Improving early childhood services

Raising kids is tough. On days when I’m home with my three kids all day, I’m exhausted. It is a blast to play and learn with them, but takes a lot of energy. After having kids, my appreciation for early childhood educators has increased significantly.

In September, I had the opportunity to attend the Buffett Early Childhood Institute Thriving Children, Families, and Communities Conference. We had a team of four from McCook with Cindy Huff, Tasha Wulf, and Tyler Esch also attending. It was interesting to see how different communities throughout the state were approaching early childhood education.

The current situation in rural Nebraska around early childhood education presents short term and long term challenges. Currently, there isn’t enough access to early childhood education. This can put strains on parents trying to work and the businesses who employ them. In McCook, our survey showed:

-- 94% believe there aren’t enough childcare options in our area

-- 81% believe the current availability and access to childcare negatively impacts our community

-- 81% said it was extremely challenging or very challenging to find infant care

-- 54% of business respondents believe the lack of childcare availability has affected their ability to obtain or retain employees It is also a long term issue. First Five Nebraska, http://www.firstfivenebraska.org, provides some of the information on the value of quality early childhood education:

-- The human brain builds as many as one million new synapses throughout the earliest years of life.

-- The more a very young child is held, comforted, spoken to and played with, the more these experiences stimulate emerging neural pathways.

-- The best opportunity to lay a solid foundation of neural circuitry for success in school and life is before children even reach school age.

As a community, how we take care of our youngest, plays one of the biggest roles in how successful our students will be.

To try and improve, we’ve used our survey data to come up with a three point plan that we’re finalizing.

1. We’re looking to incentivize our current providers to take more infants – There is an urgent need for more infant care. We hope financial incentives will help increase the number of spots available.

2. We’re looking to provide education and startup capital to people transitioning into early childhood education – We have found some of our best providers entered early childhood education after having their own kids and deciding to watch a few other kids. If we can provide the next generation of providers education on how to run the business side and give some assistance in getting started we can make improvements.

3. We hope to create scholarships to help encourage students to enter early childhood education and stay in this area for a career.

We’re still in the process of finalizing our plan and looking for funds to executive. If you have thoughts, questions, or ideas, please contact us.

Another issue we’re working to improve is area housing. Last month, our board approved an incentive plan to encourage housing developers to build new workforce housing. Through the McCook Growth Fund, we will provide up to a $10,000 reimbursement for new workforce housing units built in McCook. To qualify developers need to:

-- Contact us before building has started.

-- Commit to building at least two new units.

-- Build housing that costs under $275,000 to sell or less than $200,000 per unit to develop for rentals.

There are a variety of other requirements. If you are interested or have questions please let me know.

We have a host of challenges in McCook and are working to find solutions. Most rural communities in Nebraska are facing similar challenges. They are challenges that are complex and require unique local solutions. Thanks to the support of a variety of people involved, we’re moving forward to continue to improve our community. I better wrap this up so I can go read, “The Monster at the End of the Book,” to my two year old daughter.