Friday, April 16, 2021 | Seaside Signal | SeasideSignal.com • A3
Cannon Beach preschool to close
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
The Astorian
CANNON BEACH —
The same day Ashley Nel-
son decided 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 fi gure out what
to do next.
Charis Kids, owned by
the Cannon Beach Con-
ference Center, is the only
local preschool option in
the city and one of just a
few such programs avail-
able across Clatsop County.
The main preschool and
after-school programs will
end June 18. It isn’t clear
yet if a summer program
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 cur-
riculum Nelson values and
the care of well-trained and
certifi ed 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
understand why Charis
Kids is closing. A letter
sent to parents and a sub-
sequent conversation with
Marc Hagman, the con-
ference center’s executive
director, left her with only
more questions.
The letter to parents pro-
vides no concrete reason
for the preschool’s closure,
but Hagman told The Asto-
rian a combination of fac-
tors — including the coro-
navirus pandemic — led to
the decision.
Stresses and strains
The conference center is
not in a bad fi nancial 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 center’s leadership has
been looking more closely
at its overall mission. When
conference center leader-
ship began reexamining its
programs and off erings last
year, Charis did not seem to
fi t, Hagman said.
“If we hadn’t gone
through COVID,” he said,
“I don’t think we’d be at
this point.”
The program is expen-
sive to run and, given the
center’s primary responsi-
bilities to conference and
retreat guests, “it can’t just
be a break-even sort of
thing,” Hagman said.
But, he added, the deci-
sion 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
minimizes their compas-
sion and their skill. What
we’re doing is not a com-
ment or commentary on
them. It’s just this is what
we need to do at this point.”
Hagman said they will
look to fi nd other job
options within center oper-
ations for the teachers and
staff of Charis Kids who
want to continue at the con-
ference center.
Since the announce-
ment, former teachers have
reached out to Hagman
and the conference center
leadership, asking them to
reconsider their decision.
Dana Jones, a former
employee at the preschool
whose children attended
the program when they
were young, said commu-
nities would be left with-
out reliable and aff ordable
child care if the preschool
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Charis Kids
A preschool student at Charis Kids colors in a calendar.
closes for good.
“I
understand
that
COVID has forced busi-
nesses to reevaluate, but
I don’t understand why
you’d take away a min-
istry and outreach to our
community that provides
jobs and meets such a crit-
ical 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,
sacrifi cing their careers
and asking 10-year-old sib-
lings to watch their infants
because there aren’t enough
child care options in our
community.”
Clatsop County — along
with every county in Ore-
gon — is considered a child
care desert. Many cen-
ters and preschools oper-
ate with lengthy waitlists.
Parents who might want a
particular program for their
children struggle to fi nd
something that fi ts their
needs and their budgets.
Preschool
programs
often function as a form of
day care for working fami-
lies and are touted by edu-
cation experts as a key way
to prepare young children
for kindergarten, as well
as establish a foundation
for the rest of their school
careers.
Administrators
with the Knappa School
District pointed to these
benefi ts when they recently
announced plans to open a
public preschool later this
year.
But day cares and pre-
schools are rarely profi table
ventures. Programs often
struggle to fi nd and retain
qualifi ed staff and keep
prices aff ordable for fam-
ilies. With the pandemic,
centers faced restrictions
on how many children they
could accommodate and
other costs and hurdles.
Before the pandemic, Clat-
sop County had 12 state
certifi ed child care centers.
After shutting down tempo-
rarily last spring because of
the pandemic, only a hand-
ful 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 hos-
pital nurse administrator,
relies on Charis Kids for
child care but also appre-
ciates the education 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: “Mov-
ing forward, it will severely
impact working families
that would be the ones
growing this community.”
‘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 pre-
viously let administrators
know she would be leav-
ing the program to move
to Seattle. The pandemic
and the layoff hastened her
timeline.
Now she feels “shocked,
saddened and sick.”
She respects Hagman
and knows it was a diffi -
cult decision, but she hopes
the conference center will
reconsider.
“We got so much feed-
back that we were meet-
ing 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
everybody could come.”
During Corbin’s time at
Charis Kids, the preschool
served students from Asto-
ria to Nehalem. It had also
adjusted operations to make
it through diffi cult years.
Nelson wishes the com-
munity had a chance to
work with the conference
center to fi gure 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?”
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