Lindsey Ramsey: Helping the Helpers

Step into the Shady Lane School in Pittsburgh, and you’ll see a large picture of Mr. Rogers. He was one of the school’s founders, along with Phil Hallen, a local philanthropist, and Margaret MacFarland, a consultant on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, the iconic children’s TV show. They were all sitting at a Chinese restaurant in downtown Pittsburgh during the ‘60s when Hallen said he had the funding to start an early childhood program that would be accessible to a wide, diverse range of children and families. They began to write their ideas for the school on a place mat that’s now in the school’s lobby. It’s covered in soy sauce and filled with scribbles of their ideas, including the name Shady Lane circled in red. And Lindsey Ramsey has seen it many times because she is the school’s executive director.

She’s also a big fan of Mr. Rogers, one of her hometown’s heroes, and she agrees with him that “strength has to do with helping others.” And that’s what she’s done as the first Black head of the historic nonprofit early learning program and as an advocate for the early childhood profession. But 16 years ago, she was a young single mom and college dropout, who was scared of the future. “I didn’t know how I was going to take care of my baby, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life,” Lindsey recalls. “I was at my grandma’s house crying when she urged me to go to the East Minister Child Care Center down the road, where they were looking for an aide in the infant room.”

Lindsey got the job and much more as she found herself “surrounded by amazing educators from different backgrounds,” as she recalls. “They helped me navigate being a new mom, taught me about best practices in the early childhood classroom and showed me what community looks like,” Lindsey says. “They provided me with the sisterhood I needed at the time, and I simply fell in love with the early childhood education field.”

What made the experience even more special was that the school allowed Lindsey to bring her daughter to work with her. “Like me, she was learning, and that made me even more aware of the value of early childhood education,” Lindsey says. So, she was happy when her director suggested that she earn her CDA®. The coursework took place nearby at the Shady Lane School, where Lindsey again found a sense of community and sisterhood. “The room was full of young Black and brown moms like me who were earning their CDA,” Lindsey says, “and many of us held our babies on our hips during the class. The instructor encouraged us to be frank about the challenges we were facing as new moms and that helped us thrive in the program.”

Earning a CDA made Lindsey even more aware that early childhood education is so much more complex than babysitting and emboldened her to go on with her education. “The CDA coursework was so well structured and easy for me to follow that I lost my fear of going to school with a new baby,” Lindsey says. “I went on to earn my bachelor’s degree in instructional studies at Point Park University and my master’s in education at West Chester University, where I’m now earning my doctorate in public administration.”

Along the way, Lindsey worked as a center director at Les Petits Cherubs-East Falls in Philadelphia, and as a center director at KinderCare center in Wilmington Delaware, where the enrollment was at an all-time low when Lindsey came onboard. “We were able to build enrollment up to 100 percent occupancy at one point,” she’s proud to recall, “and I can’t give the credit to anyone but the educators who were willing to do anything to ensure the quality of their classrooms. And that sometimes meant neglecting their health and well-being,” a sacrifice that Lindsey had also made as an early childhood teacher.

“I had first-hand experience of how challenging it is to be an early childhood teacher,” Lindsey says. “But it’s different when you have an administrative viewpoint and see all the hard work your staff is doing, despite the hardships they face. I had educators who couldn’t afford groceries and were having the power shut off in their homes, which made me determined to change things for the early childhood sector. I wanted more for our teachers by 2019, and I was also getting homesick for Pittsburgh,” Lindsey recalls. So, she took a job there with Trying Together, a nonprofit that provides professional development opportunities and advocacy for the early childhood profession.

Lindsey loved working at Trying Together because it gave her the chance to support early childhood teachers and make their voices ring out. In the course of three years, she rose from regional public policy coordinator to assistant director of policy and practice. And in this role, she established a provider advisory board of which she is especially proud. Last year, the advisory board organized a day without child care, brought providers and parents to lobby at Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, and convinced Governor Josh Shapiro to add a line item in the state budget for recruitment and retention of early childhood teachers. Lindsey joined the group on their trip, though by this time, she had taken the job at Shady Lane, a role that better filled her need for a strong connection to the community of providers in the field.

When the job opened up in 2021, Shady Lane, like many child care programs, was struggling in the wake of the COVID pandemic. And Lindsey felt she couldn’t let that program close. “It’s an anchor in the community and it’s where I earned my CDA, the launching point for my career,” as she explains. “So, when I came back to Shady Lane in 2022, it was like a full circle moment in my life.”

Since then, Lindsey has drawn on support from the community to give her staff some of the opportunities and benefits they deserve. “We’re partnering with professional development organizations to help educators earn their CDAs or get some type of higher education,” she says. “We have parents who provide us with support through their businesses. And we have a five-year grant from Duolingo, a publicly traded Pittsburgh company that does English-language learning, translation and support.”

When Shady Lane received the funding, Lindsey asked her educators what they wanted, as she recalls. “They voted for either bonuses or health benefits, and we wound up going with health benefits as the first choice,” she says. “So, unlike staff in many child care programs, our educators don’t have to pay out of pocket for the health care they need. We also give them access to therapists and telehealth mental health assistance, all of which has improved retention and recruitment. It has also raised the quality of teaching,” as Lindsey points out. “If our educators feel great, they are more able to make the classroom great, too.”

So, Lindsey continues to speak out on their behalf by serving on Pennsylvania’s Early Learning Commission, led by Governor Shapiro, where she joins in the search for new ways to increase access to child care and expand the child care workforce. “We recently had a summit,” she says, “that brought together public and private sector leaders to discuss innovative ideas to support the early childhood field, whether that be through private business investments, real estate opportunities or more community partnerships.” And it’s an issue that should concern us all, as Lindsey points out, since the early childhood workforce helps us all.

“Educators support our economy and society,” she says. “They’re the workforce behind the workforce. Yet people too often overlook the importance of what our educators do.” And when Lindsey speaks out on their behalf, she likes to quote something else that Mr. Rogers once said: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” And early childhood teachers, as Lindsey knows, are helpers who our communities and our whole country need.