“The room that we are in right now is a student parent study space,” Jost said. “If they have a child with them, there are books they can use or checked out for the family. The computer and the phone are all here if the student needed to do an online class for instance and need to have some time for their child to be engaged. We have a lactation room across the hall that is designed as a really comfortable place for that parent to either nurse directly with their child or to pump. There is a little refrigerator in there and supplies. The lights can dim. It is an environment that is respectful of that adult space.”

These spaces did not happen accidentally. There was a lot of give and take in the process.

“Those are all things that are difficult for many childcare centers to put into place,” Jost said. “By thinking about those as a part of the planning and advocating for those needs with all of those players within the college who were responsible for helping to secure the funding, helping work with the grant opportunities. The facilities team who is only used to designing college classroom spaces, having them be willing to work with me. Sometimes I had to push back and say, ‘That’s not what we need. This is what we are going to need.’ We needed to ensure that we had dedicated outdoor play space for children on a campus that is so tightly packed. We had to say, ‘No, we still have to have a place for those children to be able to be outside.’ I have been incredibly blessed to have a ton of leadership and commitment within the college to support the work that we do day-to-day.”

While the doors officially opened on January 15^th, that did not mean the center would immediately open at full capacity.

“We started knowing that we could only hire a few teachers at a time and open those classrooms,” Jost said. “And so we are recruiting for additional children and we are interviewing at the same time. So we have two classrooms open right now. And then as we hire teachers, we’ll add additional children. We started with the wait list for Truax and have been working through that to see for those families, who could join the south center. Two of our current children transferred. They were enrolled at Truax and transferred to South in January. I will say that we have been cautious because starting a program in January with construction still happening meant that we didn’t do a bunch of recruiting in December because the worst thing that we could do for a family is say, ‘Hey, come on in’ and then not have that care available after they had already given up their other care. That would have been incredibly difficult. And so we were careful to not do that.”

Madison College has been supportive in making sure that the center has the resources it needs to be viable.

“We are fortunate to have a significant amount of support from the college for overhead and certainly for the cost of renovation,” Jost said. “The day-to-day functioning of the center is based on children’s tuition, just like it is in every other childcare. The service is not free. We do have a sliding fee scale, so we are able to accommodate different income levels for student families. We also do a lot of grant writing. In particular, our biggest funding come through the Dept. of Education through CCAMPUS, Childcare Access Means Parents in School. It is designed for students who are receiving Pell Grants. That means they meet the federal definition of a low-income student. And if they have that Pell grant, then they are also eligible for this tuition assistance for childcare. And that grant funds up to 85-90 percent of that individual cost of care for those parents. And because at Truax we are licensed for 85 children on any given day, I have between 80-90 children on the waiting list there, which is part of the reason we are looking to get this center up and running as well. Depending on where the student is living or driving through, this center is just as likely a good fit for them as the Truax one is.”

While the center has limits to how many children can be served at any given time, the center will be able to serve a lot of children.

“We are licensed for 85-89 slots,” Jost said. “That’s the highest number we can have at any given moment unless we change the age ranges because the classrooms are large enough that if I change those infant classrooms to a two-year-old classroom, it changes the number of children that I can have in there. So the maximum group size for infants is only eight children. However maximum group size for two-year-olds is 12. If we at some point change the age range, based on what we are finding we need for enrollment, then we could increase that capacity.”

And while tghey may have 89 slots, it doesn’t mean they are limited to 89 children.

“We have a flexible enrollment schedule. So our minimum enrollment is two-days-per-week. At Truax, we have any combination of two, three, four and five days per week. With that kind of schedule, we will serve more than 85 children over the course of a week. We just can’t have more than that in the building at the same time. Eventually our expectation is that we will look at some extended hours to see if we can better meet the needs of some of the night classes at the South campus. We’re a ways away from being able to do that today. But that is certainly a long-term goal because finding quality night care while you are in class is a challenge. And so this would give us an opportunity to better serve some of those student families.”

The people staffing the center and teaching in the classrooms are highly trained professionals who stay current with trends in early childhood learning.