Struggling Bay Area Schools Get New Life as Badly Needed Child Care Centers

Over the past six years, a shuttered Vallejo elementary school stood vacant, serving as a visual reminder of the Bay Area city’s declining student population.

Whenever a bell rings, residents around the former Beverly Hills Elementary School know that it isn’t the sound of classes starting, but of an alarm triggered by vandals breaking in.

But starting earlier this month, a new sound could be heard in the neighborhood: preschoolers playing in the yard. After undergoing a major overhaul, the campus reopened as an early learning center for up to 200 young kids.

The new Rise Vallejo Early Education center is the latest example of a school repurposed to provide child care, following similar moves in San Jose and Hayward.

As California school districts continue to grapple with rising expenses and falling enrollment — with the sharpest drop since the pandemic recorded this year — education leaders and child care providers say this kind of conversion could help revitalize communities and create sorely-needed child care spaces.

“It’s definitely a project that is scalable in all communities that really want to help meet the need of providing child care,” said Juan Cisneros, executive director of Child Start Inc., which operates Head Start classrooms in the center alongside four other early childhood education and care programs.

“We just have to have the resources and the community will to do something like that,” he said.

Across the Bay Area, other school districts facing declining enrollment, such as Alum Rock and Berryessa Union school districts in San Jose and Hayward Unified School District, are leasing underutilized classrooms to child care operators and family resource centers.

This summer, the child care organization Kidango plans to open an early learning center in partnership with the Ravenswood City School District in East Palo Alto.

And just last week, the education board of the Los Angeles Unified School District approved placing more preschool classrooms on elementary school campuses as part of an ambitious plan to open more space for infants and toddlers.

The district saw the steepest decline in enrollment in California over the last year — 4.5% compared to 1.3% statewide — and is hoping that families who send their child to a publicly-subsidized preschool program will stay in the same campus when they begin elementary school.

But unlike these arrangements, Solano County transferred ownership of Vallejo Rise to Child Start, allowing the nonprofit to operate five classrooms and lease ten others to privately-owned child care providers.

The $20 million project began in 2020, when Child Start needed to vacate a building it was leasing from the county. The agency had a tough time finding a facility in Vallejo that met the needs of its existing students, not to mention a space big enough to accommodate the long waitlist of families hoping to join.

Responding to the severe shortage of licensed child care spaces — which were only available for 23% of Solano County children, according to a 2023 study — county leaders asked the Vallejo City Unified School District for a few spare rooms. As it happened, the district had an entire school available.

All over the state and nation, a declining birth rate and slowing immigration rates have contributed to enrollment loss. In Vallejo, school enrollment fell 30% between the 2014-15 and 2023-24 school years. The plummeting enrollment fueled a fiscal crisis that has forced the district to downsize.

First 5 Solano County, which distributes funds from a statewide tobacco tax to support local early childhood programs, worked with county leaders to buy the school for $2.8 million. Then, they pulled together county, state and federal dollars, along with private donations, to fund the rest of the redesign and renovation.

Workers outfitted the classrooms with tiny toilets, sinks and kitchenettes, resurfaced the yards with artificial turf, and installed smaller-scale playgrounds and shade structures. In the hallways, new murals of animals greet the children at their eye level.

“It really makes sense to take a public asset, make a one-time investment and turn it into something that you know isn’t just sitting empty but can really feed the community,” said Michele Harris, executive director of First 5 Solano.

The providers don’t pay facility fees. Instead, they share the costs of utilities and staff to manage the day-to-day operations of the center, allowing them to run their businesses at about half the cost, Cisneros said.

“It helps them expand their business, but it also builds the workforce,” he said. “People who want to teach in this environment now have this space to be able to do it, and it’s going to bring a lot of new jobs into this community.”

Cisneros said Vallejo Rise is the only early learning center he knows of that houses multiple programs with their own early education philosophies.

For Dionna Perkins, the new center is giving her a chance to grow her home-based Montessori preschool, Joyful Journeys, into something much bigger. She’s currently licensed to serve up to 14 children and often has a waitlist of seven to 10 families.

“It’s crazy because I get a lot of parents that [sign up] when their child is in the womb,” Perkins said.

Now, she’ll have three classrooms that can serve up to 48 kids.

“I can happily say that we do have at least half available right now,” she said.

The providers will share the cost of other resources, like the laundry machines, and save on big purchases, like cribs and classroom furniture.

“It’s a huge benefit because if you’re expanding, you have to find all of the funds for that by yourself,” Perkins said. “And in this economy, it’s hard, you know?”

Fundraising is underway to build a family resource center near the parking lot for anyone in the community seeking child care, a food pantry, and social services. The county’s Office of Education will also provide on-site coaching to early childhood educators who might need help supporting a child with special needs or developmental concerns, Harris said.

“To have that professional development on site where [the coaches] can respond right away, it’s just such a tremendous difference than being in isolation by yourself all day, every day,” she said.

For Ruben Aurelio, the superintendent of Vallejo City Unified School District, the partnerships that were formed to create the center give him hope for the future of Vallejo. In its heyday, long before he led the district, more than 22,000 students were enrolled.

“We’re currently sitting around 9,000 students,” he said.

The closure of Mare Island Naval Shipyard in 1996 devastated the local economy, and the 2008 financial crisis led the city to declare bankruptcy.

A high crime rate, police misconduct scandals and neglected infrastructure gave Vallejo a bad reputation. Declining enrollment and overspending also brought the school district to the brink of bankruptcy. After receiving a $60 million bailout from the state, it lost local control for 20 years and is emerging from state oversight.

Aurelio said the district will close three more elementary schools by the end of this school year as it seeks to “right-size” itself, and is looking at ways to reopen vacant or surplus facilities to benefit the community.

“We just don’t like seeing them sit empty,” he said. “That’s a blight on the community, and it diminishes that sort of pride that the community has.”

After touring Rise Vallejo on its opening day celebration, Aurelio said he was heartened to see the school reimagined into something that brings value to the community.

But, there’s another benefit, he said, “Those preschoolers will hopefully feed my schools one day.”