Juwan Kelly attended Perry Nursery School in the late 1990s. He is now 14 and attends Robichaud High School in Dearborn Heights.

Photo courtesy of Tania James

Tania James had just graduated from college. It was 1998, and she had a job as a social worker making about $20,000 a year — which would have been fine if she weren't a single mom looking at paying $8,000 a year for day care.

With bills overwhelming her financial stability, James started looking around Ann Arbor for other child-care options. That's when she found Perry Nursery School, a nonprofit preschool that provides care on a sliding scale for at-risk children. The Perry community is celebrating the school's 75th anniversary on Oct. 16.

James says Perry not only gave her son, Juwan Kelly, a great educational start, but also provided support for her as a parent, through workshops, social events, and donations of food and clothing.

James is married now, and lives in Inkster with her husband, Willie, their preschool-age daughter Janae, and Juwan, who at 14 attends Robichaud High School in Dearborn Heights, where he enjoys playing football. James works at the nonprofit organization Southwest Solutions, overseeing the rental assistance programs, and she also founded and runs Sisters Who Are Powerful (S.W.A.P.), a nonprofit agency that offers mentoring, scholarships and support to women and girls.

Perry's long history is filled with stories like James', says Executive Director Sandy Hilton. Founded in 1934, Perry was originally one of four local Works Progress Administration nursery schools that cared for children from depression-ridden homes and provided employment for the low-income mothers who staffed the nurseries.

As the Depression eased, the other three WPA nurseries closed, but Perry remained. In the 1940s, Perry was a Lanham Act nursery, receiving federal funds to care for children of women who went to work in the factories during World War II. After the war, a group of parents, educators and local leaders saw a continued need for Perry in the community, to provide affordable child care for war widows and women supporting husbands who were attending college under the G.I. bill.

"Our staunch mission has always been to provide child care for low-income and single-parent families," Hilton said.

"If it wasn’t for Perry Nursery School, I’m not sure if I would've been able to continue working at my job," James said. "I didn't have family in the Ann Arbor area. I didn't have anyone that I could trust with my child, who could provide the type of quality care that I needed."

The program itself looks much different today, though, than it did when it began. In the 1930s, child care was little more than babysitting, but as research on child and brain development began to show the importance of early childhood learning, child care centers like Perry evolved. By the 1960s, Perry had developed an educational program that was progressive for the times, Hilton said.

The cultural atmosphere was also progressive.

"To be a single parent in the 60s or 70s, you were an outcast," Hilton said. "Those parents have said Perry was a safe haven — someplace to come where their child did not feel different."

At the time, Perry held Friday night potlucks that were often the only social outlets those families had.

"Even today, I have parents who have come to me and say, 'I want to be at Perry because I know my child won't be treated differently,'" Hilton said. "We are like a little U.N. here. We have a very diverse population of children, and a very diverse staff."

According to Hilton, Perry today has three critical functions: to provide consistent, full-time, year-round child care, to provide a high-quality preschool education, and to provide support services for the parent and the child. The school holds about a dozen free parent workshops per year on topics as varied as conflict resolution, household budgeting, and bedtime battles; parents are required to attend at least two.

Tuition is assessed on a sliding scale based on a parent's income. Hilton said 99 percent of Perry's families have low to extremely low income, and of that, 50 percent are extremely low, which means they make $16,600 or less per year. Perry's cost to educate a child is about $11,000 per year, but the average parent only pays about $3,700 of that. The difference is made up in grants and donations.

Hilton stressed that it's important for parents to pay some amount for their children's care. "They don't want to be on welfare. They want to be independent and take care of their family."

However, Perry is at risk of losing much of its funding due to state budget cuts. The school aid budget passed by the Legislature last week will reduce by half the grant program that provides 40 percent of Perry's funds. The rest of Perry's funds come from other grants and donations. Hilton said if Perry loses a significant portion of its funding, it might have to drastically change its mission, or even close its doors.

"It hurts to even think it or to say it, but it's the honest truth," Hilton said.

That would be a huge loss for the community, said Jim Inloes, a retired court administrator for the 22nd Circuit Court who has volunteered in Perry's classrooms and served on Perry's board of directors.

Inloes said his work at Perry convinced him that giving at-risk kids a quality early childhood education can keep them from ending up like the juveniles he saw in trouble in the court system. Most at-risk kids who aren't in a program like Perry's don't have any experience in a school setting until they enter kindergarten, at which point they are already behind their peers, he said.

"Perry children have already learned so much about themselves, seeing themselves as positive and successful," Inloes said. "I would venture to guess that if you took 100 people on a tour of Perry, 99 of them would approve of their tax dollars supporting it."

But without seeing it first-hand, he said, many people don't make the connection that early childhood intervention is a long-term investment.

"It costs around $30,000 per year to house someone in prison," Inloes said. "It doesn't make sense to house people in their 20s instead of providing some assistance 15 years earlier so they can be successful in school."

Perry's 75th Anniversary celebration will be held Friday, Oct. 16 at 6 p.m. at the Morris Lawrence Building at Washtenaw Community College. Tickets are $35 each, and the evening will include food, drinks, a silent auction and raffle, and music from the 1930s to the present day. To order tickets, or for more information call 734-677-8130 or e-mail sandyw@perrynurseryschool.org.

Jen Eyer is on the Community Team at AnnArbor.com. She can be reached at 734-623-2577 or jeneyer@annarbor.com, or you can visit her at 301 East Liberty.