Sean C. Morgan
The District 55 School Board gave a nod to Little Promises Daycare to move into the closed Pleasant Valley Kindergarten.
“Basically, someone sought us out and asked us if we would be interested,” Director Carlene Erickson said. At capacity in three buildings at Sweet Home Evangelical Church, Little Promises took the offer.
Little Promises is licensed for 120 children in the daycare based on space with about 100 children in its preschool and kindergarten programs.
It is the only daycare in the area licensed for children under two and a half years old, with 12 slots available in the infants and toddlers program, Erickson said. The daycare has 160 families registered, but not all of the families have children at the daycare every day.
Little Promises employs about 21 persons right now and 24 to 25 during the school year.
The daycare uses part of the main church building, both floors of the gym and the church annex across Kalmia Street from the church during the school year.
Little Promises and School District 55 are hammering out a contract for leasing the Pleasant Valley site. In the deal, Little Promises will provide for renovations to meet state licensing requirements. The district will provide the “facelift” work, such as painting and cleaning gutters.
The move will allow Little Promises the potential to expand and more than double its infants and toddlers program to 36 slots.
“We have women that say, ‘I’m pregnant. Put me on the list,'” Erickson said. “It’s weekly that we have to turn people away as far as the nursery.
“It really has been growing, both the school program and the daycare program. We are out of space. It’s come to the point we are repeatedly turning people away.”
Sweet Home Evangelical “has been awesome at expanding with us,” Erickson said. “But now, we’ve utilized everything.”
Moving will limit downtown access for the daycare, which often does walking field trips to the pool, the park and downtown destinations. Those will continue, but Little Promises will need to use its van.
It will also affect early childhood education and job shadow programs at the high school. High school students often work at the daycare as part of those programs. They will need to be able to drive or find transportation when the daycare moves.
Little Promises closes for a week in August, Erickson said. She hopes the daycare can move during that week and be ready to go by Sept. 1.
The Linn-Benton-Lincoln Education Service District uses two classrooms and an office at Pleasant Valley right now. The district will move the Opportunity Room at Holley School to Hawthorne, opening up two classrooms at Holley for the ESD services.
“It’s been a positive experience all the way around,” Erickson said. The district has been supportive and positive about the idea.
Little Promises will become a nonprofit corporation with a board of directors after her mother, owner Anita Hutchins, decides to retire.
The program is not a Sweet Home Evangelical Church program, Erickson said. “People on the baord are from different walks of life all over the community. It’s just a broad-based board because we want to be a community program.”
Little Promises works with the state to place “assisted families,” and it works in early intervention programs.
“We want people to realize we’re not limited to religious organizations,” Erickson said.