Community Highlights: Meet Emily Jacobson of Everbloom Montessori

Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Jacobson

Hi Emily, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
In the Spring of 2020, the Montessori school that several of our current staff worked for decided to eliminate the entire infant and toddler program in order to use those classrooms for the older children to have smaller cohorts of children which was recommended at that time during the pandemic. This unfortunately left many staff without jobs some of which had been employed there for 25 years as well as the families without care at that age level.

As a short-term solution during 2020-2021 three families opened up classrooms in their homes for staff to continue to have employment and for families to have care for their children.

In late Fall early winter Emily Jacobson, Annie Cloyd, now current co-directors at Everbloom and Kate Robinson, now founding parent, board president and executive director of strategic growth started discussing what plans might look like to open our own Montessori early childhood education school.

After hosting informational sessions, finding a location and a lot of work and determination Everbloom Montessori opened its doors in August of 2021.

Everbloom started its first year with four classrooms with ages 3 months through six years old, with enrolment just over 50 children. In our second year we had a waitlist of over 100 children and a need to expand our program. Fortunately, the building that shares a parking lot with the current building that we lease space from had a 3,500 sq ft space available which allowed us the opportunity to expand in the fall of 2022 to just over 80 children. Everbloom is now entering its fourth year of operation and is expected to have over 90 children enrolled and has plans to purchase a building with the need for yet more growth with the hope to move the entire school to that location in the fall of 2025 which will allow enrollment to grow to around 130 children between the ages of 3 months and 6 years old with the potential to add a charter elementary.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Things have aligned well in many ways for us to be able to open our doors in just a short timeframe. We did not do any advertising and were still able to open with full classrooms and waitlists which was very helpful and contributed to the overall success of being able to operate. We also had several committed parent volunteers with experience in the entrepreneurial world as well as expertise in finance, law and many other areas that helped us build our model, policies, procedures, budget etc.

With all of that said we have definitely encountered struggles along the way. In a matter of two years, we had to prepare and get licensed two different sites which is a big undertaking in itself. Find, hire and train staff and Emily Jacobson and Annie Cloyd also functioned in two full time roles our first three years working in the classrooms as lead teachers and as the school’s co-directors.

We also opened our doors during the pandemic and had to adhere to all guidelines from the adults and children being masked to not allowing anyone who was not an employee or enrolled child into our environment during our first year of operation which was very hard to do especially when trying to build relationships and trust with families.

Our latest struggles have been in regard to the need to expand and purchase a building as our new home. We have had three offers on three different buildings as well as looked at many others. Trying to secure funding from a lender, doing all of the required surveys and zoning as well as a long list of other things has made it very difficult to purchase our own space. As a smaller non-profit who works very hard at keeping our tuition rates affordable and our staff paid livable wages while simultaneously trying to help pay for staff to receive Montessori training have an abundance of materials and all of the other necessary things needed to run an Early childhood education school is quite overwhelming and requires a lot of time, energy and dedication amongst our leaders/admin team.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Everbloom Montessori?
Everbloom Montessori opened in Fall of 2021 serving children and their families ages 3 months through 6 years old. Everbloom is the only authentic early childhood Montessori program in West Michigan with MACTE credentialed Lead Guides on staff at every level. We also offer some of the most competitive infant-toddler care rates around with our tiered tuition model that is based on household income, MDHHS childcare scholarship for all ages, and are also participating in the Tri-share program in which employers pay 1/3 of the child’s tuition, the family pays 1/3 and the state pays 1/3.
We are passionate about offering affordable, quality early childhood education for all children and have plans to move to a lower income, high diverse neighborhood in fall of 2025. We also have plans to add a Montessori elementary program at that time that will be charter based so that we are able to offer an authentic Montessori education to children through sixth grade that will not be tuition based.
Everbloom is also committed to having a diverse community from all walks of life where everyone feels welcome. We are currently participating in a yearlong equity program with an organization called Embracing Equity to help us with this very important work.

Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
My favorite childhood memory is from the time that I spent with my grandparents’ house. I loved listening to their stories from their past, making raspberry pies from their raspberry patch and being together with all of our large extended family sharing meals, lots of laughter and time playing and growing up with all of my cousins.

Pricing:

• https://www.everbloommontessori.com/enrollment

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.everbloommontessori.com
• Instagram: everbloom_montessori
• Facebook: Everbloom Montessori Cooperative