Winding a plastic spider around the yarn web strung by his teacher, Chip Deroharian wasn’t just making a “garden friend” but practicing the fine motor skills he’d need next year in kindergarten.

For a while, it seemed like Deroharian and the other kids in Noelle Smart’s class might be the last at LEAP Preschool.

For the past two years, LEAP had been telling its families that it would have to close: Its teachers were all either retiring or moving on to new chapters.

After 14 years at the school, Smart is moving on, she said, for a fresh start, to pursue more travel and, potentially, to start a family. She stayed on for an extra year as LEAP looked for new hires. But, like many early childhood education and childcare centers in the state, the school struggled.

However, with three new teachers and three new teaching aides arriving next year, things are turning around. The school will even expand to three classes, serving kids from age 3 until they enter kindergarten.

“We’ve been telling people for two years that we’re closing down, so we just don’t have the word of mouth out there anymore,” said Executive Director Heidi Jones. “It’s a wild problem that we have: We’re in a city that has a crisis of preschool. We have the openings, and I’m doing everything I can to let the community know.”

There was no silver bullet, no major change that solved LEAP’s staffing shortage, Jones said. People just started saying ‘yes.’

Now in its 17th year, the preschool is tied to the Trinity Christian School out of Trinity Baptist Church on Clinton Street. With morning and afternoon programming, its classes are capped at 15 students and follow a “play-based” learning model, which uses hands-on and child-led activities as a medium for development.

On the one hand, the staff pool for LEAP is somewhat limited – while students don’t have to have a Christian background, the staff must. On the other hand, the preschool’s connection to the K-12 program down the hall means close contact with teachers and parents who fit the bill and might be looking for a change. With not every student coming every day or all day, the preschool offers more flexibility than standard, full-time teaching, Jones noted. That can be a big draw for classroom teachers wanting to downshift and for full-time parents looking to transition back into their careers or into new ones.

This held true for Samantha Blackard.

“I just felt like I was ready to go back to work,” said Blackard, a certified K-6 teacher who has been a stay-at-home parent for the last several years.

With her two kids, Reed and Rayn, now in second and fifth grade at Trinity, she began working part-time as a kindergarten aide for a few years and heard about the situation facing LEAP.

“There’s such a wonderful atmosphere that that school has, just uplifting and encouraging, and I really didn’t want that to go away,” she said.

Another parent, Bri Wilson, will teach the class of 3-year-olds that her son, Graham, will join next fall. She had initially leaned toward homeschooling him but also missed teaching in a classroom. LEAP offered a win-win.

Jones is herself a former first-grade teacher at Abbot-Downing School who joined LEAP as its director in January. She and her husband met as students at Trinity Christian School.

Not all students at LEAP will attend the K-12 school. Most are not affiliated with Trinity Baptist, Jones said, and some are not Christian.

“We are a Christian-based community,” she said, noting that there is Bible story time and prayer before meals. “But we’re not agenda-based by any stretch of the imagination. … Our program, primarily, is to let kids be kids, to have fun with them, just to have them in a safe, nurturing environment.”

The school’s Concord location means it is popular with people who work in the city and may live in surrounding towns – from state workers to emergency service staff, she added.

Concord – and the rest of New Hampshire – remains in the throes of a childcare availability and affordability crisis. Staffing plays a big role: Spaces have limited capacity without enough early childcare professionals, and turnover can be high, especially due to low wages, according to a report from the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute. At the same time, raising staff pay often means charging more for tuition.

LEAP will offer Tuesday-Thursday classes for 4-year-olds and 3-year-olds at $210-250 for half-day and $460 a month for full-day. Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes, available to 4-year-olds, are between $310–$370 monthly for the half day and $680 for the full day.

“We have this space, and we used to be completely full, booming,” Jones said. “So we’re hoping to get back there and help our community.”

Catherine McLaughlin can be reached at cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com. You can subscribe to her Concord newsletter The City Beat at concordmonitor.com.