One hundred and twelve years after Milton S. Hershey opened his original school for orphaned boys, the latter-day torchbearers for Hershey’s vision of helping disadvantaged children are coming to Harrisburg.
The board of managers that govern the Milton Hershey School in Derry Township announced Thursday that they have settled on a site to build the second of what will eventually be six Catherine Hershey Schools for Early Learning, at Sixth and Muench streets in Harrisburg.
The centers are part of the Hershey Trust’s mandate to make greater use of its nearly $14 billion in assets - built on the foundation of its controlling stake in the Hershey Company - on charitable purposes. The first early childhood center is planned for Derry Township, on the Milton Hershey School’s home campus.
The proposed Harrisburg center will be located on a set of unused lots at North Sixth and Muench streets. After its opening in 2024, it will offer cost-free education and family support services to 150 students from birth to age 5, all from economically disadvantaged and at-risk backgrounds.
Senate Alexander, executive director of the new Catherine Hershey Schools, said eligibility thresholds are still being developed. But one parameter that looks to be pretty well-established at this point is an income-eligibility ceiling of 200 percent of the federal poverty level. For a single parent with one child in Harrisburg, that would be about $34,000 in annual income.
In all of Dauphin County, according to the Annie E. Casey Center’s Kids Count data center, there are more than 9.500 children aged 5 and under that fall under that ceiling; Harrisburg would have one of the highest concentrations of childhood poverty in the county.
“Just looking at the need of how many children, especially low-income children that do need quality early childhood education in Harrisburg, was a driving factor” for choosing Harrisburg, Alexander said. That was coupled with the proximity to the home campus, and the sense that the residents here are familiar with the Hershey brand as more than just a candy bar.
“The primary goal is to set children up for lifelong success and to provide then with a foundation for lifelong success,” Alexander said.
“The thought is that by setting these children up and giving them the foundations, they will either than go into the area public schools and it will help raise the public schools; or, for some of them, they will come to the Milton Hershey School and continue to get that high-quality education.”
The Harrisburg site — on four acres on the 600 block of Muench Street that Alexander said currently covers two vacant lots and one empty residential property — is expected to have 80 employees and volunteers upon opening, providing services from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays.
“We look forward to partnering with the Harrisburg community to support the critical and growing need for early childhood education in the area and narrow the kindergarten-readiness gap between low-income and higher-income students,” Alexander said.
Hershey’s Board of Managers announced plans in 2020 to develop up to six of the so-called early childhood resource centers across Pennsylvania, all operating as subsidiaries of Milton Hershey School.
That plan won a needed blessing from Dauphin County Judge John J. McNally last year, because the original deed of trust issued by Milton and Catherine Hershey in 1909 restricted the spending of trust income solely to the existing private residential school in Derry Township.
In McNally’s order, the Hershey School agreed to earmark 25% of its future endowment income to the new early education centers, the first major expansion of the Hersheys’ original vision outside of Derry Township.
The board said earlier this year that the new centers would be named for Catherine “Kitty” Hershey, wife of Milton Hershey and the person who Milton Hershey credited with birthing the couple’s vision to provide schooling for orphaned children.
The first center, which will be located on the Milton Hershey School campus on the southwest corner of Governor and Homestead Roads in Hershey, is scheduled to be completed in 2023. The locations of other centers will be determined by the board of managers based on further research and community input.
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