A new childcare center has opened at the site of the former Woodstock Nursery School below The Little Theater at the Woodstock Recreation Center on River Street. The advent of the new center comes on the heels of the closure of The Mill School in Woodstock’s East End, effective May 20, essentially canceling out the impact on the local area’s long-standing childcare capacity dilemma for families in the region.
Kayla Jenkins, a veteran early childhood educator from Charlestown, N.H., opened the doors of the new Sugar Maple School at the Woodstock Recreation Center on Monday, June 29, just days after gaining full licensure from the Department for Children and Families’ Child Development Division (DCFCDD). The new facility is situated where the former Woodstock Nursery School, a local preschool institution for nearly three-quarters of a century, previously operated prior to its shutdown a year ago after the facility lost its lead teacher and could not find a replacement. The dilemma typified persistent teacher recruitment issues in the region and state, especially for childcare providers for infants and toddlers. But while those challenges appear to have eased marginally, the lack of adequate facilities for licensed childcare operations persists.
In a phone interview last Friday, Jenkins said the nascent Sugar Maple School is licensed to provide care for children ages six weeks to five years. The new childcare center has a capacity of 25; 14 children are currently enrolled at the school, and an additional three are expected to join its rolls over the next month, leaving what Jenkins projects to be openings for eight more infants and toddlers. Several children and one teacher from The Mill School, which shuttered six weeks ago, are now on board at the Sugar Maple School. Jenkins herself spent two weeks as the director of The Mill School in April, charged with reviving its day care program, which went dormant last winter when former school operator Caroline Olsen opted to expand infant and toddler services at the now-defunct childcare center. New Sugar Maple School founder Jenkins opted to leave The Mill School after such a short stint when the opportunity to reopen a childcare center at The Little Theater site arose.
A check of the Vermont Childcare Information Services database of the Vermont DCFCDD revealed that several other local childcare facilities — including the Rainbow Play School and Little Branches Learning Center in Woodstock and the Hartland Early Learning Center and the Windsor Early Childhood Education Center, which are co-operated by the Windsor facility — are at zero capacity. Representatives of the Rainbow and Little Branches schools did not respond to inquiries from the Standard about the size of their wait lists, but the Hartland Early Learning Center director was forthright about the situation at that childcare site during a Monday afternoon interview.
“We have licensed capacity to care for 40 children, and we’re full,” Lindsey Baker said.
For more on this, please see our July 16 edition of the Vermont Standard.
