Stephanie Henifin faced a difficult challenge. While she was undergoing cancer treatment at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, she found comfort looking out the window toward her children.
Her kids were less than a mile away at Everett Community College’s Early Learning Center. There, they were cared for while she fought the disease. Henifin trusted the center and felt safe knowing her children were nearby.
Now, that support is ending. Everett Community College announced it will close the Early Learning Center by June 30. The center currently serves 71 children. The college says the closure is necessary due to the high costs of running the facility.
For Henifin, the center is more than just childcare. She managed to maintain a 4.0 GPA, even while receiving daily radiation treatment and taking tests from hospital beds. Most of her education costs are covered by a federal grant.
Without the Early Learning Center, she has no other childcare options. Henifin says she will have to drop out of nursing school.
“I always thought cancer would be the only thing to stop me from finishing school,” she said Wednesday. “Not budget cuts. I fought this monster, and I thought that would be the only obstacle.”
The Early Learning Center opened in 1990. It is known as one of the best early childhood education facilities in Washington state. The center has national accreditation and earned the highest Level 5 rating from the state Department of Children, Youth, and Families.
The program focuses on supporting student-parents and low-income families. It often has long waiting lists of families hoping to use its services.
“It serves the most vulnerable people in the community, which is very rare,” said Samantha Sommerman, an Everett lawyer whose children attend the center. “Usually, programs this good are only for wealthy families. This is a subsidized, well-resourced public program, and now they want to cut it.”
The college first tried to close the center in 2021, also citing financial reasons. In response, Snohomish County provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep the center open. The funds came from the Puget Sound Taxpayer Accountability Account (PSTAA), which supports early learning, and the American Rescue Plan Act.
Between June 2022 and September 2024, the county allocated $249,520 from the American Rescue Plan Act to the college, said Shelby Burke, the college’s vice president of finance. In addition, the county’s PSTAA funds provided over $300,000 in 2024-2025, county records show.
These funds helped pay for repairs at the center, part of the administrative assistant’s salary, and set aside money to hire a consultant. The consultant’s job would have been to review the center’s business model and find ways to keep it running long term.
However, the college was unable to find a consultant for this work, said Cathy Leaker, vice president of instruction at Everett Community College.
