding” and increasing costs of operation.
Parents of the students in the ECC recognize these difficulties, but many have been vocal on the university putting more effort into finding a way to remain open and question whether as much was done as possible to find an alternative. Others feel that they should’ve been provided more transparency and warning from the university, stating that many early childcare centers have waitlists that in some cases can get up to years long and affordable early childhood education can be hard to find.
The closure of the ECC is definitely a change for St. Kate’s, and opens up the question of what direction these changes are taking us. The ECC is set to permanently close their doors on May 24.
