How child care can keep a community healthy

SALISBURY — Child care seems so essential to keeping families here — and yet, when it comes to providing essential aid, private donors and benefactors may be overlooking agencies such as the Housatonic Child Care Center, according to members of the center’s board.

As money goes to other important areas of need such as the hose company, the ambulance squad, and the creation of more affordable housing, child care remains the essential element that makes all those other areas possible. Without child care, working families — the ones who provide so many essential volunteer services — are likely to move elsewhere.

Susan Vreeland, a lifelong Salisbury resident, recently returned to the board of the Housatonic Child Care Center, serving as board president. As a volunteer with many other not-for-profit organizations in the area, she said she is surprised by how relatively small the community contributions are to the child care center in comparison to the annual appeals of other admittedly worthwhile causes.

"We have one of the smallest returns on an annual appeal of any not-for-profit in town," she said.

Without support from the community, she warned, the center’s future is in jeopardy.

"If we do not offer services to help the work force, we’re going to wind up with a town that is a bedroom community starving for people to work," she said. "For me, this is more far-reaching than raising money for another not-for-profit. This impacts the entire structure of the town. If you don’t have economic diversity in a town, it puts the health of the town in danger."

The center’s universe is necessarily small, of course. Only 59 children can be enrolled there full time (though 120 children from 90 families pass through the doors each year) and the parents of those children are not, for the most part, the kind who can easily send in large contributions when the annual appeal rolls around. Although there are some children who are there purely for the benefit of socialization and the early learning skills they get at the center, most are children who have parents who live and/or work in town.

Some of them can afford the full cost of tuition; some can not, and are helped by scholarships that total about $10,000 a year. There is a fund at the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, which was started by a former board member and added to by the center’s board. Income from this fund is used only for financial aid.

But for the working parents of very young children, there is no other alternative in Salisbury to the Housatonic Child Care Center. There is always a waiting list for the infant/toddler room and often a waiting list for preschool.

"For preschool there are other options," Vreeland noted. "There’s the Town Hill School and the preschool at the grammar school and there is the Little Scholars program. But for infant-toddler care, there really aren’t many options."

Nonetheless, child care center staff and board members remain committed to making it the best possible facility they can. Children learn and play in a clean, airy space that is owned by the center (the land it sits on is owned by the town). Staff members return to school for higher levels of training and accreditation — which is encouraged by the center’s board, even though those higher certification levels bring higher salary requirements with them.

The center also holds itself to a high standard, not only meeting state standards but also meeting the more rigorous requirements of the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

The full tuition fee doesn’t even fully cover the costs of running the center, Vreeland said. That leaves it up to her and the 14 other board members to raise $45,000 a year (out of the center’s total operating budget of $450,000). How do they do it? The annual appeal brings in between $12,000 and $15,000 a year. The annual September house tour (now in its 24th year) brings in between $15,000 and $18,000. A tag sale, started last year, brought in about $4,000.

This year, for the first time, the center will host a dinner dance, at Elaine LaRoche’s LionRock Farm at the Salisbury-Sharon border, on Route 41. The party will be held July 7. At 6 p.m. there will be cocktails and dinner (tickets are $75). At 8 p.m., there will be a dessert buffet and dancing to music by deejay Mr. Joe Cool. The cost to attend only the dessert and dancing portion of the evening is $40.

"We tried to make it affordable so more people could come," Vreeland said. "We are trying to be all-inclusive."

Tickets are available at the Housatonic Child Care Center and the Salisbury Pharmacy, or by calling 860-435-9694.