Childcare center at downtown Anchorage church set to open Oct. 1 with municipal funding

Alaska's first worker-directed childcare center opens downtown Oct. 1, with room for 82 children and a governing model borrowed from cooperatives: the people who work there help run it.

The center, 3 Elements Educare, is setting up at First United Methodist Church on West Ninth Avenue. The municipality put $200,000 toward launching it — a capital grant from the fund Anchorage voters created in 2023 with Proposition 14, which routes marijuana tax revenue into child care and early education.

That fund now distributes about $5 million a year. The Assembly approved this grant in June as one of nine awards in a $1.25 million round, chosen from 48 proposals.

The cooperative structure is what sets it apart. Child care is an industry defined by low pay and heavy turnover, and worker-directed models give staff a formal role in decisions about how the business runs — an approach common in some trades but, according to the municipality's own award memo, not tried before in Alaska child care.