25-year-old daycare closes
10:19 p.m. Friday, January 25, 2008
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Many parents experiences were like Alissa Seal's experience.
"I came to pick him up today and they informed me today was gonna be their last day," she said.
The surprise wasn't that Lakeshore Learning Center, a daycare in the community for 25 years, was closing. That, they knew.
"It's under-funded," Darrick Wells said. "Where do they find the money at?"
The surprise for everyone, teachers included, was that January 25 would be their last day of operation.
"This was too tough," said Vicki Nolls, a teacher at the center. "This was not right. Not right at all."
Friday was the end of a quarter of a century legacy.
"The kids were going, 'what?'" Nolls said. "'We can't come back?'"
The daycare was supposed to close in a month, but they ran out of money. They are so strapped that employees may not get their final paycheck, let alone payment for unused vacation days. For now, final hugs will have to do.
The slate of the center will be wiped clean. The toys will likely be sold as well as the other things the center owns because when they close the fence today, it'll be closed forever. Wells has three kids who went to the daycare "from day one." He said he thinks it is a shame.
"They make sure people downtown at the Capitol got a place to park their cars underground," he said, "but people can't afford to put money in a system that is definitely needed."
A spokesperson for the center says the state didn't provide enough money for the 95 percent of underprivileged kids in the center. We repeatedly tried to speak with management at Lakeshore, but every time we mentioned money, they shut us down.
So then, we tried to talk with The United Way, who partially funds the center. No one would speak to us on camera.
Instead they sent a statement from Vice President Vickie Brokke saying, "United Way is committed to helping with ongoing salary costs at the center as long as teachers were caring for children."
Nolls says the center was underfunded, but she doesn't think it was because of a lack of money.
"As far as I'm concerned, there was mismanagement," she said. "Somewhere along this line they stopped thinking about the kids and started thinking about the money or do we trust them to be open while paying them. They all forgot what it was all about."
Watch the original story on Lakeshore closing that aired on January 8 here.
Comments
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Jan. 26, 2008 at 11:21 a.m. (Suggest removal)madmommy (anonymous)
First let me say that the closing of this daycare has nothing to do with United Way or SRS not doing what they need to do to help.
United Way has been there in many needed ways.
As for mismanagement..you need to have all the facts before you point fingers. This daycare had a director as well as an executive director.The executive director was in charge of the accounting side of running this daycare. It also had a board of directors that helped oversee the operations of the daycare.
But there was a break down of communications somewhere. This didn't happen over night. Has anyone ordered an audit of this daycare to see if the funds were going where they were suppose to? And what about the parents responsibility to the kids & the center? Were they all paying their part?
It's too bad that all of these people are out of daycare for their children as well as jobs. Where & who went wrong?
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