The national nonprofit plans to the occasion with an “intentional year of celebration, reflection and doing what we’ve always done — center the voices of educators,” said CEO Michelle Kang. 

A century is a long time for any organization to exist. It is a long time — period. Thus, NAEYC’s centennial presents an opportunity for longtime early childhood educators and leaders to recognize the progress the field has made, and to consider why, 100 years later, some systemic issues remain unchanged. 

Founded in 1926 and first known as the National Association for Nursery Education, NAEYC has a long history of promoting high-quality education for children from birth to age 8, advocating for improved working conditions in the field, and helping families and the general public understand the value of early childhood education. Today, it is the largest early childhood education association in the country, with affiliates in nearly every state, reaching hundreds of thousands of educators through its research, advocacy and membership network.

Over the past century, NAEYC has been involved with a number of the profession’s major . The organization participated in the creation and expansion of , a federal program that provides high-quality early care and education to children from low-income families; collaborated on the development of the (CDA), a nationally recognized credential for the field’s educators; and built the first national to demonstrate quality in early learning programs.

But at the same time, the field has been defined by stagnation in critical areas, such as low compensation, insufficient public funding and a lack of professional recognition. 

“It’s a lot of ‘two steps forward, one step back,’” said Marcy Whitebook, who co-founded the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) in 1999. “It’s not that we haven’t made progress. It’s that these problems we’ve had for a long time endure.”

Whitebook, a septuagenarian, recalled meeting with other child care workers in the 1970s and 1980s to campaign for better working conditions. At that time, these teachers felt their contributions to society were underpaid and undervalued. 

“People who did the work had no rights, raises and respect,” Whitebook said, referencing the of a campaign from that era. “That’s still true.”

Few would dispute that. Early childhood educators today make an average of to care for and teach the nation’s youngest children, according to the CSCCE 2024 Workforce Index — despite a growing body of research and increased awareness among the public that the early years are foundational for learning and development, and deeply connected to a person’s eventual success. 

In a of the early childhood workforce, released by NAEYC in February, educators reported high levels of burnout and increasingly unstable personal financial circumstances. One teacher in California said, “I’m constantly worried about making rent and affording groceries, which distracts me during the day.” 

Many teachers are also dealing with the consequences of working in understaffed programs. Teacher turnover remains high and recruitment challenging, largely because many educators leave the field for better-paying jobs elsewhere. 

What would most help them stay in the field, the survey respondents said, is better pay and more employee benefits. Instead, many providers are experiencing stagnant federal funding and a perceived reduction in public support. 

Carol Brunson Day, who became a NAEYC member in 1969 and later served as the organization’s president, believes that wages and compensation remain the biggest issue facing the field. 

“That problem was there when I entered, and it’s still there,” she said. “We’re working on it, but we don’t seem to be getting the kind of traction we should be.”

Day added: “Until we solve that problem, we are still going to have high turnover, which is not just not good for teachers, it’s not good for young children.”

Day also spent 20 years as president of the Council for Professional Recognition, a nonprofit that NAEYC helped form in the 1980s to oversee the administration of the CDA credential. 

That credential, she said, has not only helped “produce competent caregivers,” but has also created a pathway for a racially, culturally and linguistically diverse workforce — primarily women — to advance their careers in early childhood education. As a result of getting many community colleges to recognize the CDA and award credits toward an associate degree, some early educators have been able to use their CDA as a springboard to earn four-year degrees and beyond. “It’s not perfect yet,” Day said, “but it’s there.”

Kang called the credential “one of the best first steps into the field of early learning,” noting that at her own son’s high school, students can pursue coursework to earn their CDA before graduation. 

“It has represented the path for so many people who would not otherwise have been able to be part of the field,” Kang said.

Even still, it’s not a solution to the lack of professionalization that early childhood educators face. There is still, among much of the public, a perception that adults who care for babies and toddlers are not teaching, but “babysitting.”

“We have not gotten to a place where we fully understand, as a community and a country, that these are professionals doing this work,” Kang acknowledged. “We push back against the narrative that anybody who loves children can do this work.”

That misconception likely perpetuates the low compensation in the field and the limited federal investment it receives. If the public and policymakers recognized the importance of the early years, they would, theoretically, want to pay the professionals who work with young children a living wage while also investing public dollars to boost quality and accessibility. 

“The entire system depends, basically, on very underpaid people doing the work,” said Whitebook. “The whole thing has been operating on cutting corners with the people who do it.”

Indeed, the current structure of the system is unsustainable, said Kang, resulting in a “” of early care and education. And yet she finds herself thinking back to at least one point in the field’s history when that was perhaps not the case.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, in early care and education allowed the field not only to survive the disaster, but to come out of it, in some respects, stronger than before. That was also a time when many families and government leaders referred to early childhood education as “essential,” though Kang said she hasn’t heard that sentiment expressed for several years now. 

“There is very little about COVID that I would say we want to go back to,” Kang said, “but I do want to go back to that moment where policymakers on all sides of the political spectrum, families, community leaders recognized the importance of early childhood education and the investment needed to have it work well.”

It proved that it is possible for public dollars to buoy early childhood education and to raise the stature of the professionals who work in the field, she noted. 

“I don’t want to see us have another global calamity to get there,” Kang said. But when she reflects on NAEYC’s 100 years and the narrative around high-quality early learning, she said one thing is clear: “We need to support the professionals who are doing this work … so children can get everything they need to become the citizens we want them to be.”

While teachers of all grades shape their students’ lives, kindergarten teachers play a unique role in that they build a formative early bridge from home to school. They introduce fundamental academic skills, build foundations for social and emotional development and help young learners develop confidence, curiosity and a lifelong love of learning. 

“As an educator, my mission has always been clear: to ensure every student, regardless of background, zip code, or circumstance, has access to a high-quality education,” Gray wrote in a published by the NEA Foundation. “I see my work as an act of justice.”

Gray has started a number of programs at her school to support students in need, including working with classes to raise funds to donate to peers and creating opportunities for families to volunteer as tutors. She has also participated in various teacher advocacy efforts. Gray has testified before her state’s legislature about issues such as mentorship and compensation, and has participated in the , which aims to improve the teaching profession and student outcomes.

In the conversation below, she reflects on her career, the importance of mentorship in education and what drives her to make change — whether launching a new initiative at her school or using her voice to advocate for change across her profession. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I’m curious about your career and how you got to this point.

I have been an educator for 13 years in the public school system in Texas. I have [spent] the majority of my years teaching kindergarten in Temple ISD [Independent School District] in Temple, Texas … but I have taught at multiple campuses with different demographics.

One campus I was at was all about teaching students social-emotional skills … I got a chance to build relationships, and I learned a lot [about] emotional growth.

I had an opportunity to teach my first year at a campus that had … a lot of attendance issues. On my first meet-the-teacher night, I had maybe three parents show up. By the end of the year celebration, every single parent and grandparent showed up. That was probably the turning point to let me know I was in the right space. 

What has mentorship meant to you in your career?

Before I started as a teacher, I was working at a day care, and I was in a pre-K 3 class, and that was really my first official class, but it wasn’t at a public school. When I had the opportunity to get my certification, I got a chance to teach in the school district with my mentor, Leah Suchomel, who taught kindergarten. She taught me so many things that I didn’t get in the books or in the classroom. Yes, I learned a lot about … the different theories and Harry [and Rosemary] Wong’s but until you’re actually in a setting with a teacher that is willing to trust you enough to teach her class — and just that compassion that she showed, not only to me but to her students — I still take [that] to this day.

How have you paid that forward as a mentor?

My mentee came from Texas A&M. Her mom was an assistant principal. Her grandma was a teacher. Her aunt was a principal. So she came from a long line of educators, but when she told them she wanted to be a teacher, they asked her, “Are you sure?” Because it is different from when they were teachers. 

I thought about what my mentor taught me, and I tried to see what my mentee needed to be successful for when she would become a mentor. It’s like a torch being passed.

How did the pandemic change your experience as a teacher?

During the pandemic, you could see a difference in the social-emotional status of our students. Before the pandemic, we were trying to get kids to learn how to use technology, but after the pandemic, I noticed my students wanted to have me read them big books. They didn’t want to just always be on a tablet to learn. I mean, that’s a tool as well, but they really craved that attention. 

Right now, I feel like we have so many students that are having to learn how to regulate their emotions. When they are playing … or working with classmates, they have to learn, How does this person feel before I react? If they’re on an iPad, nobody is there to tell them, “Hey, you’re being rude on this game.” They have to learn … the body language of someone who needs space. They missed a lot of that during their first years of growing up.

You’ve started a few programs and clubs at your school. Why did you start the Stars Helping Stars program?

I started that program when I began here at this school. I saw one of my students that was kind of struggling. I overheard him tell one of his classmates that he had slept in his car last night. And then his mom had called me and let me know that they had lost their housing. So, what I did with our kids — since it’s a STEM campus — we repurposed items from recyclables such as snowglobes, jewelry boxes, guitars, water guns and containers and sold them in order to get gift cards for homeless families at our school. 

The next year, that effort evolved into a tutoring group. Parents would come in and tutor kids on Tuesdays before school or after school. … And we saw a significant increase in our students’ accountability. 

What about the Breakfast Club program?

Once a month I’ll have mentors that will come through and just do different activities with about a group of 25 kids that range from kindergarten all the way to fifth grade. The high school volleyball team volunteered to come in, and they played volleyball. A group of soldiers came, including my spouse, and they did different stations where they had to talk like a soldier, act like a soldier, sound like a soldier…. Maybe one day they want to grow up to be in the military. We don’t know, but just planting those seeds so they can see things outside of their home and outside of the classroom, that’s the whole point.

Do you think being someone who gets things off the ground is part of why you won this award? 

I do believe that it plays a big role. … That and also just being a person of action. That picture behind me — that is me signing with the governor of Texas. (House Bill 2 authorized $8.5 billion in new . A portion of that funding went toward teacher and staff pay raises.) And that day, I sat at the table speaking for 384,000 teachers that are in Texas that needed that extra pay. There were other teachers in different parts of Texas … who had to work pick-up jobs during Christmas just to make ends meet. And I wanted to do something about it. And so just being able to tell our stories together, bring our stories together — to sit and pass a bill of one of the largest allotments that has been passed in Texas. 

As the only elementary school teacher to win this NEA Foundation award, what do you have to say about the early years?

I think that early childhood sets such a big seed … for our students to have character, to have work ethic, to understand the importance of [this] journey. … I always have kids that end up being best friends, and I have at least one or two that end up being best friends all the way up to high school.

I’ve been teaching long enough to have those memories. Thanks to Facebook, I can see where they tag [me in photos from when] they were in kindergarten and now they are getting ready to graduate. It’s like, “This all because of you, Ms. Gray.” 

How do you cultivate friendships and relationships that last a lifetime? 

Part of it is the atmosphere in a classroom. It’s just everyone uplifting each other. And if someone doesn’t, if you don’t like what someone else said, it’s okay to disagree, but it’s not okay to just totally not listen to that person.

That’s what some of it is. Also, just being able to have … relationships with families. 

Whenever we have parent conferences — I don’t just do the beginning of the year, I do the middle of the year as well because I want [parents] to know that we are partners. The majority of the time they’re here with us, with the teachers, not at home. And so just building their relationship … you can understand like, “Oh, I understand the reason why he may need the extra hug today.”

The Iowa House passed a measure Monday to make the current pilot program providing free child care for child care workers permanent.

Iowa’s Child Care Assistance (CCA) program is available to parents with a gross monthly income below 250% the federal poverty level, if they are gone during the week days due to their job, schooling, vocational training or state activities. However, Iowans working at least 32 hours a week in the child care field have also been able to access the CCA program outside of the income restrictions through a pilot program implemented in 2023 and extended in subsequent years.

, passed 86-3, would make this program permanent. Rep. Ryan Weldon, R-Ankeny, said since July 2023, 2,105 families have received child care through the CCA pilot program, with the average family receiving support being at 302% of the federal poverty level. The funding for the program has come, and will continue to draw from the state’s Child Care Development Fund, which Weldon said had $112 million in the previous fiscal year, with a projection of carrying forward $107 million in FY 2026 and $91 million in FY 2027, alongside federal funds.

According to the , the bill would have an estimated cost of $11.7 million in FY 2027 — with the state paying $7 million — and $12.1 million in FY 2028, with the state paying $7.3 million.

The bill was amended to require an annual report on state and federal costs, the number of participating families and children and the average household income of those receiving the CCA program support.

Rep. Tracy Ehlert, D-Cedar Rapids, said she was “excited” the bill was introduced, as it was a proposal House Democrats have introduced in previous legislative sessions and Iowans working in child care have called for lawmakers to approve.

“As I have talked to different programs, this is one of the number one things that they said they needed to stay in place to help them,” Ehlert said. “It’s helping communities, it’s helping children, it’s helping our early childhood workforce.”

Another proposal — which survived the first legislative funnel as  and  — also contains language to codify the CCA pilot program. These companion bills are the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services’ larger proposal including a shift in some funding from the Early Childhood Iowa system to HHS.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com.

“I didn’t have to leave my house,” Antoine said. For a full year, from 6:30-9:30 every Wednesday night, Antoine logged on via Zoom with 16 other early childhood educators who participated in the apprenticeship program to receive their Child Development Associate Certificate, or CDA. It took a single year to complete and she was still paid for her time, receiving a $250 stipend every two weeks for taking the class. Each time she completed 500 hours of training, she also received a 50-cent hourly raise at her YMCA job. By the end of the program, she’d completed 2000 hours and received $2 more per hour.

The apprenticeship required a portfolio, work and homework pertaining to early childhood, as well as in-classroom observation and a written test. Antoine felt the year of coursework left her well prepared for that final exam. “It’s not long and it’s not hard,” she said. She passed, and in February of 2024, she joined 67 other apprentices in Neighborhood Village’s first ever graduation ceremony, with her family and friends in the audience.

The graduation ceremony, where Antoine received her CDA, was “a mini wedding” according to Binal Patel, chief program officer with Neighborhood Villages. Three hundred people attended – graduates with their friends and families, and children of their own. Individual names were read and each graduate walked across the stage. The Massachusetts Secretary of Labor delivered the keynote address. (Massachusetts has for its state support of early child care programs, including creation of $475 million in state funding to sustain Commonwealth Cares for Children operational grants, or “C3” grants, which send funds directly to child care programs.)

Now that she has her CDA, Antoine is certified as a K-1 teacher, which includes working with preschool-aged children. “More doors are opening up to me,” she explained. In addition to her raise, she received a promotion at work and is now the assistant director at the YMCA. She’s still exploring opening her own child care center, either in Massachusetts or in her native New York.

The Value of Apprenticeship Programs

are lauded for combining on-the-job training with classroom instruction, so that workers gain skills needed for the job while still having the requisite experience many employers require before hiring. Many apprenticeship programs, like the one Antoine was enrolled in, are also paid, allowing more people from different socioeconomic backgrounds to take part. Upon completion, the certification, license or degree can lead to future earnings opportunities, and for a field like child care which is experiencing a — particularly in leadership fields — these apprenticeship programs can boost the pipeline of qualified staff.

Patel first learned of such early childhood apprenticeship programs at the ECEPTS conference in 2022, where she connected with someone who had helped launch a similar program in Kentucky at the Governor’s Office of Early Childhood. Though Kentucky has registered and started the program, their cohort has not graduated yet, so the Neighborhood Villages cohort is the first in the country to graduate with a Registered Apprenticeship in Early Childhood Administrator/Director through the Department of Labor.

When Neighborhood Villages graduated 68 apprentices in February, this made its program the largest early childhood registered apprenticeship program in Massachusetts. Over half of the graduates (37 participants) received their Child Development Associates and the remaining 31 received their Lead Teacher certificate, which qualifies them to be a child care or preschool director. The program and its graduation were successful enough that six of the CDA graduates are now continuing on with the Emerging Leaders Program.

Hope Olson is of those recent graduates who is going on to the Emerging Leaders Program. Olson grew up in New Hampshire about an hour from the sea coast and was always drawn to outdoor activities. She majored in environmental studies in college and upon graduation began working at the Boston Outdoor Preschool Network, a nature-based early childhood program.

“I haven’t ever thought of it as a switch, actually,” she said, regarding her pivot from environmental studies to teaching. “I was drawn to the job because I’ve always worked with children. It combined my love for outdoor education with children and working with children.” But Olson recognized that she didn’t have the traditional background for teaching, and when her supervisor mentioned the apprenticeship program, she enrolled. Like Antoine, she was emphatic about the experience, coursework and graduation ceremony. “Adding on this program made me feel capable in this role,” she said. Once she completed her CDA, she enrolled in the Emerging Leaders Program, and plans to keep learning while teaching. “These are stepping stones to pursue teaching further or find myself in a director role,” she said.

Funding the Neighborhood Villages Apprenticeship Program

The Neighborhood Villages’ Apprenticeship Program is managed by Neighborhood Villages but features a variety of funding sources, including the City of Boston, which boosted American Rescue Plan funds, and the State’s Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development Labor. There was also private philanthropic support for the initial cohort, but Patel said they anticipate that the program will be primarily funded by EOLWD going forward.

Their success with the apprenticeship program has allowed for more opportunities for such programs to grow. Neighborhood Villages has received the designation of “ambassador” to support the expansion of Early Childhood Registered Apprenticeship programs in Massachusetts, and serve as a liaison with EOLWD and programs who already have apprentices, or are looking to register new ones.

Patel explains that they are consulting with organizations that would like to register their programs to ensure they know the process and required paperwork and components, including registering the program with the YMCA and working with For Kids Only to register the first out-of-school time educator apprenticeship program. Other states have heard about their program, and reach out for information and assistance.

“Registered apprenticeships are fairly new in this industry and are continuing to grow very quickly!” Patel said.

This year, Patel plans to present at three national conferences to share their work on apprenticeship and everything they have learned, including returning to the conference where she first learned about apprenticeships, in hope of inspiring another person to start their own. She is returning to the same conference she went to in 2022, “Except this time I was invited as a presenter!” she said. “I am excited to share about our program and all of the lessons we have learned, and hopefully inspire others that they can do it too!”

Classes start May 15. .

“When children have teachers who reflect them, who look like they do, they’re more likely to do well in school,” says Sandra Osorio, associate professor of raciolinguistic justice and director of teacher education.

Osorio, who came to Erikson last summer from Illinois State University, says her move was partly inspired by Erikson’s new president, Mariana Souto-Manning, who is seeking to redress inequities and injustices in early childhood teaching and teacher education. Souto-Manning says she hopes graduates of the program will “ensure that the brilliance of children who have historically been marginalized or come from disinvested communities continues to shine.”

An advisory council of local educators is taking part in the program’s design, signaling what they need in their communities.

“We don’t want a tourist view of the city,” she says. “We want this to be for the real Chicago.”

Chrishana Lloyd, researcher at Child Trends, says, “An educated citizenry is one of the most important assets of a nation. This program’s emphasis on opening educational doors to those who are typically shut out has the potential to strengthen the lifelong prospects of those who engage in the program, as well as positively influence endless generations of children and families who benefit from access to well prepared and highly skilled early care and education professionals.

Three qualities distinguish the new program, which Osorio sees as “a blueprint that other universities can take up”:

1. Integrating Certification

Traditionally, graduate students at Erikson would earn their early childhood licensure and then add special education or English as a Second Language (ESL), aspects of early education that are traditionally presented in isolation. It would take three years, and the tuition costs were often prohibitive. Erikson integrates the content, so participants master a wider range of issues they are likely to encounter in the real world.

“Multilingual students are everywhere, and so are students with identified disabilities,” says Osorio. “As a teacher, you’d better be prepared.”

Osorio herself was born in Chicago and went to bilingual preschool in the basement of her church. When she started kindergarten, her parents were advised to stop speaking Spanish at home—even though the research then and now . Early in her career, she taught Head Start to the children of migrant farm workers. She repeatedly encountered administrators and educators who tried to “squash” Spanish. Erikson is cultivating a space where multilingualism is welcome.

2. An Assets-Based Approach

When we talk about kindergarten readiness, what are we really talking about?

For Osorio, the traditional orientation means: “the child’s lacking something. There’s something wrong with them.” The new program views children from a different angle. It encourages teachers to ask, in Osorio’s words, “What is the wealth and knowledge they have? How can we bring their languages into the classroom space?”

This shift in perspective signals a departure from what Osorio terms “ethnocentric white scholarship that doesn’t really speak to students of color.” She and the Erikson team are reinventing the curriculum to incorporate a new wave of scholarship that intentionally includes researchers of color who use an asset-based perspective. The shift entails recognizing that there is no “normal” child. Children show up in preschool with a wide variety of abilities, skills and knowledge, and it’s the educator’s job to support all of them.

According to Osorio, “The number one thing I’ve heard from the teachers we’ve recruited is, ‘Are we going to learn about autism? Are we going to learn what supports we can give? How do we support parents? What am I supposed to be doing?’ Everybody wants to know how to support children.”

3. Full Tuition Grants

Thanks to philanthropic support, Educator Impact Grants will enable four cohorts of 30 educators to go through the program with minimal fees. “One of the interviewees told us, ‘I didn’t ever think I was ever going to be able to do this, but now I can’,” says Osorio.

“That’s the icing on the cake,” says Lloyd. “No debt. In this climate and economy, the Erikson program is worthy of celebration.”

To qualify for the grant, participants need to sign a service agreement saying they will teach four years in an underinvested community. Osorio says she expects that while some graduates will seek positions at new facilities, others will remain in same schools and centers, ready to take on new responsibilities. “They are part of the community,” she says, “and they plan to stay in the community.”

Educator Impact Grants include a two-year professional learning community post-graduation. Groups of 10 graduates will meet every month with a faculty member to discuss topics decided on by the participants, who will earn professional development credit.

Full-time students in the new master’s program will take four courses at a time, graduating in three semesters (summer, fall, spring). Others will opt to take two courses at a time, and they’ll finish in six semesters.

Initially, the program will be hybrid in-person and virtual, and Erikson plans to launch a fully virtual option next year.

Chris Riback: Councilmember Maness, thank you so much for joining us today.

Kathy Maness: Thank you. I’m so glad to be here.

Chris Riback: You are the immediate past president of NLC. What did you see in early childhood learning during your time? You had that role during some of the most difficult times imaginable.

Kathy Maness: Right.

Chris Riback: What’s the state of early learning in our nation today?

Kathy Maness: Early learning is so important and during the pandemic, it played a huge part because many of our childcare centers were open for parents who had to work. A lot of parents were working from home, but we had essential employees who had to go into work. And thank heavens our early learning centers were open to provide the needed childcare for those parents.

Chris Riback: None of us wanted to go through that. Did you feel on some level that it took a crisis to raise some awareness around an area that I’m sure you already knew the criticality of?

Kathy Maness: Unfortunately, yes, it did. I have had wonderful childcare centers for my children and now my granddaughter. So I know the importance of quality early learning, but it did take this crisis for our community to realize. Hey, they could open. They were there to help families. They were there to help our communities. And most importantly, they were there for our young children during this time.

Chris Riback: You, of course, have an incredible vantage point both locally in Lexington, South Carolina but also because of your roles and your national involvement nationally. How would you characterize the range of what you see in our communities nationwide?

Kathy Maness: Well, I was the president of the National League of Cities during a very difficult time for our cities, towns, and villages across America. And we saw where communities were closing. We saw how our city halls, our town halls, had to do a balancing act to keep our employees there, not having shutdowns, deciding what we were going to do to keep our community safe.

Chris Riback: So many competing priorities.

Kathy Maness: That’s right. And our early childhood learning centers were there as a partner to us as local elected leaders to help try to make things normal when they really weren’t. And I am so thankful for our early learning centers and our early learning community, that they were there for us.

Chris Riback: Everyone grasping for just a sliver of normalcy.

Kathy Maness: Right.

Chris Riback: An hour of normalcy- [crosstalk].

Kathy Maness: Yes.

Chris Riback: Is what it felt like. Given what you’ve seen and given what you know from your experience, what guidance might you have for local elected officials who might be struggling with those tensions, the competing tensions of priorities, health needs, environmental needs, infrastructure needs, employment needs, education needs in their communities? Any guidance that you would give them around, from based on what you’ve seen, around how to prioritize or make sure that early learning stays part of the focus?

Kathy Maness: Early learning and education is very important to me. I have a master’s in early childhood education. I’m a former third grade teacher. That’s still considered an early childhood, and it is my passion. And it is important that to us, as local elected officials, to know that these young children are our future. They’re going to take my place one day. They’re going to be a Councilwoman or a Councilman in the town of Lexington, South Carolina. They are going to be the president of the National League of Cities. And we’ve got to be there early for them to help them learn, to help them grow, to encourage them. And that’s what we saw through our early learning centers during this pandemic.

Chris Riback: Thinking back to your previous self as a third grade teacher, and I’m willing to bet that once a third grade teacher, always a third grade teacher- [crosstalk].

Kathy Maness: Always. That’s right.

Chris Riback: I’m sure. But thinking back to you at that point, whatever point that was in your life, what would you say to teachers today, to caregivers today about the stresses that they are feeling and some who might be questioning, “Can I do this again another day?”

Kathy Maness: That is a great question for me because I left the third grade classroom and went to work for Palmetto State Teachers Association. I’m now the executive director of the largest professional association for teachers in South Carolina. I hear it every day and it breaks my heart the stresses that our teachers are under. Our children have experienced losing that year or- [crosstalk].

Chris Riback: Yes.

Kathy Maness: A year and a half.

Chris Riback: Such loss.

Kathy Maness: And it’s showing. When we started this year, we had to teach children how to be in a classroom again. And for our early learners, it’s the first time they’ve been in a classroom. So they missed that kindergarten year being in there where they were able to learn by play and to learn how to be a part of a community, part of a classroom. And it is hard. It is hard on our teachers now. And we, as local elected officials and as communities, need to lift our educators up, our early learning educators all the way through high school. We need to lift them up and let them know, “You are important, and we know that you are making a difference in the lives of children, starting with our early learners.”

Chris Riback: Making that difference every day.

Kathy Maness: Every day.

Chris Riback: What’s next for Lexington, South Carolina?

Kathy Maness: Well, we are coming back. We did a good job during the pandemic. We have a fabulous town administrator. I have a fabulous staff at our town and our council, so we’re coming back. We’re doing things for early learners. We’re redoing our beautiful park downtown, making it more friendly for families and young children. And that is so important that we’re doing that. But I just appreciate the cities, towns, and villages across America, as they worked very hard during this pandemic to respond, recover, and now we are rebuilding. And for many of us, it’s better than ever.

Chris Riback: It’s time to visit Lexington, South Carolina, isn’t it?

Kathy Maness: Please come to Lexington, South Carolina. I am so proud of my town.

Chris Riback: Well, I’ll go there for a number of reasons, including, I appreciate your having come to the studio.

Kathy Maness: Thank you. [crosstalk].

Chris Riback: Thank you so much.

Kathy Maness: Thank you.