Holy Name Preschool Suspends Operations After Staffing Crisis

Steamboat Springs —Eleven children. That is the entire current enrollment at Holy Name Preschool in Steamboat Springs, a facility licensed to hold forty. The preschool will suspend operations on Friday, Oct. 9, according to Father Grzegorz Cioch, who told the Steamboat Pilot on Monday that recurring staffing issues have made sustainable operation impossible.

The preschool opened in 1978. Families received notice of the suspension on Sept. 8. Cioch, who has been with the preschool for four years, stated that despite significant efforts to recruit qualified permanent teachers, the school could not establish the staffing needed to operate responsibly. He expressed hope that this is a suspension rather than a permanent closure, noting the parish would be "very happy to explore reopening" if permanent staffing is secured. The parish plans to continue supporting families through other ministries, including Operation Good Shepherd and religious education programs.

The closure highlights a broader structural failure in the local early childhood system. Meg Franges, executive director of Routt County’s First Impressions — the county’s Early Childhood Council — warned that the narrowing of available services will persist unless sustainable solutions are implemented. Franges pointed to an $8.5 million annual funding gap that the early childhood system currently faces.

First Impressions launched Routt Thrive by Five earlier this year, a branding and public education effort aimed at filling that funding void. In July, the initiative launched an interactive dashboard to track the early childhood crisis. Franges explained that affordability and workforce issues are interconnected problems driving the current situation. Programs cannot pay what it takes to recruit and retain educators, she said. Creating more classrooms does not automatically create the individuals needed to staff them.

"That’s why this is so hard to tackle, because there’s not just one solution," Franges told the Steamboat Pilot. "When one part of the system fails, you see the whole shutdown … for Holy Name specifically, it was a workforce breakdown."

The $8.5 million gap is too vast for a single grant, tuition increase, or one-time capital investment to solve. A systemwide investment is required to target all issues simultaneously. The data underscores the severity of the decline: Routt County has lost 151 early childhood spots in the past three years. This loss comes on top of an existing shortage of 269 spots, according to Franges. In those same three years, six early childcare centers closed their doors.

Let’s do the math on the local impact. The preschool served 11 children before suspending operations. With a licensed capacity of 40, the facility was operating at less than 30% of its potential. The suspension removes those 11 spots from the already strained local market. For context, the county is short by 269 spots before accounting for recent closures. The loss of Holy Name’s capacity adds to that deficit, not subtracts from it.

Franges noted that the workforce is the "whole other piece" of the crisis alongside affordability. Educators are leaving or failing to stay because wages do not match the cost of living in Steamboat Springs. The parish’s inability to retain permanent teachers mirrors the trend across Routt County, where six centers have closed in three years.

The practical bottom line is simple: fewer options for working parents and fewer jobs for early childhood educators. The $8.5 million annual gap remains unfilled, and the loss of 151 spots in three years shows that the system is shrinking. Holy Name Preschool’s suspension is a direct result of this financial and labor crunch. Until the systemwide investment Franges describes becomes reality, more closures are likely as programs struggle to pay staff who can afford to live in the valley.