ELY- Who says a 50-something-year-old business can’t embark on a big transformation?
Happy Days Preschool, a beloved fixture in the Ely community since 1969, made a big announcement last week that will change the early childhood landscape for frustrated parents who haven’t been able to find care for their kids.
“Happy Days Preschool is excited to announce that we are evolving into a childcare center,” a March 1 press release said. “The new center will be housed at the newly renovated Revenue Building and offer high quality, engaging childcare for children ages six weeks to 12 years. Care will be offered full or part-time five days a week. We will also continue to offer preschool programming with wrap-around care provided, with a goal to open in Fall 2023.”
Lack of childcare in Ely has been a hot issue for nearly two years, with a city of Ely committee and various business and community stakeholders searching for solutions to the pressing shortage that hampers the town’s economy by making it difficult for families with young children to choose to move to town.
The Ely Area Community Foundation took the first big step in 2022 by spending just over $1 million to purchase the former Minnesota Department of Revenue building and renovate it for a childcare facility and a wellness and fitness center. Now they’ve partnered with Happy Days Preschool to operate that center, and Happy Days board member Mandy Petersen talked with the Timberjay about their plans.
“There’s a lot of great preschool programs in our area,” Petersen said. “We just realized the need to shift more toward childcare, and infants especially. It’s incredibly hard to find childcare if you are looking for an infant or a toddler. So, we just decided to follow the need.”
The new center will have room for 12 infants who are at least six weeks old but less than 16 months, Petersen said. There will be a toddler classroom for children 16-32 months. A preschool-age classroom will offer curriculum-based learning in the mornings and wrap-around childcare. After-school care will also be offered.
“We are in the process of being Parent Aware certified, so our entire center will have a curriculum,” Petersen said. “We are definitely prioritizing that.”
Longer days and new group sizes will mean that Happy Days Preschool will need more staff, and Petersen said they’re already hard at work trying to identify potential new employees.
“We’ll definitely need to have higher certification for teachers and lead teachers, but we already have a lot of interest from some folks in the community,” Petersen said. “We’ve gotten folks who are interested in moving to the area that their spouse or partner is majoring in early childhood education. We’ve also been in touch with the Mesabi and Itasca campuses of Minnesota North because they offer certification programs. We’re also talking about hiring wages that are a little bit higher than standard childcare wages. We want to attract people who care about children where this is a career path for them, not just a job.”
But before anyone can move into the space, there’s plenty of renovation that needs to be done.
“We’re fortunate that a lot of the Revenue Building, for the most part, is up to code,” Petersen said. “There are some things that it needs that we’re all looking into for the foundation. For example, we need to build a kitchen so we can serve high quality meals for our kids. It needs to be sectioned off for other community organizations that will be in there. As far as funding goes, we’re working with the Department of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation and they are hopefully going to provide us with some funding to do infrastructure. Sen. Tina Smith was in town a few weeks ago talking about federal earmark money and it’s about $1.5 million. We’re hoping that will do the trick.”
An architect has just finished the plans for the renovation, Petersen said, and the start of construction will be determined at a meeting in a few weeks, pending notification of funding.
Petersen said the Happy Days Preschool board is immensely grateful for the support and partnership of the Ely Area Community Foundation as they undertake this new endeavor. Part of that is being able to retain the preschool’s nonprofit status.
“Our model is a bit different than others in the area,” Petersen said. “We aren’t building a for-profit childcare center, rather we are joining up with the foundation, we’re going to remain a nonprofit, and we are going to be in a building the foundation owns. We have to work with the foundation and a lot of other organizations before we are able to open, but they’ve been so organized and so great to work with. We sure do appreciate them helping us to realize this dream.”
While much still remains to be settled, including the cost of care (it will be a fair market rate, Petersen said, one thing is definitely set in stone. The center is keeping the name Happy Days Preschool, even though it will be a full-service childcare, because of the name recognition and the long history of quality service to the community that goes with it.
“We batted around some other name ideas, but none of them have stuck as much as Happy Days,” Petersen said.
With the word out, people have already been contacting Happy Days to learn more, and Petersen said that right now they’re compiling an interest list for future communication, but won’t create an actual waiting list until the project is further along. To be included on the interest list, send a request via email to happydaysely@hotmail.com.