Mar. 2—JAMESTOWN — The Jamestown Public School District is seeking approval of a proposal to provide child care for its staff through career and technical education programming, according to Superintendent Rob Lech.

Under the proposal, the Jamestown Public School District’s child care program would be allowed to serve existing staff during the school year for regular and drop-in child care services. Students in the school district or enrolled in the GED program would also be eligible to access the child care services at no cost while attending school.

The Jamestown Public School Board could approve the proposal at its next meeting on Monday, March 4.

“If we are looking to retain the good people that we have and recruit others, then you have to look at what is that you need, what could you provide that people are looking for and needing and child care was one of those that really came up to the top,” Lech said. “I think the benefits that align with how we care for our families is pretty important.”

In a memo to the school board, Lech wrote that the startup budget is projected at about $715,000 for remodeling five classrooms, playground equipment, safety needs, infrastructure supplies, architectural design costs, equipment/supplies and travel.

Lech said the school district was able to secure a $500,000 grant through the Regional Workforce Impact Program. He said the grant requires a 25% match.

“We had written another grant a few years back for enhancements to career and technical education,” he said. “So we are going to use funds from that grant because this is a career and tech ed program that we are expanding, it’s a family and consumer science program for child development, so we are able to access that grant to pay for the other costs.”

The James Valley Career and Technology Center was awarded an $800,000 grant from the Career and Technical Education Capital Projects Fund. Those dollars will go toward a planned project for the James Valley Career and Technology Center that includes construction of a 7,000-square-foot addition that will be used by the building trades program to build lake cabins and to house ambulances for training students and providing public service in northeast Jamestown.”Essentially what we are doing is adding this program to that grant,” Lech said. “We still have one hurdle to jump is to get approval through state CTE (North Dakota Career and Technical Education) to do that, but our intention is to keep every project in that that was previously requested in that grant.”

The child care program could begin in the 2025-26 school year.Lech said part of the startup cost of the child care program could be absorbed through user fees.Lech said the school district could find partnerships to fund some of the overall project of the James Valley Career and Technology Center or shift some dollars around.

“Maybe we do a little bit more in some programs or a little bit less in other programs,” he said. “That’s still a little ways away yet and we are still assessing that.”

The school district’s central office surveyed staff in October to gauge interest in pursuing a child care program. A total of 69 staff members responded, and the results of the survey showed 15 staff members had 19 children from birth to age 5 in day care. The respondents said the average cost of day care was more than $900 per month, Lech said.

He said having a child care program would help drive down the monthly cost of child care and staff members wouldn’t have to pay during the summer months to hold their spot.

“If we can release the bottleneck in the community for child care the existing child care programs may have fewer on the waitlist because we might be opening up some of those spots for other people in the community,” Lech said. ” In the end, our whole community could benefit from something like this.”

Staffing for the program would be scalable up to eight infants, 15 toddlers and 20 prekindergarten children with two professional staff, including the existing child care development instructor, and three support staff.

“If we had fewer students, our classified positions would be less,” Lech said. “We wouldn’t have the need for as many child care workers.”

He said from a budgetary standpoint, the school district’s goal is for the child care program to break even.

If the proposal is approved on Monday, the next steps include ensuring the James Valley Career and Technology Center’s infrastructure grant can be shifted to fund the expanded family and consumer science program and how the first year would be funded, according to Lech’s memo to the school board.