Kate Strebe’s daughter, Maya, is an intense kid. Full of big emotions and boundless energy, she’s the type of child who runs laps around the living room at the end of the day. So, when Strebe and her husband decided to enroll Maya in preschool in 2023, they worried about how their then three-year-old would adjust. Could Maya handle sitting still inside a classroom for much of the day?

Turns out, she wouldn’t have to. The Strebes stumbled upon a preschool that operates out of Denver-area parks and watched in amazement as “Maya just blossomed,” Strebe says. Maya, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy, spent her days climbing trees, building shelters out of branches, and splashing in creeks. She practiced writing her name with a stick in the sand and learned numbers by counting the needles on a pine bough. She even sat still. “She’ll spend 15 minutes just watching the way the ants move,” Strebe says. “Her ability to be out and engaged with kids her own age got better, and there was less fighting at home. Her math skills exploded.”

There was only one problem: money. The Colorado Universal Pre-K Program (UPK), which launched in August 2023, entitled the Strebes to 10 hours per week of free tuition at their local Cherry Creek School District preschool. That was a big deal, as both Strebe and her husband were between jobs at the time. They could not, however, use that subsidy at Maya’s school because it—as well as most other nature preschools—wasn’t licensed by the state. The Strebes managed to cover the cost of tuition ($952 per month for 18 hours a week) through a combination of credit cards and gifts from Maya’s grandparents. By signing up for federal food assistance and visiting food pantries, the family made their ends meet. “This school is perfect for her,” Strebe says. “It’s what she needs. Moving her into a traditional preschool for the UPK money—we decided it wouldn’t be worth it.”

With Maya attending her nature preschool full time this year, the cost has risen to $1,700 per month. Strebe and her husband are working now, but paying the bill is still a struggle. The Strebes have sacrificed retirement contributions and prescription medications to pay for it. “My dream is that we’ll be able to use UPK funds to send my younger child to nature preschool,” Strebe says. Thanks to legislation passed this summer, she may get her wish.

Read More: 3 New Colorado Laws Going Into Effect July 2023

Nature-based preschools, sometimes called forest schools, originated in Europe around the 1950s and have been mushrooming across the United States for the past 15 years or so. Some operate on public lands, some out of teachers’ homes; others partner with museums or nature centers. What they have in common is that their students spend most or all of their time outdoors, in all kinds of weather. The Centennial State is currently home to about 45 such schools, according to Jennifer Kollerup of the Colorado Collective for Nature-Based Early Education, an educator support group.

Parents seek out nature preschools for lots of reasons: because they don’t like the idea of their kids being indoors all day, because they value a connection to nature, because they believe children learn better outside. Research says they’re onto something. Studies published in a litany of peer-reviewed journals over the past few decades suggest that outdoor schools promote critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, and risk assessment. They lower stress and increase physical activity and prosocial behaviors (translation: compassion, helping others) and can be particularly beneficial to children with autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. What’s more, nature school graduates are just as ready for kindergarten as their traditional school peers in terms of social-emotional skills and early academics, such as letter recognition and counting. (Full disclosure: I sent both of my kids to an outdoor preschool.)

Despite growing evidence of their benefits, nature programs have long been forced to negotiate a tricky truce with government officials. Centennial State regulators oversee preschool licensing, and one of the Colorado Department of Early Childhood’s (CDEC) most basic requirements is access to an emergency shelter, which many outdoor schools don’t have. (Why pay rent on a facility, after all, when students are always outside?) “Our top priority is making sure children are not being cared for in dangerous situations,” says Mary Alice Cohen, director for the Office of Program Delivery for the CDEC. When it came to outdoor preschools, officials worried about everything from frigid weather to wild animals to whether kids would have to poop in the woods. (Many cancel school in extreme cold; wild animals typically aren’t an issue; and, sometimes, they do, cathole-style.)

Thus far, many nature programs have been operating under exemptions to state licensure rules, which the CDEC created for certain types of preschools, such as religious ones. The dispensations can be onerous. All of them limit the number of students who can enroll, and some advise that schools keep short hours—a stipulation that allows, say, a gym to offer childcare but doesn’t really help working families.

Even when they’re operating legally under exemptions, many outdoor preschools shy away from attracting the attention of the CDEC; several we spoke to for this story, including Maya’s school, requested we not disclose their names. They don’t always advertise their services, relying on word-of-mouth marketing that results in the enrollment of kids from similar families—usually white ones. That’s a byproduct of many factors, including the fact that outdoor schools tend to be where the green spaces are: Public and private lands are, naturally, easier to come by in the suburbs, foothills, and mountains than in the heart of Denver or Colorado Springs. Affordability is also an issue. “We know diversity of all kinds is really underrepresented” in Colorado outdoor schools, Kollerup says. A 2022 survey from the environmental education organization Natural Start Alliance reported that 78 percent of nature preschool students across the country were white. By comparison, kids of color made up more than two-thirds of the three- and four-year-olds in licensed Colorado preschools in 2021-’22.

That being said, children of all backgrounds were woefully underrepresented in pre-K classes that year, when 77 percent of Colorado’s four-year-olds didn’t enroll in or lacked access to a high-quality preschool. Lawmakers designed the UPK program to help remedy that gap in early education by making up to 15 hours per week of preschool free for everyone in the year before kindergarten. But the funds—as well as subsidies for low-income parents from the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program for Families (CCCAP)—didn’t flow to most nature schools, because they weren’t licensed.

Although she’s a teacher at a traditional middle school in Loveland, Janice Marchman recognizes the benefits of nature pre-Ks. “These outdoor programs are really good for a lot of kids,” says Marchman, who’s also a state senator representing western Boulder and Larimer counties. “Yet, they’re very expensive. They become quite exclusive.” So, during the 2024 legislative session, Marchman worked with the Colorado Collective for Nature-Based Early Education to co-sponsor SB 24-078. The bill, signed by Governor Jared Polis in June, made Colorado only the second state (behind Washington) to create a license option for full-day outdoor preschools—thereby ensuring the organizations will be eligible for CCCAP and UPK funds.

Licenses could also spur a much-needed boom in outdoor schools. The waiting list at AdventurMe Forest and Nature School in Black Forest, north of Colorado Springs, numbers more than 100. “Programs like mine can’t possibly serve the amount of families that are looking for this,” director Tamara Wineland says. While outdoor preschool advocates are pushing for a teacher-to-student ratio requirement of 1:6 (the ratio in traditional preschools is 1:10 for three-year-olds and 1:12 for four- and five-year-olds), the exact regulations of the new license are not yet clear. SB 24-078 directs the CDEC to create rules specific to nature schools by the end of 2025, opening the door for licensed programs to kick off in spring 2026. (Current outdoor preschools can apply for a special waiver, introduced in September, to bridge the gap.)

One guideline legislators baked directly into the bill: Providers can use structures like RVs or covered pavilions to meet the department’s emergency shelter requirement, rather than rent costly permanent structures that increase their overhead and tuition. “I think it’s groundbreaking and amazing progress,” Rebecca Van Der Like, owner of Seedlings Kindertribe nature preschool in Fort Collins, says of the new law. “It will open up so many opportunities for children to take their learning into nature.”

Boukman Byrd, a teacher
at a local nature school. Photo courtesy of Boukman Byrd

Boukman Byrd grew up catching tadpoles and crawfish in Texas; after he moved to Denver as a teen, he worked at an adventure camp in Estes Park and taught city kids how to fish. Still, he had no idea nature preschools existed until the founder of one in the Denver area took a martial arts class Byrd was teaching. “Like most parents, I was like, This is a thing?” says Byrd, who is Black. His next question: “Aren’t the kids in danger?” Byrd visited the preschool with his youngest child, Dionysus, and felt reassured enough to sign his son up in spring 2023. “He loved it,” says Byrd, who now teaches at the preschool and often shares his family’s experience with prospective parents—particularly parents of color.

Making nature preschools more affordable is one thing. Making them more diverse, however, will require a good deal of healing. “There’s a lot of harm that has historically happened to us in outdoor spaces,” says Dr. Deja Jones, the co-founder of the Black Educators Network, which connects environmental educators across the country, and founder of a nature-centered preschool in Newark, New Jersey. “Many parents don’t allow their children outside because of our perceptions about what safety looks like.” That trauma stretches back to slavery and lynching and continues today, from everyday micro-aggressions to high-profile incidents that make the news: In 2020, a white woman in New York City’s Central Park called the police on a Black birdwatcher. That same year, white men murdered Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man, while he jogged through their Georgia neighborhood.

Both Byrd and Jones view outreach, along with access to resources and funding, as key to ensuring that all children reap the benefits of nature preschools. “Programs recruiting, learning how to go into different communities and educate them about the physical and mental health benefits, would really make a difference,” Jones says. Byrd’s school, one of the few in Colorado located in an urban area, engages communities of color through neighborhood events, workshops, and afterschool programs around Denver, and it also offers a sliding scale for tuition. Last year, students of color accounted for 43 percent of the school’s enrollment.

Although SB 24-078 does not allocate funds for outreach, the law’s passage in and of itself might reassure parents, says Debbie Groff, childcare deputy senior administrator for the state of Washington’s Department of Children, Youth & Families. “Anytime you license a program, you’re really letting families know there’s eyes and ears out here,” Groff says. “We’re here to make sure your kids are placed in spaces that we will ensure are safe and healthy for them.”

With growing approval from the government and parents, some advocates envision a future in which public school districts launch outdoor pre-Ks and perhaps, eventually, even some K–12 nature options. That’s Kate Strebe’s new dream for her children, anyway. With kindergarten looming next year, Strebe worries about Maya’s ability to adapt to a traditional public school. “Nature school gives her the space and tools to self-regulate,” she says. Strebe hopes another year outdoors will help get Maya ready for the next step. Until then, Maya will spend her days making pine cone art, balancing on logs, and learning to identify different ducks in their natural habitats. Classic Colorado kid stuff, in other words.

Read More: At This Outdoors Preschool, Nature Is the Classroom