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Unique Child-Care Center in Mt. Joy

Posted on: Wednesday, 15 March 2006, 00:00 CST

By RYAN ROBINSON

The Lancaster County Career and Technology Center is expanding its Mount Joy campus to create a unique child-care center. For parents of infants and preschoolers in the Donegal, Hempfield, Manheim Central and Elizabethtown school districts, the expansion will bring another choice in full-service child care for infants through pre-schoolers. For LCCTC students studying to become early childhood educators, it will mean real-world experience working under the same roof as their regular classes. "I don't think any other high school or vocational school in Pennsylvania has anything like this," said Bill Grant, founder and owner of Hildebrandt Learning Centers, which will manage the child-care center. Carpentry students are about half finished building a 9,000-square-foot addition to the eastern side of the school's 432 Old Market St. facility in Mount Joy. Mike Curley, LCCTC's executive director, said the addition would have cost $2.2 million if the students had not built it. A grand opening celebration is scheduled for Sept. 28. To get children in a day-care facility, plans with parents must be set up in August. That process may not occur in time for children to enroll right at the start of the 2006-07 school year, Curley said. Up to 120 children will be housed in the eight-room addition, according to Wendy Bertoli, the early childhood instructor at LCCTC

. Children ages 6 weeks to 5 years old are eligible. "We want to provide a quality program," Bertoli said, adding that its cost should be comparable with other area full-service child care centers. Bertoli described the new center as an "early learning" program that will provide stimulation for infants and educational opportunities for the older children. Forty high school seniors a year will be able to work with Hildebrandt staff to provide care for the children. The students can earn college credits for the 1-year program. "They are not counted in staff-child ratios," Bertoli said. Currently, her class meets in a third-floor room at Grace Lutheran Church in Lancaster and the students get hands-on experience working at city day-care centers. The addition will allow them to fulfill the same requirement in-house. Bertoli said the vocational school also plans to provide free training for up to 25 child-care providers from area child care centers and family and group day care homes. Curley said the school has been trying, along with the United Way, to improve quality day care across Lancaster County. "We're hoping to improve training for our students and also provide more resources to existing day care workers," he said. Seven of Hildebrandt's 30 child care centers are in Lancaster County. They are at Brethren Village, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster Laboratories Inc., Landis Homes, Masonic Homes, Park City Center and the Pequea Valley School District. The LCCTC facility will also include a Head Start of Lancaster County classroom, according to Head Start spokeswoman Diane Feeser. The classroom will serve 36 children in the Mount Joy/Elizabethtown area who currently travel to Columbia for the class, she said. Head Start serves 810 children in 40 center-based classrooms and nine home-based programs in the county. The child care center being built in Mount Joy has gotten the attention of state leaders. Governor Ed Rendell last week announced the state will give the LCCTC a $200,000 low-interest loan to help pay for the project. "Studies show that our investments in early childhood education pay long- term dividends for both students and the state," Rendell said in a press release. Brian McDonald of the Department of Education said expanding opportunities for children to earlier hone critical learning skills should lessen tax dollars spent later on special education classes. Early childhood educators are classified as high-priority occupations in Pennsylvania's work force development system. Rendell has focused on improving the commonwealth's career and technical centers by aligning program opportunities with high-priority occupations to give students further preparation for well-paying, high-demand jobs. The technology center is the second school in the state to get an Early Childhood Capital Investment state loan. The Quaker Valley School District in the suburban Pittsburgh area received a $101,000 loan March 6 to help expand and renovate an elementary school to house that district's early childhood education program.

Source: Intelligencer Journal

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