{"id":96344,"date":"2019-01-04T18:16:34","date_gmt":"2019-01-05T01:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lutheran-church-to-close-early-learning-center\/"},"modified":"2019-01-04T18:16:34","modified_gmt":"2019-01-05T01:16:34","slug":"lutheran-church-to-close-early-learning-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lutheran-church-to-close-early-learning-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Lutheran church to close early learning center"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Christ
Christ the King Lutheran Church will close its early childhood learning center next week. The center was first opened in the church during 1970.<\/span>Mary Shinn\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Christ the King Lutheran Church will close its early childhood learning center next week because of declining enrollment.<\/p>\n

The Children\u2019s World Early Learning Center will serve its 14 enrolled children until Jan. 11, said the Rev. Tim Orlowski. The center serves children between 6 weeks and 5 years old.<\/p>\n

The learning center has struggled with declining enrollment over the last couple of years, and it was \u201cpersistently down\u201d over the last six months, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a sustainable ministry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The learning center has struggled with finding and retaining staff, and the turnover likely contributed to enrollment decline, he said.<\/p>\n

La Plata County has a shortage of early childhood teachers that has been contributing to the shortage of child care.<\/p>\n

\"Children\u2019s
Children\u2019s World Early Learning Center at Christ the King Lutheran Church will close Jan. 11 because of declining enrollment.<\/span>Mary Shinn\/ Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The center never limited the number of children it served who qualified for subsidies by the state of Colorado because the church considered the child care a ministry for the community, Orlowski said. However, the center has been receiving less and less funding per student from the state, he said.<\/p>\n

It is the second preschool to close in La Plata County in recent months, eliminating child care options in an area that was already facing a shortage of care.<\/p>\n

Before the closures, it was estimated that child care existed for about 44 percent of all children younger than 5 years old in the county, but 62 percent of families report both parents are working, according to the Early Childhood Council of La Plata County.<\/p>\n

A new learning center<\/a> is expected to open in Ignacio this month and offer care for about 50 children.<\/p>\n

Durango High School also started offering early childhood care<\/a> this fall.<\/p>\n

Children\u2019s World Early Learning Center notified parents about the closure Thursday and it will be informing them of other child care options, Orlowski said.<\/p>\n

Finding subsidized child care could be challenging for some families because of the countywide shortage of care.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe recognize that it will be a really difficult transition for a lot of those families,\u201d Orlowski said.<\/p>\n

The learning center was opened at the Lutheran church<\/a> in 1970.<\/p>\n

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

struggled with declining enrollment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5794,5735],"tags":[6327,3020],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-96344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-lutheran","tag-preschool"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96344","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=96344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96344"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=96344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}