Parents push LCCC to find new funding sources for Children's Discovery Center

Nov. 10--CHEYENNE -- Accessing quality child care for infants and toddlers has long been a struggle for working parents in Cheyenne, but a recommendation to eliminate those offerings at Laramie County Community College's Children's Discovery Center has set off alarm bells among parents who rely on those services.

As of Monday afternoon, more than 650 people had signed a Change.org petition asking the college to reconsider eliminating the early childhood education component of the center's heavily subsidized programming by looking for a new funding stream.

"This is not just a place to drop off my kid while I'm at work. I know I'm putting my kid on a path to succeed," said Rebekah Fitzgerald, the communications director for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, who has enrolled her 17-month-old in the Children's Discovery Center. (Fitzgerald also is a community representative on the WTE Editorial Board.)

Unlike all of the other child care facilities in town, LCCC's center, which has been around for decades, is accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children and delivers a focused curriculum that goes beyond the offerings of a standard day care.

Fitzgerald is so pleased with the instruction her son has received through the center that as soon as she and her husband, who also works full-time, found out they were expecting another child this coming February, she put them on the waitlist.

"There's a lack of available infant and toddler care within Laramie County. This (center) really serves a need, and it's a high-quality opportunity for parents," said Fitzgerald, who added that she so far hasn't found another child care center that can enroll her son and soon-to-be newborn before next fall. "We've had to make a choice because there's such limited options. We're putting ourselves on lists and hoping the availability matches up."

If nothing opens up, she said, "we'll have to find a nanny," which could cost thousands of dollars a month.

LCCC: "We just don't have the resources"

The possibility of cutting funding for the center's programming for children up to age 2 1/2 is one piece of the college's larger strategy to balance a $4.1 million deficit in next year's budget. That impending budget gap is the result of a statewide financial crisis in Wyoming that has left state agencies across all sectors, including community colleges, with the arduous task of cutting their upcoming budgets by around 10%, if not more.

Last week, LCCC President Joe Schaffer presented his recommendations for how to balance the college's budget to the Board of Trustees. The plan, which the board will have the option to approve at its Nov. 18 meeting, included eliminating 33 staff positions and reducing some employee benefits, among other cuts.

To the dismay of many parents who have since signed the petition against it, the budget cut memo Schaffer released last week also included a plan to restructure the college's child care center. Under the proposal, the center would continue to offer instruction for students who fall into the 2 1/2 - to 5-year-old age bracket, but do away with infant and toddler care, which is projected to save $213,676. There are approximately 28 children currently enrolled who would be affected by the restructuring, which is recommended to take effect next June.

The college has historically subsidized much of the cost of running the center -- which came to a total of $425,000 this year -- in an effort to offer families equitable and affordable access to the well-regarded program.

"Early childhood education is in short supply in our community, and we don't want to further exacerbate the issue when it's so needed," Schaffer said Monday afternoon.

"What we were proposing was eliminating the youngest classrooms for infants and toddlers. That's just a function of economics because of the cost of our classrooms," Schaffer said. "The overall goal here is to essentially eliminate the current funds subsidy from the college. With the budget cuts from the state, we just don't have the resources to fund these auxiliary programs."

Parents: "It will hurt this community"

As soon as Joseph Kohan, a working parent with two young children in the infant and toddler program, heard the news late last week, he started looking into other options around town.

But like Fitzgerald, he soon discovered there aren't many child care centers that come close to the curriculum the Children's Discovery Center offers -- and the waitlists are long at nearly every place he's called. Trying to find a place that will accept both of his children is compounding the difficulty of that process.

"We need this school to stay open. I don't know what we're going to do if it closes," said Kohan, who added that he and his wife, who also works full-time, have even considered moving to Fort Collins, Colorado, to access an accredited child care center like the CDC.

"Losing the pillar of early childhood education in Cheyenne will hurt this community. It hurts job retention and recruiting," said Kohan, who bought a house in south Cheyenne to be close to the child care center, which is on his way to work. "It's tough, because this community has seen such growth, and there's so many new jobs coming in, but housing, pay and child care are the three pillars of (sustaining that growth). Losing any child care, that really hurts."

A path forward?

So, Kohan and his wife have spearheaded a parent-led effort to work with Schaffer to come up with a plan to find other sources of funding -- like fundraising and increasing tuition rates -- to make up for LCCC's need to eliminate the subsidies for the infant and toddler care.

Schaffer, who plans to meet with some of the parents before the LCCC Board of Trustees finalizes the budget reductions next week, said he's sympathetic to parents' concerns and is open to hearing possible fundraising solutions.

"If there's a path to basically move the center off the reliance of those current fund dollars, we can certainly look at other pathways and options to do that," he said. "Our biggest fear is that we're going to out-price the market and make our early childhood education only available for the most affluent in the community. But what we want to do is ensure that we're closing equity gaps by providing it to all populations."

This story was first published online at WyomingNews.com and on the WyoNews app at 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9.

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