The Works Progress Administration provided free childcare for children ages 2 to 5 for families in need, and jobs for the unemployed. The goals of the WPA nursery school administrators: racial integration; parental education and involvement; toys created with recycled materials; allowing boys and girls to play with the same types of toys and, perhaps most ambitiously, cooperative group play—both indoors and outdoors—for the express purpose of planting seeds of good citizenship in children. By the end of 1935 there were over 1,900 WPA nursery schools nationwide, attended by 76,000 children. Employment had been given to over 6,600 people. Eighty years later, millions of Americans struggle to find affordable childcare.
2025 is the 90th anniversary of the WPA, the greatest public works and human welfare program in America’s history. The Living New Deal has sparked a national conversation about what the New Deal achieved and what a new New Deal could
do today.
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