From Scarcity to Inspiration: Rethinking the Value of Early Childhood Education Facilities November 11, 2026

At the most basic level, an ECE facility needs four walls, windows, a roof, electricity, a water source, and a bathroom. This setup can barely be described as a “facility” at all, though; it is simply program space. Fortunately, licensing standards in most states have created a baseline for health and safety that have greatly reduced the percentage of ECE spaces existing at this level. While the health and safety of young children is protected by these standards, these shelter centers fail to provide for much else.

In the shelter category, staff must spend as much time managing a dysfunctional environment as they do serving children. Often located in auxiliary spaces in facilities built for other purposes and used by other people, these spaces are generally borrowed, donated, or rented for a nominal fee. Poor lighting and lack of windows are common. In some cases, staff must entirely “break down” classrooms to accommodate other uses for the space when children are absent, making it nearly impossible to create any type of permanency.

Furthermore, the daily logistics of a shelter space actively undermine quality care. When plumbing, water sources, and bathrooms are located far from the classroom, staff are forced to carefully choreograph group toileting and restrict water-based activities to maintain mandatory staffing ratios. Inadequate kitchen amenities similarly disrupt mealtimes for staff trying to prepare and serve food in a space designed for other purposes.

Beyond these daily programmatic hurdles, ECE centers in the shelter category burden providers with significant operational concerns. Unreliable HVAC systems, spotty electricity, noise problems, and limited or no storage present constant challenges that undermine the quality of programming. Compounding this is a lack of control over the space, with providers entirely at the mercy of their landlords. Neglected sewer systems, faulty roofs, and poor snow removal frequently interrupt provider services or force sudden closures, disrupting family work schedules contributing to 74 percent of working parents reporting they’ve missed at least a few hours of work because of child care challenges.

Adapting these spaces is nearly impossible—making licensing requirements difficult to meet—and virtually no accommodation can be made for the comfort and dignity of those who use the space. Deferred maintenance and increased overhead costs mean funds that could go to professional or programmatic development are instead used just to stay open day-to-day.

Far too many ECE centers, particularly those in under-resourced communities, exist in this category. The defining difference between basic function and shelter is that the provider has more agency and control over the space. It is permanent in nature, with staff able to claim the space without continually moving and/or adapting in response to the facility owner’s needs.  That permanency allows the provider to execute improvement projects over time that create privacy and remedy facilities problems before they interrupt care.

Yet, despite having more agency, these facilities are still heavily characterized by adapting a building or space designed for a completely different purpose. Classrooms are frequently carved out of larger spaces to technically meet licensing requirements. On the lower end of this category, spaces are divided by curtains or movable partition; on the higher end, they have permanent walls, but the layout remains awkward since the space was originally designed for another use. For instance, classrooms may double as hallway egress for others moving through the building, creating constant foot traffic and noise. The resulting environment is noisy and poorly suited for focused learning or rest.

Classrooms in these spaces also will not have separate toileting, requiring children and staff to go elsewhere in the building, nor will they have a water source or sink. Natural lighting is scarce because of limited windows, and artificial lighting will be poor. Storage is so limited that supplies are crammed wherever room can be found, and scarce office space doubles as a sick bay, meeting room, counseling room, overflow storage, and more. While the center may have its own entrance, it often lacks clear sightlines for easy monitoring, forcing staff to divert time away from other critical tasks to manage access. Finally, while heating and cooling systems provide basic comfort, they will frequently be unreliable, and outdated electrical infrastructure will accommodate only low-level technology requirements. To conduct learning assessments that require computers, for example, staff may need to use extension cords because of limited outlets available, creating tripping hazards.

Here, we can start to use the term “ECE center” instead of “space.” In this category, the facility was specifically created or adapted for early education and care, and its physical elements actively enhance programming. All of the basic safety, health, comfort, and programmatic needs are fully met. Facility-related problems do not threaten licensing nor cause a shutdown of the center.

Classrooms are divided by noise-attenuating walls and include their own dedicated toilets and sinks. Square footage exceeds minimum licensing requirements, allowing for greater freedom of movement for children and staff. Because of their size, these classrooms accommodate the creation of quiet, play, and wet zones. Storage space is available within the classroom and scattered through the broader center. Classrooms have sufficient natural lighting and better-than-adequate artificial lighting, with convenient access to appropriately sized, age-appropriate outdoor spaces for play and movement.

The center features a separate, controlled, and secure entrance and lobby; dedicated meeting rooms; and a private staff lounge complete with its own kitchenette and restroom facilities. Logistics are streamlined through distinct drop-off and pick-up corridors, designated staff and visitor parking, and a separate area for service delivery.

A facility like this is built to be utilitarian, often constructed brand new or significantly rehabilitated from large, open buildings like former elementary schools or commercial spaces. By providing high levels of satisfaction for both staff and families, these centers give organizations the opportunity to truly excel by enabling staff to focus entirely on children and programming.

The next level up is an ECE center that considers not just function, but how children, parents, and staff feel when they’re in the facility. These centers deliberately make allowances for beauty, mood, and the science-based physical and emotional sensations good aesthetics can create.

These are essential considerations for effective programming, not trivial or superficial concerns. Considerable research documents the physiological and psychological effects of physical space on humans, as well as the importance of thoughtful design in helping people to heal, learn, and feel calm, safe, and cared for. This is especially true for children and, when they’re spending up to 10 hours a day in an ECE center, the environment must not only allow for them to learn, play, run, eat, toilet, and sleep, but encourage them to feel inquisitive, happy, enthusiastic, safe and secure, quiet, cozy, and sleepy.

While standard school classrooms are built strictly for learning, child care centers have to be so much more. Think of it this way: we might appreciate a highly functional office building because it helps us get our work done, but we wouldn’t want to live there. Yet, children under 5 spend up to 10 hours a day, all year long, inside ECE facilities. The best ECE facilities embrace this reality by rejecting institutional design in favor of a warm, multi-sensory approach to make them a comforting extension of home.

Color choice plays a substantial role, heavily impacting the moods and concentration levels of both children and staff. Humans learn through visual communication, and colors affect us even when we do not consciously perceive them, like soft and neutral tones that promote calm, comfort, and productivity.

Centers like these embrace the entire family and tend to include parent lounges providing parents with comfortable seating, workspaces, and opportunities to connect with other parents to build community and strengthen a sense of belonging.

The Reggio Emilia early learning approach is a prime example of getting interior beauty and inspiration at ECE centers right. This methodology brings elements of cultural beauty from the children’s family and community life directly into the classroom. When executed well, Reggio classrooms never fail to elicit an immediate sense of comfort and security from adults and children alike. Reggio’s foundation is its intentionality, not luxury or cost. The approach reminds us that our environment matters deeply and through deliberate and specific interior design, we can create spaces that communicate belonging, that you are valued, and that your ideas matter.

To inspire means to fill someone with the urge or ability to do something, particularly a creative endeavor. We need our centers to inspire children by facilitating sensations of security, warmth, play, rest, and learning throughout the day.

At the pinnacle of this continuum sits an ECE facility that signals both the value of its mission and of the people it serves. Such facilities not only honor and inspire the children, parents, and staff within, but the surrounding neighborhood as well. When viewed from this perspective, the full impact of facility design is almost impossible to quantify.

Of course, ECE centers do not have to reach this level of design. Yet, when an organization secures the rare opportunity for new construction or a major renovation and centers design as a priority instead of a luxury, the facility has a chance to inspire. It can become the ultimate form of community development by setting a standard of what learning environments for children should be, regardless of their neighborhood or economic status, and how academic success and pride in community can be cultivated.

During the pandemic, a number of state governments, alarmed by the vulnerability of their ECE ecosystems, approved American Rescue Plan Act (ARP) funding for more than 225,000 child care programs nationwide. In Michigan, the department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential partnered with IFF to make $59 million available to ECE providers across the state through the Caring for MI Future program—the first major investment in early learning facilities in the state’s history. The dollars enabled more than 1,000 ECE programs to complete more than 3,600 projects to upgrade, repair, and renovate their facilities.

In California, the state appropriated $150 million for new construction and major renovations specifically to expand, create new programs, or replace programs that had closed due to state or federally declared disasters. In 2023, more than one-third of child care directors reported that their program would have closed permanently without these federal stabilization funds.

While one-time emergency funding opportunities like these offer a rare chance for ECE providers to upgrade their facilities, they are not without drawbacks. Limited planning and implementation time, coupled with requirements for dollars to be spent on minor renovations, forced ECE providers to pursue easily executed projects and equipment purchases. The more extensive, difficult renovations—the exact types of structural work required to move a facility up the hierarchy—proved to be beyond the scope of fast-expiring funding.

Moving forward, we need to be more proactive. By conducting comprehensive facility assessments before one-time funding opportunities arise, we can create a “shovel-ready” pipeline of significant deferred maintenance projects paired with other structural renovations to hit the ground running the moment capital becomes available. If we ignore the deep deferred maintenance that these assessments identify, basic cosmetic improvements can quickly be wiped out by structural failures, risking the closure of entire programs.

We must also aggressively lobby for permanent capital funding for ECE facilities. In Illinois, the ECE community led by Action for Children and Start Early has successfully argued that early childhood facilities are just as critical to the state’s economy as roads and bridges. As a result, advocates secured a dedicated ECE capital carve-out within the state’s capital improvement bill. In the most recent bill, Illinois set aside $100 million for ECE facility expansions alongside $10 million for smaller rehabilitation projects. Massachusetts has successfully executed similar capital models.

The profound advantage of state capital funding is that it builds infrastructure without cannibalizing the operational dollars meant for classrooms and staff. Concentrated, intentional advocacy to set aside state capital dollars for ECE improvements should be replicated across the country. Even modest, consistent allocations can systematically move local and regional ECE ecosystems up the hierarchy, dramatically improving the daily environment for children while broadening access to quality care.

While we must more aggressively demand public accountability for capital funds for ECE facilities, we also need to embrace the reality that large-scale systemic change will not occur without the philanthropic sector. As mentioned earlier, the development of ECE facilities in under-resourced communities has long been relegated to philanthropic endeavors, but we need to be far more intentional about requesting the level of funding needed to raise the bar of our ECE environments. Again, there are precedents.

The Kresge Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation share a deep, long-standing understanding of how early childhood facilities drive broader community development. Working together, they’ve staked out an ambitious, comprehensive vision for Detroit’s children, Hope Starts Here, with one pillar focusing on the physical infrastructure of the ECE ecosystem.

In addition to facilitating the development of four new exemplar facilities (Marygrove Early Education Center, McClellan Early Childhood Center, United Children and Family’s center, and a planned project in southwest Detroit) to meet the city’s overwhelming need for child care, the collaborative provided funding for Learning Spaces to improve existing ECE facilities and homes. Through the program, IFF works hand-in-hand with center-based providers to support facilities improvements. Beyond physical changes, the initiative couples construction with provider education on facility design, resulting in graduates becoming passionate ambassadors for high-quality early education environments. The program’s success also laid the groundwork for regional expansion, with similar programs funded by other foundations in Metro Detroit, western Michigan, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and downstate Illinois. Outside of the Midwest, comparable programs have been conducted in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Atlanta. In each case, local providers had access to dedicated sources of funding and other crucial supports that enabled them to successfully execute facilities projects.

What these examples demonstrate is that moving ECE facilities along the hierarchy is entirely possible, but only when backed by consistent, intentional philanthropic capital used explicitly for infrastructure needs. The roadmap exists, and now we need local champions to scale the approach nationally. Community foundations are the natural choice to drive this effort because they have the unique convening power to organize capital campaigns that leverage their own assets, contributions from local United Ways, and funding from the local corporate community—which has a vested interest in bolstering the ECE ecosystem on which its workforce depends.