The Nashville Early Education Coalition has launched a new scholarship program aimed at helping early childhood educators afford child care for their own children while addressing a persistent workforce challenge facing Nashville child care centers.
The Retaining Early Educators As Professionals, or REAP, Scholarship will help cover tuition for full-time early educators whose children attend the centers where they work.
The 2026 pilot will provide scholarships to 23 educators with 30 children at eight Nashville child care centers. NEEC has budgeted nearly $400,000 for the program’s pilot year, with the average educator expected to save about $6,300 annually in child care tuition.
Weekly scholarship payments began in September and will continue through August 2027. Individual awards average more than $200 per week, depending on the number and ages of an educator’s children.
NEEC says the program addresses a problem child care providers regularly face: educators leaving the profession because their wages make it difficult to afford child care for their own families.
“Because of student-to-teacher ratios, which are necessary to preserve safety and quality, losing one educator can mean closing an entire classroom. And that leaves fewer seats for families who are already on waitlists,” said Melanie Shinbaum, executive director of NEEC. “When we help our educators afford care for their own children, we protect care access for many other Nashville families at the same time.”
Scholarships were awarded through a competitive, blind-review process open to nonprofit, mission-driven child care providers across Davidson County.
Participating centers are Belle Meade UMC Children’s Center; Equally Created; Fannie Battle Day Home for Children; Glen Leven Presbyterian Church Day School; The King’s Daughters Child Development Center; Little Wonders Early Learning Center; St. Luke’s Community House; and Saint Mary Villa.
The scholarship is funded through a multi-year commitment from The Frist Foundation, with additional support from the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, the Joe C. Davis Foundation and The Women’s Fund at the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.
“Nashville’s early childhood educators do some of the most important work in Nashville, and often while struggling to afford the very care they provide to others,” said Corinne Bergeron, CEO of The Frist Foundation and a member of NEEC’s Executive Committee. “REAP addresses that reality directly and is the kind of coordinated provider-informed program that Nashville needs.”
The program is modeled after an initiative that began in Kentucky during the COVID-19 pandemic and has since been adopted in various forms elsewhere. NEEC hopes the Nashville pilot will provide evidence that could support expansion of similar assistance to more early educators locally and statewide.
Rhonda Trumbo, executive director of The King’s Daughters Child Development Center, said retaining qualified educators is a continuing challenge for child care providers.
“Every director I know spends a great deal of time and energy to figure out how to keep great educators in the field,” Trumbo said. “When we invest in early educators in ways that make their own lives more sustainable, we protect the quality of care for every child they serve.”
NEEC plans to collect data from the pilot to help guide its advocacy for workforce investments in compensation, benefits and child care affordability.
“The early childhood workforce, including the teachers that REAP supports, is the foundation of every other workforce in this city,” Shinbaum said. “When NEEC and its funders invest in retaining early childhood educators, they are investing directly in the ability of every Nashville employer to keep their own employees on the job.”
