{"id":26811,"date":"2024-07-07T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-07T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-announces-partnership-to-relocate-tri-county-head-start\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T23:46:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:46:05","slug":"durango-announces-partnership-to-relocate-tri-county-head-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-announces-partnership-to-relocate-tri-county-head-start\/","title":{"rendered":"Durango announces partnership to relocate Tri-County Head Start"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Durango
Durango resident Heather Haaland watches her son Myles Drinker, 3, swing while holding her baby Reece Drinker, 12 weeks, on June 26, at the playground in Three Springs. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Parents are no strangers to the ongoing struggle to find adequate child care, but the promise of new solutions could be peeking out from beyond the horizon.<\/p>\n

Tri-County Head Start is getting a new facility, and the La Plata Economic Development Alliance received a Rural Economic Development Initiative Grant earlier this month to fund an assessment of area early child care needs.<\/p>\n

The city of Durango is partnering with Tri-County Head Start to move the early child care provider into a new facility near Durango Public Library with much-needed upgrades.<\/p>\n

Tri-County Head Start offers child care in Durango, Dolores, Cortez, Mancos and Pagosa Springs and provides early child care to income-eligible families.<\/p>\n

\"Lisa
Lisa Stone, executive director of Tri-County Head Start, stands in front of the Durango location at 2019 East Third Ave., that it has leased from the city of Durango for the past 20 years. Head Start will move into a new facility, which will be built on the site of an underused parking lot across Third Avenue between East 19th and 20th streets. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Lisa Stone, executive director of Head Start, said Head Start has leased its current Durango office at 2019 East Third Ave. from the city for over 20 years. The facilities consist of a 100-year-old house and modular units.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always say we\u2019ve put as much lipstick on these buildings as we can, but it\u2019s really time to do something different,\u201d she said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Head Start will move into a new facility, which will be built on the site of an underused parking lot across Third Avenue between East 19th and 20th streets.<\/p>\n

The partnership includes Reynolds Ash and Associates and Agave Group, according to the city.<\/p>\n

The new Head Start facility will be able to host close to 80 children, according to the city.<\/p>\n

\"Once
Once Head Start is moved, up to 22 workforce housing units are planned to be built at its current location. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Head Start has dealt with inadequate space at its current location for years, Stone said.<\/p>\n

With the new facilities, \u201cwe can flex between toddler classrooms and preschool classrooms,\u201d she said. \u201c \u2026 We\u2019ll have all the support rooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Head Start will have a gross motor room, or a room designed to stimulate children\u2019s senses and encourage physical play, to give kids opportunities to be active when winter weather makes outside recesses impractical. Stone said the new facility will also have a teacher work room.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really allows us to have a design space that\u2019s specific to child care in our Head Start program,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Durango Community Development Director Scott Shine said at a June 4 City Council study session that the public-private partnership between the city and Head Start is an \u201camazing\u201d opportunity for the city to address child care needs and to make a positive impact on workforce housing.<\/p>\n

Once Head Start is moved, the plan is to build up to 22 workforce housing units at its current location.<\/p>\n

\"Plans
Plans are in the works to move Tri-County Head Start located at 2019 East Third Ave. into a new facility to be built on the site of an underused parking lot across on Third Avenue between East 19th and 20th streets. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Shine said Head Start is pursuing grants to pay for the construction and site development. The city is simply leasing the land to be built on.<\/p>\n

Neighboring property owners will be consulted about design of the units, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe overall concept is very exciting,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what we wanted to do when we put out the request for proposals, was get creative and sort of innovative ideas about how to use this property.\u201d<\/p>\n

Supporting Head Start is not the city\u2019s only recent move toward supporting early child care options. In April, City Council submitted a grant application for $55,000 from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs on behalf of the La Plata Economic Development Alliance, which was awarded earlier this month.<\/p>\n

The funding will support a study that will inform a \u201cregional child care investment strategy\u201d<\/a> to fill present gaps in child care accessibility and challenges faced by centers across the county, according to city and child care leaders.<\/p>\n

\u201cChildcare is a very important need,\u201d City Manager Jose Madrigal said in an email to The Durango Herald<\/em> on Tuesday. \u201cI have received comments from staff members about the need to have childcare services available at an affordable price. Recruiting and retaining staff is always a challenge, especially in the dynamic job environment that is happening not only in Durango but all over the state and nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also said providing or having access to child care services \u201cwill be critical in maintaining full staffing to provide services to the Citizens of Durango. The City of Durango wants to be an active partner in helping find solutions for childcare services in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n

City spokesman Tom Sluis said the city offers all-day programs and afterschool programs for children ages 5 to 15 through its Parks and Recreation GameTime Program.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it is not traditional child care that would be found in the private sector,\u201d or operational hours from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, he said.<\/p>\n

Parents struggling to access care worried about bills, their children\u2019s development<\/div>\n

Parents and child development professionals alike are feeling the economic pains of great demand for early child care and childhood education mismatched with weighty costs to families, interminable waitlists and nonstop turnover at centers.<\/p>\n

Heather Hawk, executive director of the Early Childhood Council of La Plata County, told the Herald<\/em> in March 2023 the turnover rate among 31 licensed childhood centers in the county was between 30% and 40%<\/a>. That matches a trend established over the previous eight years and largely continues to this day.<\/p>\n

The Good Food Collective, a branch of the La Plata Food Equity Coalition, has been a strong voice advocating for raising awareness of child care needs, with representatives appearing at recent City Council meetings seeking action from the city.<\/p>\n

Tiffany Chacon, a Good Food Collective member and Latinx early child care and education specialist, said child care should be a key priority for the community because whether or not someone has children, the quality of care children receive comes back around to affect him or her.<\/p>\n

Durango resident and mother of two Heather Haaland made several appearances during public comment periods at recent City Council meetings to ask for action.<\/p>\n

She has two sons, a 3\u00bd-year-old turning 4 in September and a 12-week-old as of June 18.<\/p>\n

Her oldest son is 13 days too young to be accepted into Durango School District 9-R\u2019s universal preschool program this year, which opens the program to 4-year-olds and has a cutoff age date of Sept. 1.<\/p>\n

She said because her son is technically too young to start preschool in the fall, she and her husband have to pay for another full year of child care, which is currently costing them nearly $2,900 a month for both of their children.<\/p>\n

Haaland\u2019s son, who\u2019s in his second year of child care at the same center, is older than his peers. That makes Haaland worry about his development, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some kids that are not fully verbal, they don\u2019t speak very much, and they use younger kid actions,\u201d she said. \u201cSo there\u2019s hitting and biting and kicking. He was starting to do those things when those younger kids were moving up, because that\u2019s how they were communicating. So he was seeing that as like, \u2018Oh, this is acceptable.\u2019 And so I worry about things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also worries for her son\u2019s teacher, who carries a part-time job in addition to working as a full-time teacher just to make ends meet, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOlden days, you had schoolhouses with kids of multiple ages,\u201d she said. \u201cBut if he\u2019s the oldest and he only knows so much, what can the teacher do when the majority of the students are younger and you can only do so much with your curriculum? I\u2019m afraid that it\u2019s going to be really focused on the younger children,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Carolina Diaz, a Latinx immigrant who speaks Spanish as her first language and has two young daughters, finds herself in a similar position as Haaland.<\/p>\n

Diaz has been trying to get her children into Head Start programming since 2020 and has remained wait-listed to no avail.<\/p>\n

Speaking with the help of Lisa Rogers, a Durango-area interpreter with the Community Language Research Group<\/a> from the La Plata Food Equity Coalition, Diaz said finding child care seems even more difficult for people who don\u2019t speak English as their first language.<\/p>\n

Diaz works for Compa\u00f1eros: Four Corners Immigrant Resource Center remotely from her home office. Her children stay with her at home during the workday while her husband works two separate jobs to pay the bills. She said her daughters aren\u2019t getting the attention they need, and it shows.<\/p>\n

Her oldest daughter, who like Haaland\u2019s oldest son is mere days too young to start preschool with Durango School District 9-R this fall, is exhibiting behavioral issues \u2013 causing mischief around the house \u2013 to get attention, Diaz said.<\/p>\n

Early child care centers have become notorious for paying child development professionals and caregivers low wages in exchange for exhausting work. The arrangements often result in caregivers leaving for easier jobs with higher pay.<\/p>\n

According to data collected in January 2023, 68% of child care programs reported vacancies. Hawk said child care centers are reporting the same pain points \u2013 demanding work for low wages.<\/p>\n

When child care centers lose teachers and child development professionals, room for children in their programs naturally shrinks. The Early Childhood Council of La Plata County estimates about 2,100 children ages 0 to 5 in La Plata County need care, but there is only the capacity for about 80 infants and toddlers, or just 3.8% of the overall young child population.<\/p>\n

Hawk said there are about 500 children in each \u201cage band\u201d \u2013 birth to 1 year old, 1 to 2 years old and 2 to 3 years old. Being able to provide care for 80 of 500 infants is a clear indicator of the low capacity of child care centers.<\/p>\n

Some preschools have expanded their capacity for toddler care for 3- and 4-year-olds, she said.<\/p>\n

Although there are not enough spaces in Bayfield and Ignacio programs, there are more spaces in Durango preschools this year than in recent years.<\/p>\n

cburney@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Economic Development Alliance receives $55,000 for child care needs assessment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[747,950,155,28,146,3020],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-26811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-children","tag-durango","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-parent-and-child","tag-preschool"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79485,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26811\/revisions\/79485"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26811"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=26811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}