When it comes to preschool, Washington, DC is in a relatively strong position. The district provides free preschool to all children ages 3 and 4, regardless of family income, through the Pre-K Enhancement and Expansion Program (PKEEP). Additionally, the Early Childhood Pay Equity Fund will ensure that PKEEP teachers earn the same salaries as elementary school teachers.
As a result, more children, especially disadvantaged children, are being nurtured to succeed in kindergarten and beyond, the study found. More parents (usually women) are joining the workforce. And families enjoy greater financial security and growth potential. Overall, the initiative is considered a success across the community.
But even the best system cannot succeed if the federal government weakens child care providers’ ability to find and retain qualified workers through policies such as revoking work permits, restricting visas, and deporting immigrants en masse, ultimately reducing the number of child care providers who can provide child care services. All children are eligible for pre-school education, but only if they can get a slot.
Until recent changes in federal immigration policy, hiring was “difficult but doable,” said Raul Echevarria, co-founder, president and CEO of CommuniKids, a language immersion preschool that also offers after-school care and summer camps. But now new immigration deportation enforcement efforts are “having a significant impact on teachers and team members.”
By fall 2025, a change in federal regulations would have reclassified a “small but significant number” of kindergarten teachers as ineligible to legally work in the United States. These teachers were forced to resign because daycare centers and kindergartens operate under strict licensing requirements.
“It’s causing a lot of anxiety and putting pressure on human resources people to make sure they hire teachers at the last minute,” Echevarria said. Children who are “very sensitive to who their teacher is” are also affected, he says. “They lost a teacher.”
CommuniKids has been serving families in the Washington, DC area since 2005. We currently operate four centers in the district, accepting children from 18 months to 5 years of age. The other is in Virginia and accepts children ages 2 1/2 to 5 years old. In total, about 500 students are enrolled, but hundreds more are on the waiting list.
Nearly all of our students are U.S. citizens, typically one or both parents were born in the United States, and more than three-quarters come from homes where English is the primary language. CommuniKids is PKEEP’s largest community-based provider, with approximately half of the students in the program between the ages of 3 and 4. Some spend up to 50 hours a week at the Communicids Center, mostly so their parents can go to work.
What makes CommuniKids unique, and especially vulnerable to changes in federal immigration policy, is that it is a fully immersive language program. Not only must teachers be licensed for preschool employment, including authorization to work in the United States, they must also be native speakers of either French, Mandarin, or Spanish. “These languages are spoken all the time in the classroom,” Echevarria said. “Students develop a significant level of fluency by the time they enter kindergarten. …The special nature of our program requires that our teachers be native speakers.”
Despite high wages comparable to public school teacher salaries, with the average salary for kindergarten teachers at $75,000 plus benefits, some of the highest child care wages in the country, finding those with such qualifications is extremely difficult. CommuniKids currently has 117 teachers, almost all of whom are immigrant women, representing 25 nationalities and all of the world’s major religions.
“We are always looking for ways to identify and develop teachers who bring these skills to the classroom,” Echevarria said. “We always do our best to find the best teacher for our program.”
