Montessori school hopes to double infant childcare options

One local private school has taken steps to address the acute shortage in infant and toddler care on the Island, but while everything is in place according to their head of school, they’re short $4.8 million — and they’ve been trying for three years. 

Vineyard Montessori, located along the residential side streets of Vineyard Haven, currently offers an independent, guided learning environment for children aged 15 months to eighth grade. After successfully building a new care center on their campus in 2021 to help address an Island-wide shortage of toddler care, the school is looking to broaden their scope to younger ages as well. Many of their teachers have been trained to care for babies from birth to 15 months old, they have the land to build on, and contractors ready to go. Their only hangup: money. 

“We have builders. We have a plan. We just need the support of people who know what a scarcity this is,” Deborah (“Debbie”) Jernegan, the head of Vineyard Montessori, said.

In total, their “Building Tomorrow Now” campaign would expand the school’s toddler and preschool offerings to 43 new students, to a total of 121 children in their early childhood education classrooms. 

The amount of infant care spots added would more than double the amount on the entire Island — from about ten spots to twenty-four. The goal is to start construction this summer, and they hope to open the doors to their new centers by June of 2026. But with funding slowly funnelling in, they’re at a standstill. 

“I want movement, and more for our children,” Jernegan said.

On an Island where licensed infant care options are extremely slim, more spaces opening could pave the way for a more competitive child care environment, more spots, and lower prices. But the project is still a ways away from completion, leaving many young families wondering what’s available. 

Katelyn Carvalho, a board member at Vineyard Montessori and parent of a student enrolled there, said the staggering length of waitlists, high costs, and slim options for child care had her reeling as a young parent. Before her daughter was enrolled in classes, she hired a nanny in order to get child care. And while she appreciated the experience her child had with one-on-one attention, the price difference for a nanny versus a program can be in the hundreds-of-dollars a day more.  

“I remember when I was pregnant with my oldest, looking at all the preschools and evaluating my options and then realizing that I didn’t really have any options,” Carvalho said. “I just needed to get them on the waitlist everywhere as soon as they were born.”

She said Vineyard Montessori currently has 46 preschool aged children on their waitlist, and 29 toddlers — numbers that may not sound high, but indicate a years-long waiting list. Space opens up when children age out of the program, meaning it can be common for parents to be waiting up to four years for the call that their child got in. 

“This shortage doesn’t just affect parents — it ripples through the entire community,” Carvalho said. “Parents are forced to reduce work hours, leave jobs, or move off-Island altogether. Employers struggle to retain staff, and businesses suffer. It’s not just a parenting issue; it’s a workforce and economic stability issue.”

Andora Aquino Rodrigues, a local owner of a landscaping company and mother, said Vineyard Montessori has been a valuable resource for two of her children. But she pointed out that the child care shortage on the Island has spared no one, and the cost is still extremely high. 

When Rodrigues was able to enroll her toddler in the new toddler care center at Vineyard Montessori, she said it was a huge relief. They were on a waitlist for over a year and were starting to feel boxed in by the lack of options. 

“I was honestly overwhelmed by how limited the options were,” Rodrigues wrote in a letter to the Times. 

The cost for Vineyard Montessori is $65 per day for the care of preschool-aged children, and $78 per day for toddlers, keeping in line with another program at Martha’s Vineyard Community Services. 

Rodrigues spoke to the significance of adding more spaces to the licensed child care roster, and said the safety and security of a center has added exponentially to her life and ability to run her business. 

“It allows my husband and me to work without that constant anxiety of ‘Is my kid okay?’ That emotional bandwidth alone is worth a lot,” she said. “Unless we invest in more programs like this — more accessible, more affordable, and better supported — we’re going to continue putting families in impossible situations and leaving too many kids behind.”