08/26/2026
A Message to Our Community from the Chilkat Valley Preschool Board
It is with deep sadness that the Board of Chilkat Valley Preschool announces that CVP will be closing.
This decision was not made quickly or lightly. We believe deeply in the importance of quality early childhood education and childcare in Haines, and we know how much Chilkat Valley Preschool has meant to generations of children and families in our community.
Over the past year, we have worked hard to find a sustainable path forward. We changed our licensing, made significant changes to our building and program, pursued grants and donations, held fundraisers, and worked to increase the number of children we could serve while maintaining a safe, high-quality program.
Our community has also stepped up in remarkable ways. Most recently, CVP received a generous $10,000 donation, and our community supported another successful fundraiser. We are incredibly grateful. Those funds have helped support the preschool and its obligations, but even that generosity cannot solve the larger financial reality facing childcare in Haines.
Simply put, the gap has become too large.
There is a significant gap between the tuition a childcare program must charge in order to pay qualified staff a livable wage and the tuition many working families in Haines can reasonably afford. At the same time, licensing requirements appropriately limit the number of children who can be cared for based on their ages, the size of the facility, and required staff-to-child ratios. Even after changing our licensing and adapting our building, CVP cannot serve enough children to generate the revenue necessary to operate sustainably — and raising tuition high enough to close that gap would put childcare beyond the reach of too many Haines families.
This is bigger than Chilkat Valley Preschool. It reflects a larger childcare challenge in our community.
Currently, there is no local childcare subsidy or municipal childcare assistance through the Haines Borough to help bridge the gap between what quality childcare actually costs to provide and what local families can afford to pay. We sincerely hope that CVP's closure helps continue an important community conversation about what investment in childcare could look like in Haines.
Childcare is infrastructure. It allows parents to work, supports local employers, strengthens families, and gives our youngest community members a strong beginning. We hope that in the future, community partnerships, public investment, childcare subsidies, or another sustainable model can make quality childcare more accessible for Haines families and viable for those who provide it.
To every family who entrusted your children to CVP, every teacher and staff member who poured themselves into this work, every board member and volunteer who gave their time, and every individual, business, and organization that donated, fundraised, advocated, or simply showed up:
Thank you.
Your support mattered. Your donations mattered. And most importantly, the children and families served by Chilkat Valley Preschool mattered.
We remain hopeful that this is not the end of the conversation about childcare in Haines, but rather an opportunity for our community to come together around what our children, families, workforce, and community need for the future.
With gratitude,
The Board of Directors
Chilkat Valley Preschool
