The Brown County Early Education Center in Nashville will soon expand its services to provide affordable child care options for infants and toddlers.
A major grant for Brown County Schools aims to pay dividends to children of all ages as well as their parents.
The schools on Oct. 21 announced receipt of a $500,000 grant to Brown County schools that will enable the district to expand its services to provide child care and early education services for infants and toddlers. High school students will benefit, too, as the program will provide dual credit to those enrolled in BCS’s early childhood education (ECE) program.
BCS Superintendent Emily Tracy called the grant from Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc.’s Early Years Initiative “absolutely incredible news.”
In addition to children, parents also will benefit from a new and more affordable child care option for very young children. The program will be open to anyone in the community. The fee for service the district collects for preschool care is $27 per day per child and $37 per day for toddlers. Fees for younger toddlers and infants have not yet been determined.
Deborah Harman, director of student support services at BCS, said state vouchers also may be available to help some families defray that cost.
This will be the first time that this county has ever had a licensed child care center for kids as young as infants, Harman said.
“This is a grant that’s about expanding early care and education for infants and toddlers,” Harman said. “… Right now we only have a preschool class and an older toddler class,” she said, “so this will allow us to have 10 more toddler seats … and eight infant seats, so we’ll basically be able to have birth-to-5,” she said of the age range the district will be able to serve at the Early Education Center in Nashville.
“We’re just trying to grow the options for families,” Harman said. She said there isn’t currently a projected date for the expanded services to begin because another potential grant could impact the timeline.
The new program will be in addition to preschool programs already offered around the district to support older children at BCS, Harman said. And it also will serve a need not just for very young children, but for high schoolers, too. Harman said with some 80 students enrolled in Early Childhood Education, “it’s the largest program of study we have.
“We kind of sold it as a launch career, and the goal … is to pair it with entrepreneurship, so that you’ve got kind of a business model so you’re teaching the students not only how to be an early-education provider, but also how to build a business,” she said.
“Desperate need across this entire country” for child care, Harman said. “You can go anywhere.”
According to the school district, space in the Early Education Center, 235 School House Lane, will be reconfigured to add an infant room, a second toddler room, a laundry area, health room, and a family education area.
“The facility will be the first of its kind in Brown County and unique within the Indiana Uplands Region with its connection to dual-credit coursework for high school students,” BCS said in a press release announcing the grant. The region includes Brown, Crawford, Daviess, Dubois, Greene, Lawrence, Martin, Monroe, Orange, Owen and Washington counties.
“We believe that Brown County High School’s ECE Program located at our Early Education Center creates a much-needed area pipeline by graduating credentialed early educators ready for hire within our community and throughout the Indiana Uplands Region,” according to BCS.
In doing so, the program also offers options for high school students who participate in the program and can work their way toward credentials that can allow them to work after school or provide a foundation for further education in high-demand fields.
“High school students attend Ivy Tech classes at the Early Education Center taught by one of our teachers,” Harman said. They also get hours of service training caring for young children, which can go toward earning a child development associate credential.
She said the schools also are exploring offering a related apprenticeship program. “Early Childhood Educators — it’s a national apprentice program that’s been launched. Indiana has a couple of school districts that have gotten in early on that, and we want to jump in, too.
“… The idea is that when students graduate from high school, they have a credential with currency,” Harman said, whether they use that credential to go to work, start a business or continue to further their education.
“I think we have something unique in this area,” she said, “where we’ve got our high school students and our little ones together.”
Editor’s note: This article has been revised from the Oct. 30 print edition to clarify program fees.
