When it comes to preschool, Washington, D.C., is in a relatively
strong position. The district offers free preschool for every 3- and
4-year-old, regardless of family income, through the Pre-K Enhancement
and Expansion Program (PKEEP). Additionally, the Early Childhood Pay
Equity Fund ensures that PKEEP teachers earn the same pay as their
elementary school counterparts.
As a result, studies have found more children, particularly
disadvantaged children, are being set up to succeed in kindergarten and
beyond; more parents, usually women, are joining the workforce; and
families enjoy greater economic security and the ability to grow. All in
all, the effort has been considered a community-wide success.
But even the best-designed systems can’t succeed if, the federal government undercuts providers’ ability to find and keep qualified workers by revoking work authorizations, limiting visas, and deporting immigrants en masse, efforts that ultimately reduce, the number of kids childcare providers can serve. Every child may be eligible for preschool, but only if they can get a spot.
Prior to the recent changes in federal immigration policy, hiring was
“challenging, but doable,” said Raúl Echevarría, the co-founder,
president, and CEO of CommuniKids, a language immersion preschool that
also offers after-school care and summer camp. Now, however, the renewed
enforcement efforts to expel immigrants “are having a significant impact
on our teachers and team members.”26
By fall 2025, federal rule changes had reclassified a “small but
significant number of teachers” at the preschool as ineligible to
lawfully work in the United States. Because daycares and preschools
operate under strict licensing requirements, those teachers were forced
to quit.
“It’s created a lot of anxiety, and put some pressure on our human
resources staff to make sure we can bring in teachers at the last
minute,” Echevarría said. Children, too, “who are very sensitive to who
their teachers are,” have been affected, he said. “They have lost their
teacher.”
CommuniKids has been serving families in the D.C. area since 2005.
Today it operates four centers in the District, accepting children ages
18 months to 5 years; and one in Virginia, accepting children ages 2 1/2
through 5. In total, some 500 students are enrolled—but hundreds more
are on waitlists.
Nearly all of the students are U.S. citizens, and more than
three-quarters are from homes where English is the dominant language,
typically because one or both parents were born in the United States.
CommuniKids is the largest community-based provider in PKEEP, and about
half of its students are in the 3- to 4-year-old age bracket covered by
the program. Some spend up to 50 hours a week at a CommuniKids center,
almost always so their parents can go to work.
What sets CommuniKids apart—and makes it particularly vulnerable to
federal immigration policy shifts—is that it is a fully immersive
language program. Teachers need not only be licensed for preschool
employment, which includes being authorized to work in the United
States, but they must also be a native speaker of either French,
Mandarin, or Spanish. “Those languages are spoken in the classrooms at
all times,” said Echevarría. “Students develop a significant amount of
fluency by the time they enter kindergarten. … The special nature of
our program requires that the teachers be native speakers.”
Even with the high pay—to be commensurate with public school teacher
salaries, the average preschool teacher salary is $75,000 plus benefits,
some of the highest daycare wages in the country—people with such
qualifications can be very hard to find. CommuniKids currently has 117
teachers, nearly all of whom are female immigrants and who together
represent 25 nationalities and all the world’s major religions.
“We’re always looking for ways to find and nurture teachers who bring
those skills to our classrooms,” said Echevarría. “We will always do all
we can to get the best teachers for our program.”
The post Preschool for All—But Not Enough Teachers appeared first on American Immigration Council.