FCF Iowa Team Helps Child Care Center Move Past Pandemic Challenges
Coming out of the COVID pandemic in 2021, the Aquin Little Angels Early Childhood Center and Preschool in Cascade, Iowa, faced challenging times.
“COVID hit and bumps in the program became real,” says Advisory Board Member Lisa Merritt. “During COVID, closings of some classrooms were mandatory. Coming out of the pandemic, struggles due to staffing and enrollment that previously existed became more pronounced.”
Various options were on the table and some of them – including selling portions of the center operations such as the School-Age program, stripping the center down to al a carte options for care, or even contracting it out to a different company – weren’t acceptable to community members such as Lisa, who had been the center’s director from 2004-2010.
The Little Angels center is part of the Aquin Catholic School, an early childhood through eighth grade Catholic School program within the Archdiocese of Dubuque. The Aquin system includes daycare, preschool, elementary, and high school religious education programs.
Cascade has about 2,000 people and is near the larger cities of Dubuque and Cedar Rapids. While being close to larger cities has benefits, it can also cause challenges – especially staffing.
The child care center opened in 2000 in an old convent building. There were three main goals for the center when it was created:
- Provide for the community and be a service to families
- Bridge the earliest years (0-3) to preschool (the center is on the same campus as the preschool and school buildings)
- Link the services provided by the church to early childhood education
In 2017, the center did a capital campaign for a new building. The child care center moved out of the convent building into a modern, one-story building.
But issues such as staffing and enrollment proved difficult, even with the new building. Then the pandemic made things tougher.
“The City administrator reached out and asked if they could be involved in writing a grant to help the center,” Lisa says. “With the possible options of selling or closing on the table, we jumped at the chance to pursue a City grant to help the center.”
After receiving the grant, the center began working with Angie Rae Duncan, FCF Business Development Manager in Iowa.
“I give Angie and FCF a lot of credit for getting us on the right track,” Lisa says. “We took data to Angie and she and the FCF team were able to look at policies, handbooks, grant applications and so much more.”
Along with examining the center’s policies, Duncan set up meetings, did a strategic analysis, and brought key people to the table.
“We met with key people to understand where the issues came from and how we would be able to work together to solve them,” Lisa says. “We started with just one or two peoples’ opinions that changed to be a team of decision-makers who listened to each other.”
A key step was when businesses recognized the center’s importance to the community and the businesses.
“Businesses really understood how the center helped make sure that their employees could be at work while their children were in a great environment,” Lisa says. “We had to have a lot of honest moments in a difficult time. Angie would bring up solutions that helped shine a new light on our situation and helped us find a better path forward.”
As Lisa looks to the future, she knows the center will keep finding creative solutions to challenges.
“We will continue to forge community relationships and to bring businesses and other stakeholders to the table. We will keep creating ways to attract and retain employees, such as letting full-time employees bring their children to the center (at reduced cost).
Today, the center is through the bad bumps, and its balance sheet is on its way to standing on its own again for the first time post-COVID.
“Our community now sees that we are going to be OK. We got through this and want to keep the positivity that we have built.”
