Kids from the St. Agnes School after-school program line up for ice cream on a hot day at the beginning of June. The school is set to host Lake Placid’s first birth-to-three child care program in the fall. (Enterprise photo — Grace McIntyre)

LAKE PLACID — St. Agnes School is preparing to welcome its first class of birth-to-three-year-old students in a new child care program offered as a public-private partnership with the town of North Elba and village of Lake Placid. This comes less than a year after St. Agnes volunteered to house and administer this pilot program, which addresses pressing child care needs in the area.

The program, supported by the newly minted “First Steps” organization that grew out of the joint town-village child care committee, is only a drop in the bucket when it comes to addressing child care needs. However, it is a good first step, and a welcome one.

Village Trustee Katie Brennan said she knows people with young kids, or even young people considering having kids, who feel like they can now envision a viable future in Lake Placid.

“That is super exciting in terms of thinking about the future of the community and having the resources and infrastructure in place for people to really make this their home,” she said.

The pilot program will be opening this fall with 22 spaces for children between the age of 6 months and 3 years.

The child care committee initiated this project following research on the child care needs in the community, which was greatly aided by the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism. This survey indicated a need for infant and toddler child care. To Dean Dietrich, chair of the committee, one of the most striking insights was how many days of work people reported missing because of a lack of child care.

This need has only been confirmed by the response to the program thus far — St. Agnes has already received more than 50 applications for the 22 available slots.

Dietrich said they realize this initial offering doesn’t meet all of the needs out there. However, the program needed to start somewhere. Part of the reason the program has been able to take shape relatively quickly was because of the space already available at St. Agnes.

“That’s where you try not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” Dietrich said. “We could not do anything to help 55 people all at once — there’s physical constraints, there’s economic constraints.”

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Working toward sustainability

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Now, the First Steps team is working on the next steps — increasing the number of child care slots available and building a fund so that the program is sustainable for years to come. The approximate cost of getting this program up and running was $185,000. Dietrich said they have raised enough money to get the program started, but there will be an ongoing need for fundraising to account for contingency costs and other upgrades — like a separate playground — that St. Agnes might want to add in the future.

The funding, so far, has come from a combination of private donations and grants, as well as money from the town of North Elba. In January, the town council voted to give First Steps $50,000 in occupancy tax funds, and the effort also received a Local Enhancement and Advancement Fund grant for $95,000.

Looking to the future, the most important task is to keep the program open and affordable for local families. Dietrich said they hope to create an endowment fund that would be supplemented by an annual fundraiser.

One of the challenges when it comes to making child care affordable is the gap between average salaries in the region and what it costs to run a program. The birth-to-3 age group is also more expensive since the requirements are more strict and there is a lower staff-to-student ratio required. There are government subsidies available to families that qualify, but the goal of an endowment is to further increase accessibility while not compromising the quality of the program, Dietrich said.

This summer, St. Agnes School will be making the necessary changes to get their facility ready for the younger age group. This includes work like modifying bathrooms, purchasing wheeled cribs and meeting licensing requirements.

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Benefits of child care

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The child care committee is motivated, among other factors, by the importance of child care to families and to the economic health of the community. However, that is far from the only benefit of child care. Lake Placid Superintendent Tim Seymour has been involved with the First Steps effort from the beginning, and said these kinds of programs have well-documented educational and developmental benefits.

Seymour said early education can take advantage of the dramatic brain development that happens during the formative years before the age of 4. It can also help identify potential learning challenges or disabilities and provide intervention in those early years.

“If you are not a part of an established, high-quality program, then those early interventions and some of the red flags for additional support might not show up at a time when impacts can be made to support students that need additional considerations,” he said.

Seymour said the difference between kindergartners who enter school from the universal pre-K program and those who don’t is noticeable. It’s not across the board — some families do a great job preparing kids at home, he said. However, the socialization and training kids get in the early years can make a big difference. The school is the “great equalizer” that can help kids get started on the right foot.

When it comes to building a healthy community, Seymour said factors like jobs, housing and child care are interwoven.

“Having access to affordable, high-quality child care yields benefits in the home environment that can’t necessarily be readily documented,” he said, “but are pretty apparent in just allowing families to have a sense of stability and anchor themselves in a community.”

Seymour said that, while the struggle of accessing child care is universal, he is grateful to be in a community where the town and village are doing something tangible to address it.

Dietrich, Brennan and the other members of the child care committee invite anyone who is interested in strengthening the child care in Lake Placid to get involved. First Steps has three committees: the governing board, which includes original stakeholders and representatives from the town and village, a financial committee and a publicity committee.

First Steps is open to working with other child care providers and even employers as they look to expand their model. They welcome ideas as they embark on a project that has come together quickly and still has a lot of room to grow.

Brennan empathizes with families in Lake Placid who are struggling to balance work and family life.

“How do you juggle work and your precious child who you just brought into the world?” she said. “We’re so delighted that this is here and we want to build on it.”