I noted in an earlier article that our classrooms are where early childhood education theory intersects with the realities of daily practice. The competing needs of parents, children and staff members create this interesting dynamic. Add financial realities to this mix and things get really interesting.

An obvious place to start is class size. Smaller class size is an indicator of quality early childhood education, just as it is in elementary schools. According to our licensing regulations, a Neighborhood House classroom with two teachers can enroll eight infants, or 10 toddlers, or 14 3-year-olds, or 16 4-year-olds. Obviously, an accountant would tell us to enroll only 4-year-olds, or else charge infants twice as much. Not many folks could pay $250 a week for infant care, and parents of infants and toddlers need and want high-quality, responsive care. Neighborhood House is one of the few centers in Auburn that provides care for infants and toddlers. While we do charge more for younger infants and children, running an infant and toddler room is at best a money-losing operation. Over time, we hope to build our budget so that we consider our classrooms full with six infants, eight toddlers, 12 3-year-olds, and 14 4-year-olds. These smaller teacher-child ratios would allow us to provide an even higher quality learning environment and give more individual attention to every child.

Consistency of care-giver is also an indicator of a quality environment. Obviously, a classroom where different adults are racing in and out all day long will not provide the same quality of learning environment, as a classroom where two partners, who are well-known to the children and work well together, spend the entire day.

Even when this is the case, providing the consistency that children need can be challenging. Our center is open nearly 12 hours each day. Obviously, all of our classrooms cannot be open all 12 hours, and children of the same age are grouped together at the beginning and end of each day.

In order to provide better coverage at both ends of the day, most of our teachers have to take an hour lunch break (unpaid) but children are sometimes very sad when their teacher leaves before they do at the end of the day.

As teaching professionals, our staff members deserve paid holidays, some sick time, and some vacation time.

Parents want us to be open when they need to be at work, so some of our few holidays present a problem for them.

Parents, of course, want their children to be comfortable and happy. If their child is only happy when he or she is in the company of a single-beloved teacher, a vacation day for that teacher is going to present a problem.

Parents don't like the weekly fee to increase while teachers deserve an occasional raise.

Teachers who complete college classes or degrees and improve their skills expect to get a raise. Meeting the needs of children, staff, and parents while keeping the budget in balance is an interesting challenge, and is known as the tri-lemma.

Teachers who work in a nursery school setting have some advantages that teachers in child care centers do not have. New teachers are sometimes very frustrated by the realities of teaching in a center. Our challenges are many. How do we schedule staff meetings and staff development when we are open nearly 12 hours a day? How does a teacher build a community in a classroom when children are coming and going all year long, due to transitions and the entry of new children? How does a teacher plan a great circle time when the children in her classroom are dropped off anytime from 6:30 until 11 a.m. and picked up anytime from 3 until 5:45 p.m.?

Parents want us to make an exception to our health policy and let their "recovering and almost well" child return but expect that all the other children in the room will be immediately sent home at the first sign of illness. We sometimes have to send a child home knowing that the parent has no backup, has used all their sick time, and may lose his or her job if he or she misses any more days of work. Our goal is to keep all of the children in each classroom as healthy as possible, and sometimes children are simply too ill to attend or are contagious and a risk to other children.

Despite these challenges, our teachers love their work. We work very hard to provide a great learning environment for the infants, toddlers, and pre-school aged children in our care.

We try to overcome all of these obstacles on a daily basis, keeping in mind that at the intersection of theory and practice, despite the financial pressures, the needs of children must come first.

Susan Jones is executive director for the Neighborhood House in Auburn