Cheryl Rose will oversee the daycare facility for Southern Hancock employees starting next fall.
NEW PALESTINE — Finding safe, trusted child care for working parents is a difficult task, and it’s no different for people who work in education. In a newer trend, some school districts have started offering day care facilities for their employees.
Officials with Community School Corporation of Southern Hancock say they plan to open a new day care area in one of their schools as soon as next school year (2023-24). The idea is to help those employees who need assistance with infants and smaller children during working hours.
“We’re pretty excited about offering this because it’s a great opportunity for our staff, and it’s a great way for us to attract people,” Community Outreach and Communications Director Wes Anderson said.
The new day care will be housed at New Palestine Elementary School where officials plan to hire new staff to care for the children, so the day care will not be a free service. Costs are estimated at $200 per week for each infant, $190 per week for a toddler, $180 per week for a 2 to 3 year old and $175 per week for each child ages 3 to 4.
“Once kids turn four they can obviously move into our pre-kindergarten program,” Anderson said. “We feel like $200 a week is pretty reasonable for the cost of daycare right now.”
Cheryl Rose is the district’s Early Childhood Coordinator for all Southern Hancock schools and will oversee the new daycare program.
“She’ll be taking this on under her umbrella and she does pre-kindergarten and early development as well, so all of these things now will be under her,” Anderson said.
While officials will hire staff to work at the daycare, they also hope some high school students who have expressed interest in early childhood development as a career will get involved in working and helping out while earning credit.
“We’re kind of hoping to develop an early graduation pathway for that for students who are interested in child care as a career,” Anderson said. “That can actually be part of our work-based learning ways to create more opportunities for our kids.”
While district officials say they have talked about adding a day care for employees for a while, wanting to attract teachers and retain the ones they have during a shortage on educators seemed like an extra benefit that might make a teacher choose to work or stay in the district.
“We are excited to offer this unique opportunity for our staff members,” Superintendent Lisa Lantrip said. “We always strive to take care of our own.”
Anderson noted that school districts like Carmel have offered this type of program for their employees for some time as it’s a great bonus to attract high-quality educators.
“We’re trying to find teachers, and what can we do to make this even a more attractive place for young educators,” Anderson said. “If this can help us attract quality candidates then we’re going to do it, and it also lets us reach out and take care of the people working for us that we already have.”
Elsewhere around the county, Eastern Hancock officials say offering a day care service for employees is something they too would like to do.
“We would love to be able to do this and have had some conversations about how to make it happen,” said EH superintendent George Philhower. “However, our biggest barrier right now to making it happen at EH right now is space.”
While officials at Greenfield-Central don’t offer a full day care service to employees they do offer a day care that accepts children ages 3 to 5.
“Our employees receive a discounted rate for the service,” G-C superintendent Harold Olin said. “We also offer after-hours care for our preschool-aged children to accommodate our teachers’ schedules.”
It’s the same situation at Mt. Vernon schools. Director of Community Relations Maria Bond said they currently do not offer day care for staff, but they do have an accredited preschool, starting at age 3, where staff receive a discount.
Officials with Southern Hancock say they did a survey this past fall with current employees and found the interest was pretty high to offer a day care option.
“That was the initial step and made officials think we should offer the program,” he said.
Due to the fact the new Southern Hancock daycare will be housed at NPE, the district will not accept any more transfer students at that school.
“With the staff day care, we want to be careful to make sure we don’t run out of rooms and get too overcrowded,” Anderson said. “We don’t want to put ourselves into a tight spot, plus our pre-K has been doing really well.”
