Catherine Hershey Schools for Early Learning hosts annual ECE Leaders Summit

Catherine Hershey Schools (CHS) hosted its third annual Early Childhood Education (ECE) Leaders Summit on Wednesday afternoon at the Hershey Lodge & Convention Center.

A panel of local and state experts spoke about innovation and how it shows in early childhood education, problems that are occurring within early childhood education, and new policies, programs and practices being implemented on the national and local level.

The two-day event, which began Tuesday night, gathered hundreds of education professionals with the “collective goal to optimize the early childhood education field by expanding knowledge, igniting innovation,” Catherine Hershey Schools Executive Director Senate Alexander said.

This year’s theme was “Extraordinary Impact.”

“We want this to be something that is inspirational to the staff who are here and we’re trying to make an impact by giving folks tangible strategies that they can take back to their center,” Alexander told PennLive. “And it actually has an impact not only on CHS but also all of the other providers that are here as well.”

Event attendees included nearly 500 CHS staff, local ECE program leaders and teachers, K-12 leaders, college educators, social workers and nonprofit leaders. Among the guests were local high school students from Milton Hershey School and Derry Township School District interested in a career in the ECE field.

Alexander told PennLive that the early childhood education field in the United States is facing three problems: teacher retention, providing access to high-quality education, and funding.

“When it’s a lower-waged field, then it’s hard to attract teachers, which then exacerbates the access issue, he said. “So it exacerbates all of the things.”

To combat the issues, they created a $350 million initiative that will serve six cost-free high-quality early childhood education centers.

The first CHS location opened in Hershey in October 2023, followed by the Catherine Hershey School for Early Learning in Harrisburg, which opened in September 2024.

Alexander said the CHS location in Lower Swatara Township will open this summer. The project will also expand into Lancaster County with three centers, which are anticipated to open in 2026. The three locations include Lancaster City, New Danville and Elizabethtown.

Alexander said CHS is also working with several local colleges and universities to work on internships and apprenticeship models to hire more teachers who want to enter the field.

During the panel discussion, Andrea Heberlein, executive director at Pennsylvania Early Learning Investment Commission, highlighted the positive change of new sectors being implemented into early childhood education.

Heberlein said early childhood education is being embraced beyond the traditional stakeholders such as education and social services.

She said new sectors including manufacturing, finance, technology, and construction are beginning to show that quality early childhood education can advance their own goals.

“This is key because [in early childhood education] there is not an area in which one sector can solve the problem,” she said. “We really need to have buy-in from multiple public and private partnerships to be able to solve this issue (providing high-quality education) for all families.”

Maria Hoover, executive coaching assistant at Work Wisdom, mentioned the importance of cultivating innovation in the classroom. Hoover highlighted strategies such as the importance of staying curious, embracing mistakes and conflict resolution.

“If you don’t have a workplace culture to foster innovation or to create space for that innovation then it turns into that [atmosphere of] ‘we’re getting these tasks done and we’re going to move forward.’”

Bonnie O’Keefe, senior associate partner at Bellwether and a researcher on policies and systems in K-12 and early childhood education, shared her excitement for innovative degree and credential programs that are being created for early childhood educators, which was something that didn’t wasn’t around in the past.

Bellwether is a national nonprofit that analyzes education funding nationwide. During the panel discussion, she mentioned other colleges outside of Pennsylvania that offer CDA, associate, bachelor and master degrees for early childhood education.

“Early childhood educators haven’t always had access to high quality, relevant professional training,” O’Keefe said. “And as investment increases from states or governments, often that comes with a higher bar for credentials, and we want to make sure that early educators in the field now have their expertise recognized and have access to professional learning that is built for them, the students, and it’s built for them to stay in the workforce.”

Participants also attended large-group sessions with keynotes from Jon Gordon, a renowned leadership speaker and 17-time best-selling author of “The Energy Bus,” and Duncan Wardle, former Head of Innovation and Creativity at Disney and current CEO & founder of ID8, an award-winning creative agency.

Catherine Hershey Schools for Early Learning provide non-residential, year-round weekday care and education to children, aged from 6 weeks to 5 years old, from under-resourced and overburdened backgrounds.

All costs are covered for qualifying families. CHS is hiring qualified staff at multiple sites, including CHS New Danville, where employment will begin with a paid professional development program. Click here to learn more about the current openings.