George, Iowa — There is a new daycare facility in George, and while it’s been operating for nearly a month, it was time for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday evening.
Several people have worked to convert part of the former George/Little Rock Elementary in George to a daycare center. The building used to house Kindergarten through the third grade. But now, Kindergarten through the fifth grade is at Little Rock, with sixth through twelfth grades in the big building at George. The building that houses the daycare also houses preschool. The building is also to include a weight room, central office, and the district technology coordinator’s office.
At the ceremony, one of the people to speak was former George-Little Rock interim superintendent Patrick O’Donnell, who gave us some insight as to one of the reasons that it was so important to have a community daycare facility in George.
(as said:) “When John Eyerly was here, he did a study about why we had such high open enrollment [out] and the reason was — it started here — because we didn’t have daycare, people started taking their kids to work with them and dropping them off in the towns where they work. Hopefully now we can reverse that trend. It’ll be a slow process, but it will be an effective process in my opinion.”
Committee member Taylor Klingenborg tells us how he and the committee feel about the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
(as said:) “We’re really excited to get to this point. We opened a few weeks ago. But to finally have a ribbon-cutting and then open our doors to the public to come check out our facility. Very exciting. We’re thrilled to be able to let people in and check it out because we’re… we think we’ve got a great facility here and we’re proud of the work we were able to do to get to this point.”
Klingenborg tells us having community daycare in George will have a wide impact.
(as said:) “The main factor and the biggest benefit is going to come to the school district and from there the town, you know, hopefully leads to people, you know moving to a community with access to great childcare like we’ve got here and then even surrounding, you know communities if we can help them as well, you know, it’s… that’s what it’s all about. And even, you know trickle down to just providing great care for the kids. We’re really excited about that. But yeah, certainly just another great reason to move to George and you know, hopefully get more kids to our school district.”
View the video of the ribbon-cutting ceremony below.
