It used to be harder to keep new teachers in Hamilton County's public schools. A young woman who graduated from college would get a teaching job, get married, have a baby -- and quit.
Then eight schools saw their exodus of new hires slow to a trickle after the Chambliss Center for Children in 2002 began to offer in-school child care for teachers' and principals' children as young as 6 weeks old.
"It made it all work for me," said Jill Levine.
The Chambliss Center for Children history
It began in 1872 as the Women's Christian Association, a food bank and clothes closet for orphaned girls living above a downtown saloon. The first orphanage opened in 1878 in rented space downtown. The orphanage moved to more than a dozen rented spaces in its early decades. In 1913, it became known as the Vine Street Orphanage after its first permanent home on Vine Street on what's now the campus of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. In 1937, the cornerstone was laid for Chambliss' current home in Brainerd. The building opened as an orphanage in 1939. The Chambliss Center, which changed names four times in its history, got its current name from Alexander Chambliss, a four-time Chattanooga mayor and state Supreme Court chief justice who in 1946 helped build a shelter for battered kids he saw coming through his courtroom. The shelter and the orphanage merged operations in 1983.
The in-school child care clinched her decision to take the principal's job that same year at Normal Park Museum Magnet School, where Levine got national attention for helping transform what was once a failing neighborhood elementary school with poor test scores into an award-winning institution with a long waiting list.
"Both of my children started at Normal Park as students when they were 6 months old," said Levine, who has since gone on to a temporary position with the federal Department of Education in Washington, D.C.
In-school day cares are just one example of how the 142-year-old Chambliss Center, which served in its early years as an orphanage for children whose parents died of yellow fever, has adapted and innovated.
Chambliss President and CEO Phil Acord believes the Chambliss in-school child care program is unique.
"As far as I know, there's nobody else in the entire country that's doing anything like it," Acord said.
The last orphans left Chambliss in the 1970s, and now the center's primary mission is child care -- or extended early childhood education, as Chambliss calls it -- offered 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year to children from 6 weeks to 12 years old.
Chambliss day cares for teachers and principals are in the following schools:
Normal Park Museum Magnet School Ganns Middle Valley Elementary Soddy Elementary Apison Elementary Hunter Middle East Ridge Elementary Red Bank Elementary Ooltewah Elementary Each day care can serve 12 children ages 6 weeks to 5 years old.
The center charges as little as $55 per week per child to provide child care for working poor parents -- about 80 percent of whom are single mothers. The most Chambliss charges on its income-based sliding scale is $160 per child per week.
"We've got the lowest fees of any program by a long shot," Acord said.
This year, Chambliss will embark on a capital campaign to raise $5.5 million to expand its child care to serve hundreds more children and their families.
Despite its long history -- Chattanooga's YMCA is the only other local charitable group that matches Chambliss' longevity -- fundraising is a challenge because many people don't know what it does.
"I think they're the unsung heroes of the community," Levine said.
Born to save orphaned girls
What's now the Chambliss Center for Children began in 1872 as the Women's Christian Association, a food bank and clothes closet for orphaned girls who lived on the upper floor of a downtown saloon.
The saloon-keeper, Mr. Savage, let the girls live there free of charge, which alarmed the women from five downtown churches who launched the charity.
"They deemed that highly inappropriate and swooped in to rescue these girls," said Gloria Miller, the Chambliss Center's development director.
"We believe his heart was in the right place in trying to get these girls off the street," Miller added, based on other good deeds Savage did before succumbing to yellow fever himself.
The charity's first orphanage opened in rented space downtown in 1878.
Led by women -- who normally wouldn't have business and government leadership opportunities then -- the institution's list of past board chairpersons reads like a "Who's Who" of Chattanooga's history.
Over the decades, women from some of the city's most well-to-do and influential families -- including Lupton, McCallie, Brock and Chapin -- chaired the board of the orphanage, which rented space in its first decades. The orphanage found its first permanent home in 1913 on Vine Street on what's now the site of the Baptist Collegiate Ministries at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
The manager's book of the Women's Christian Association from the 1800s is seen Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2014, at the Chambliss Center for Children in Chattanooga, Tenn. In 1937, the orphanage laid the cornerstone for its current home on a 17-acre campus on Gillespie Road just off Germantown Road in Brainerd.
Construction was funded through $200,000 from the federal government plus labor provided by the federal Works Progress Administration, matched by $100,000 raised locally. The stately, slate-roofed, four-story brick building has kid-friendly touches such as tiny toilets in the boys' and girls' bathrooms, short stair steps and light switches placed high on walls out of kids' reach.
Some 300 children attend Chambliss' child-care programs on the Brainerd campus -- but there's a waiting list of about 250 more. Chambliss manages five off-site child care centers for another 300 children. And another 700 children are served through Head Start.
But with an estimated 3,354 Chattanooga children under the age of 5 living in poverty, Chambliss' leaders believe there's an unmet need for quality child care. Women head roughly two-thirds of the city's poor households, according to a March New York Times article that said 42 percent of Chattanooga's children are poor, nearly double the rate statewide.
Chambliss expects it will cost about $2.6 million to add 15 new classrooms at its Brainerd campus, build apartments for young adults who age out of the center's eight-bed foster home and help improve the center's bottom line, including by opening a second thrift store.
"The community is just screaming at us for help," said Acord.
24/7 child care pioneers
Chambliss board members were eating at Wally's Restaurant on McCallie Avenue in 1968 when they learned their single-mother waitress had lost custody of her children because she left them home alone while she worked.
That chance meeting convinced Chambliss' leaders that a need wasn't being met.
No institution in Tennessee had a license for a 24-hour day care when Chambliss applied. So the center used some of the clout it gained through its long association with volunteers from some of Chattanooga's elite.
Board Chairwoman Mary Rhoda Porter cut through red tape by having her husband call his friend, state Sen. Douglas Henry, who arranged a meeting between Porter and high-ranking state officials.
"She came back to Chattanooga with a typed license in her hand," Acord said.
Chambliss Center 2015 capital campaign goals
Initiative I Adding 15 classrooms by moving the maintenance shop, remodeling shop space and underused food storage space: $1.6 million Serve an additional 100 children by building, buying or leasing two new off-site early childhood education programs in partnership with Head Start, in areas of greatest need: $850,000 Reach 400 children by teaching people who offer child care in their homes such things as safety, nutrition and age-appropriate developmental activities to improve the quality of care and strengthen these small-business owners: $110,000. Total cost: $2.56 million Initiative II Build two units with four 600-square-foot apartments to start a transitional living program for young people aged 18-21 who are coming out of state custody and lack family support. Create a new position to help recruit people to open foster homes. Total cost: $825,000 Initiative III Expand the thrift store to a second location: $500,000 Staff position to focus on communications, social media, outreach, foster family recruitment: $56,400 Improvements to physical plant to support program expansion: $350,000 Add funds to endowment: $1.15 million Total cost: $2.1 million
The center's connections can be a double-edged sword, its leaders say, because people assume Chambliss can take care of itself. But money's not easy to come by, officials say.
"We operate pretty lean," Acord said. "There's been waning federal dollars for the last five years now."
The center has held steady on what it charges parents, he said, though a $5 per child, per week increase is planned for 2015.
"We have not done a fee increase to our parents now in three years," Acord said.
Best-kept secret
Despite its long history here, phrases such as "best-kept secret" and "hidden jewel" came up when the Chambliss Center had City Council members visit in 2014 and had a survey done last year during a feasibility study for its capital campaign.
"Some people think we're an orphanage," Miller said.
For Christmas, a man came to Chambliss with 100 teddy bears and asked where the orphans were.
"Orphanages don't really exist in this country, anymore," Miller said.
Acord said, "We don't toot our own horn -- that's just never been part of our mode of operation."
Meanwhile, the Chambliss Center has gotten attention from outside Chattanooga.
In 1991, it was recognized for volunteer service as one of President George H.W. Bush's "points of light." Former Vice President Al Gore held a town hall meeting in the late 1990s at Chambliss Center.
And more recently, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan chose it as the site for a September visit at which he read to children accompanied by Mayor Andy Berke and touted the benefits of prekindergarten education.
Duncan was inspired to visit Chambliss in part by Maria Shriver's HBO documentary film "Paycheck to Paycheck: The Life and Times of Katrina Gilbert," which focused on a Rossville, Ga., single mother of three children who are enrolled at Chambliss.
"The center is the very definition of what President Obama has called for in his Preschool for All proposal: giving all children a strong foundation and the best opportunity to thrive in kindergarten and beyond," U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman Dorie Turner Nolt said via email.
Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu@timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/tim.omarzu or twitter.com/TimOmarzu or 423-757-6651.