Dayville School’s Emma Valade spent Monday, May 15, like she’s spent most days over the past few years — loading toddlers up in a wagon and rolling it down the ramp leading to the school district’s child care facility.

An April 2022 report out of Oregon State University classified all of Oregon’s counties as child care deserts for infants and toddlers. More than half of the state’s counties were considered extreme deserts for infants and toddlers, with one or fewer spots for every 10 children.

A child care desert is a region with more than three children for every slot in a child care program, including family child care homes and commercial day care centers.

Grant County’s situation is particularly tough: It ranks 35th out of the state’s 36 counties for access to infant and toddler care. School districts throughout the county appear to have taken notice, with almost all of them either running or planning on starting their own child care services.

Dayville is the model

So far, the only school district in Grant County with a functional day care program is Dayville. Superintendent Davida Irving said she isn’t quite sure when the program started, but it has been in operation for at least five or six years.

The program began under former Superintendent Kathryn Hedrick, who had two grandchildren she was looking after.

“As a superintendent, she saw a need for it for herself, and it is a way to attract teachers,” Irving said.

“It started off with ‘How can we get teachers here and staff and paraprofessionals, and get them to stay’” Irving added.

Irving said the program is growing — in part because it isn’t reserved just for teachers and staff but is open to everybody within the community. That dynamic has led to planned changes in the way the day care center operates.

Right now the facility has eight kids who attend daily between the dedicated day care and split preschool programs with a “dropoff” policy for members of the public who need child care. That will change to a sign-up system this fall so the school will know how many kids it will have on any given day.

The issue is staffing. Without enough care providers on site, the school winds up having to turn people away who may need their services.

“We’re becoming so popular that if we don’t know who’s coming, we don’t know how many staff members to have. … If we have parents dropping off their kids and we’re not expecting them, we might have to turn somebody away, and we really don’t want to do that,” Irving said.

The age cutoff for the day care program is 6 years old. Children ages 3 to 6 participate in both the day care and preschool programs at Dayville.

The cost of child care services starts out at $3 an hour, rising to $12.50 for a half-day and $25 for a full day. Irving said the district subsidizes the day care program in order of it to remain financially viable. 

Funding for the program comes entirely out of the district’s general fund. Irving acknowledges that the district loses money in this scenario but stressed that the budget isn’t strained and that there are no plans to discontinue the program due to financial concerns.

“We make it work because we feel it’s important to make it work,” she said.

Portrait of a child care provider

Emma Valade has been a child care provider for the past three years with the Dayville School District. She said there can be anywhere from four to six kids in her day care group on any given day.

“We usually keep it at five. Our (staffing) ratio is 1-to-4, so we really have to stick to that ratio,” she said. “If I have a second person in here by the end of the day, it’ll sometimes be four to six, so anywhere between four to six kids this year.”

Ages of the kids within the program fluctuate from year to year. The day care center’s two infants aged into toddlers a couple months ago, according to Valade.

The facility is equipped to care for children from the ages of 3 months to 6 years.

School districts providing child care may sound foreign to many people in Grant County, but Valade is very familiar with the dynamic.

“I’m from Idaho Falls. … There were several different schools that had day cares running in their schools that I knew of,” she said.

Valade said she thinks kids going to school district-provided day care at an early age and becoming acquainted with the staff and faculty within the district pays off when the kids get older and enroll in district schools.

“They know this person from birth; they’ve grown with this person,” she said. “It helps them develop different relationships, I feel like.”

Doors to the day care center open at 7:30 a.m. (although Valade is there at 7 if parents need to drop their kids off early) and they close at 4 p.m. She said she wants people to know that her facility is a safe place to bring their children.

“We love the kiddos and we try hard to keep a safe environment for them, so if anyone needs a place to bring their kiddos, this is a good place,” she said.

Other Grant County schools following suit

Other schools within the county are following Dayville’s lead and starting their own day care programs.

Monument Superintendent Laura Thomas said her school had talks about starting a day care program during late spring and early summer last year, but there wasn’t enough time to start the program this school year. The current plan is for Monument’s day care program to begin operations in August.

Thomas couldn’t provide too many details, saying that pricing and enrollment are all things that will be hashed out over the summer. As in Dayville, funding for the day care program will come out of the school’s general fund.

Thomas said Monument’s day care arrangement will likely wind up being similar to Dayville’s when details of the service are worked out.

Grant Union Jr./Sr. High School is also looking at starting its own day care program and has already hired a day care/preschool director in Trina Fell. Fell comes to Grant School District from Pendleton, where she ran her own day care center.

Superintendent Louis Dix said the idea for the district to offer day care came about after learning about the lack of child care options in John Day. That information led to the creation of a child care committee by Dix and Kitman Kienzle.

“Right now we’re looking at starting a 6 weeks-to-5-year-old program. It’s going to be called the Humbolt Child Care Center because it’s going to be housed at Humbolt (Elementary),” Dix said.

Dix said the plan is to have 36 total slots during the first year of operation. Eight slots will go to infant care, 10 slots to toddlers and another 18 preschool kids.

“Kitman (Kienzle) is writing a grant to hopefully get some buildings for us through modulars and expanding the program next year, so we’ll have even more facilities with infant and toddler care. Right now we’re just trying to get it up and going,” Dix said.

Once operational, the Humbolt Child Care Center will be the only facility in John Day offering six hours of preschool every day. The current plan is to house the day care center in the music room at Humbolt Elementary.

Grant School District has just posted seven jobs associated with the upcoming child care program. Each of the three rooms used for child care will have one teacher and one assistant. An extra “floater” will travel between the three rooms and assist where they are needed.

Starting wages will be between $16.75 and $20 an hour, and the jobs will include full insurance and retirement benefits.

Dix said he thinks the district will take a bit of a financial loss this year getting the program up and running, but they have gone out for $60,000 in grants that will cover startup costs like furniture, fencing and playground equipment. Staffing costs will come out of the district’s general fund, but Dix hopes to qualify for support from the sate’s Preschool Promise program along with some other funding options in the 2024-25 school year to help offset costs.

The cost to families will depend on the age of the child, with preschool being the cheapest at $800-$900 a month. Toddler and infant care will be somewhere between $1,000 and $1,200 a month.

Prairie City is on a similar trajectory. The school district is currently renovating the Bates Building to house its day care facility, and Superintendent Casey Hallgarth said he hopes to interview a candidate for the district’s child care provider position sometime next week.

If everything goes according to plan, Prairie City’s day care facility will open up next year. The district is using a different approach in running their center.

Rather than start a day care program from scratch, the district is looking to hire somebody who is already running a day care facility. “They’re going to basically rent the space out,” Hallgarth explained.

Hallgarth added that there are some guidelines the provider will have to adhere to.

“We’re not going to have it be where it’s just a play-for-all kind of thing. There will be lots of playing, but it’ll be a lot of education-based play,” he said.

This method will save the district a lot of costs associated with building a day care program from the ground up, Hallgarth said. Despite those savings, the district is aware of other opportunities for day care financing that it may qualify for later on.

“I know there are some programs that are still in the works, pilot programs like Baby Promise, and we do Preschool Promise,” Hallgarth said.

“If those ever get passed by the Legislature and move forward in (Oregon Department of Education), we might jump on those as well. Right now we just have such a high need, a few staff and then a lot of people in Prairie. I know there is a high need in John Day as well, so I’m happy they’re getting some day care stuff figured out there.”

Cost is still to be determined, according to Hallgarth. The district plans to hash out pricing details after the hire of the child care provider.

“We make it work because we feel it’s important to make it work.”

Davida Irving, Dayville School

A previous version of this story attributed district subsidies to the incorrect parties. The error has been corrected, The Eagle apologizes for the error.