The BulleTin • Monday, april 12, 2021 A3
TODAY
LOCAL, STATE & REGION
‘Shocked, saddened and sick’
A Cannon Beach preschool is closing, but parents and former teachers question why
BY KATIE FRANKOWICZ
The Astorian
C
ANNON BEACH — The
same day Ashley Nelson de-
cided to accept a full-time
job, the preschool where
her children attended an after-school
program announced it would close
in June.
Nelson, previously a stay-at-home
mom, had been counting on Charis
Kids in Cannon Beach as she dipped
back into the workforce. Now, she
and more than 20 other families are
trying to figure out what to do next.
Charis Kids, owned by the Can-
non Beach Conference Center, is
the only local preschool option in
the city and one of just a few such
programs available across Clatsop
County. The main preschool and af-
ter-school programs will end June
18. It isn’t clear yet if a summer pro-
gram will go ahead as planned.
Charis Kids is a long-standing
community institution with an excel-
lent reputation, Nelson said. When
it closes, her children will not only
miss out on a faith-based curriculum
Nelson values and the care of well-
trained and certified teachers, they
will also lose the community that had
formed around the preschool.
“It’s an incredible hole,” Nelson said.
Like other parents and former
teachers who heard the news, Nelson
said she is in shock. She doesn’t un-
derstand why Charis Kids is closing. A
letter sent to parents and a subsequent
conversation with Marc Hagman, the
conference center’s executive director,
left her with only more questions.
The letter to parents provides no
concrete reason for the preschool’s
closure, but Hagman told The Asto-
rian a combination of factors — in-
cluding the coronavirus pandemic
— led to the decision.
Stresses and strains
The conference center is not in a
bad financial state, and the closure
of Charis Kids is not an indicator of
tough times ahead, he said. Still, the
pandemic brought certain stresses
and strains, especially when it came
to operating a preschool. The cen-
ter’s leadership has been looking
more closely at its overall mission.
When conference center leadership
began reexamining its programs and
offerings last year, Charis did not
seem to fit, Hagman said.
“If we hadn’t gone through
COVID,” he said, “I don’t think we’d
be at this point.”
The program is expensive to run
and, given the center’s primary re-
sponsibilities to conference and re-
treat guests, “it can’t just be a break-
even sort of thing,” Hagman said.
But, he added, the decision to
close the preschool was not easy.
“Charis Kids has had great impact
in the work they do,” Hagman said.
“Not just in reaching kids, but their
families and their extended families,
too. For me, there’s nothing that mini-
mizes their compassion and their skill.
What we’re doing is not a comment or
commentary on them. It’s just this is
what we need to do at this point.”
Hagman said they will look to find
Charis Kids/The Astorian
A preschool student colors in a calendar at Charis Kids, the only local preschool in Cannon Beach.
“I understand that COVID has forced businesses to reevaluate, but
I don’t understand why you’d take away a ministry and outreach to
our community that provides jobs and meets such a critical need. As
Oregon goes back to work, our community needs child care options.
Parents are scrambling, sacrificing their careers and asking 10-year-
old siblings to watch their infants because there aren’t enough child
care options in our community.”
child care but also appreciates the ed-
ucation her daughters received. She
had been looking forward to sending
her third child to the program soon.
“For me, it was the amazing light
at the end of the tunnel,” she said.
The closure will not just impact
her, she said: “Moving forward, it
will severely impact working families
that would be the ones growing this
community.”
— Dana Jones, a former employee at Charis Kids
‘Shocked, saddened and sick’
Gretchen Corbin taught at the
preschool for 13 years before being
laid off in March 2020 because of
the pandemic. She had previously let
administrators know she would be
leaving the program to move to Seat-
tle. The pandemic and the layoff has-
tened her timeline.
Now she feels “shocked, saddened
and sick.”
She respects Hagman and knows it
was a difficult decision, but she hopes
the conference center will reconsider.
“We got so much feedback that
we were meeting a crucial need in
the community for families of every
social and economic level,” she said.
“We served them all and we worked
with them all to make sure every-
body could come.”
During Corbin’s time at Charis
Kids, the preschool served students
from Astoria to Nehalem. It had
also adjusted operations to make it
through difficult years.
Nelson wishes the community
had a chance to work with the con-
ference center to figure out a way to
keep Charis Kids. “If it was a funding
issue, why not give the community
a chance to help?” she said. “If there
was an issue we could have helped
you solve, why couldn’t we have been
given an opportunity?”
other job options within center op-
erations for the teachers and staff of
Charis Kids who want to continue at
the conference center.
Since the announcement, former
teachers have reached out to Hag-
man and the conference center lead-
ership, asking them to reconsider
their decision.
Dana Jones, a former employee at
the preschool whose children attended
the program when they were young,
said communities would be left with-
out reliable and affordable child care if
the preschool closes for good.
“I understand that COVID has
forced businesses to reevaluate, but I
don’t understand why you’d take away
a ministry and outreach to our com-
munity that provides jobs and meets
such a critical need,” she wrote in a
Facebook post addressed to Hagman.
“As Oregon goes back to work, our
community needs child care options.
Parents are scrambling, sacrificing
their careers and asking 10-year-old
siblings to watch their infants be-
cause there aren’t enough child care
options in our community.”
Clatsop County — along with ev-
ery county in Oregon — is consid-
ered a child care desert. Many centers
and preschools operate with lengthy
waitlists. Parents who might want a
particular program for their children
struggle to find something that fits
their needs and their budgets.
Preschool programs often func-
tion as a form of day care for working
families and are touted by education
experts as a key way to prepare young
children for kindergarten, as well as
establish a foundation for the rest
of their school careers. Administra-
tors with the Knappa School District
pointed to these benefits when they
recently announced plans to open a
public preschool later this year.
But day cares and preschools are
rarely profitable ventures. Programs
often struggle to find and retain qual-
ified staff and keep prices affordable
for families. With the pandemic, cen-
ters faced restrictions on how many
children they could accommodate
and other costs and hurdles. Before
the pandemic, Clatsop County had
12 state certified child care centers.
After shutting down temporarily last
spring because of the pandemic, only
a handful had reopened by July.
Which makes Charis Kids even
more special to the families who
have come to rely on the program.
Shelby Gosser, a hospital nurse ad-
ministrator, relies on Charis Kids for
Today is Monday, April 12, the
102nd day of 2021. There are
263 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On April 12, 1945, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a
cerebral hemorrhage in Warm
Springs, Georgia, at age 63; he
was succeeded by Vice President
Harry S. Truman.
In 1861, the Civil War began
as Confederate forces opened
fire on Fort Sumter in South
Carolina.
In 1877, the catcher’s mask was
first used in a baseball game
by James Tyng of Harvard in
a game against the Lynn Live
Oaks.
In 1955, the Salk vaccine against
polio was declared safe and
effective.
In 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri
Gagarin became the first man
to fly in space, orbiting the
earth once before making a safe
landing.
In 1963, civil rights leader Martin
Luther King Jr. was arrested and
jailed in Birmingham, Alabama,
charged with contempt of court
and parading without a permit.
(During his time behind bars,
King wrote his “Letter from Bir-
mingham Jail.”)
In 1975, singer, dancer and civil
rights activist Josephine Baker,
68, died in Paris.
In 1988, the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office issued a pat-
ent to Harvard University for a
genetically engineered mouse,
the first time a patent was grant-
ed for an animal life form.
In 1990, in its first meeting, East
Germany’s first democratically
elected parliament acknowl-
edged responsibility for the
Nazi Holocaust, and asked the
forgiveness of Jews and others
who had suffered.
In 2015, Hillary Clinton jumped
back into presidential politics,
announcing in a video her
much-awaited second cam-
paign for the White House.
Jordan Spieth romped to his
first major championship with a
record-tying performance at the
Masters, shooting an 18-under
270 to become the first wire-to-
wire winner of the green jacket
since 1976.
Ten years ago: Japan ranked its
nuclear crisis at the highest pos-
sible severity on an international
scale — the same level as the
1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Five years ago: Actor Anne
Jackson, who often appeared
onstage with her husband, Eli
Wallach, in comedies and clas-
sics, died in New York at age 90.
One year ago: Christians
around the world celebrated
Easter Sunday isolated in their
homes by the coronavirus.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor Jane
Withers is 95. Jazz musician
Herbie Hancock is 81. Rock singer
John Kay (Steppenwolf) is 77. Ac-
tor Ed O’Neill is 75. Talk show host
David Letterman is 74. Author
Scott Turow is 72. R&B singer JD
Nicholas (The Commodores) is
69. Singer Pat Travers is 67. Actor
Andy Garcia is 65. Country singer
Vince Gill is 64. Rock musician Will
Sergeant (Echo & the Bunnymen)
is 63. Rock singer Art Alexakis
(Everclear) is 59. Folk-pop singer
Amy Ray (Indigo Girls) is 57.
Actor Alicia Coppola is 53. Rock
singer Nicholas Hexum (311) is 51.
Actor Retta is 51. Actor Shannen
Doherty is 50. Rock musician Guy
Berryman (Coldplay) is 43. Actor
Riley Smith is 43. Actor Claire
Danes is 42. Rock singer-musician
Brendon Urie (Panic! at the Disco)
is 34. Actor Saoirse Ronan is 27.
— Associated Press