COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Maria Charlotte didn’t know where else to turn.
After taking custody of five grandchildren — ages six, four, four, three, and one — the single grandmother found herself not only with five new mouths to feed, but five children who needed looking after during the day.
Charlotte, 58, already had three young daughters of her own and feared that tasking them with part-time child care would cut their own childhoods short.
So she hit the phones. After exhausting nearly every child care center in town, she struggled to find any that would accept all five of her grandchildren, much less at an affordable price.
Finally, after six months of searching, Charlotte found a solution 127 years in the making.
Early Connections Learning Centers, a Colorado Springs early child care nonprofit in operation since 1897, is Colorado’s oldest nonprofit child care organization, and provides affordable care in the state.
Colorado Voices
Early Connections Learning Centers
As a single working mother and grandmother, Charlotte realized that becoming the primary caretaker for five grandchildren would likely require her leaving her job, further tightening the financial strain she faced raising her daughters.
“I’m glad I got to see another side of child care, because before that it was just negative stories I heard in the news,” said Charlotte of finding affordable child care.
“But it’s opened my eyes… there’s a lot of caring people out here and in our community, so… that’s beautiful,” she said.
Charlotte was able to keep working with the knowledge that all the children under her care were in good hands. But with child care costs increasing across Colorado, Charlotte’s experience is becoming a more common one.
A 2023 report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that average annual cost for center-based care for a toddler in the state spiked, ranking Colorado the fifth-highest in the nation.
An analysis of 377 care centers in Denver by Brightwheel.com found that full-time day care for toddlers costs families nearly $1,600 a month. For infants, that number increases to more than $1,700.
In terms of percent of household income spent on child care, El Paso County is among the highest, with families spending a reported 36% of household income on child care expenses, according to County Health Rankings.
This is above the state average (31%), though below Park County, Lake County, and Dolores County, where percentages reach as high as 52% of household income.
Colorado has been working to ameliorate some of these increasing costs, most notably through House Bill 22-1925, landmark legislation passed in 2022 that paved the way for the state’s new Universal Preschool Program (UPK).
UPK aims to offer all Colorado children funding for one year of preschool before kindergarten, with some exceptions being made for three year-olds. The program has helped Colorado lead the nation in providing pre-school access to four year-olds, according to the state.
Early Connections now participates in the UPK program, though its history of child care dates back more than a century.
The building was originally built to serve 50 children: 25 boys and 25 girls. Photo courtesy Early Connections Learning Centers
The organization was founded in 1897 by fourteen women, but was spearheaded by Alice Bemis Taylor, a well-known Colorado Springs philanthropist who also endowed the Fine Arts Center, the Bemis-Taylor Child Guidance Clinic (now Pikes Peak Behavioral Health Group) and her own Bemis-Taylor Foundation.
Then called the Colorado Springs Day Nursery Association, Early Connections was dedicated to serving the child care needs of the working women in the city. It continues the same mission today, and still operates out of its original building, which is over 100 hundred years old and has been named to the National Register of Historic Places.
It has since expanded to five locations, serving upwards of 350 children every day, according to President and CEO Liz Denson.
“We believe that all children, regardless of their income, regardless of their family status, deserve access to the highest quality early education,” said Denson.
Denson pointed to the organizations’ sliding scale pricing model, so that families who can’t afford tuition can still access child care.
Early Connections considers a household’s income, which includes everything from paychecks to SSI to child support, when pricing tuition for the children. The scale ranges from as little as $5 per month to $400 per week, according to Early Connections.
“We have to have a place for our children during the day… so we can make sure that families have [the] ability to go to work, go to school, and provide for their own economic mobility,” said Denson.
The daycare in its first building was originally built to serve 50 students: 25 boys and 25 girls. Today, it holds about 90 children, and including the four other Early Connections locations, the organization serves around 350 children in total.
“Our goal is to provide the highest quality care for children and families,” said Denson, “To meet them where they are, to bring them where they can be successful… and also creating other additional services for other community members to access.”
Not only has Charlotte been able to continue working, but one of her daughters, Violet Shepherd (22), now works at Early Connections, helping other kids including her nieces and nephews.
“I really like working here,” said Violet, “The kids are really fun to be around, they’re full of energy… it’s really nice.”
Charlotte’s (left) daughter, Violet Shepherd (right) now works at Early Connections Learning Centers as a Teacher Assistant Photo: Chase McCleary, Rocky Mountain PBS
For Charlotte, other parents’ compliments of Violet are a significant point of pride.
“Just knowing that their kids love [Violet] so much and want to be here… that makes me so proud, because [Violet’s] that caring person that everybody here was to my children,” she said.
Both Early Connections and Charlotte’s grandchildren are growing quickly, she only has two little ones still left at home.
The organization is hoping to open new locations around Colorado Springs in the near future. Their ongoing “Building Futures” campaign is working towards building a new “Alice Bemis Taylor Center for Early Childhood Education (“ABT Center”) to expand the number of childcare slots as well as offer tools for recruiting, training and retaining early childhood educators.
To learn more about Colorado’s Universal Preschool Program (UPK), you can visit Rocky Mountain PBS and PBS Kids’ UPK website.
