So first of all, tell me, how did you get involved in this project?

OK, so you knew Beth, many people knew Beth Brunswick. She was a driving force behind the successful completion of Rangeley Family Medicine and Rangeley Health and Wellness Pavilion. And she had in her mind to try to get a child development center, built here in the town of Rangeley. But of course her cancer put an end to her vision, and before she passed away, she asked me if I would be willing to try to fulfill that need for the town. So here I am and I am working alongside a few of her other friends, whom she also made this ask of, and my colleagues in this effort. Primary colleagues are Leeanna Wilbur, who worked very closely with Beth at Rangeley Health and Wellness, and George Bernstein, who worked with her before her passing on some initial investigation into child development center here in town. And George has a background in childcare centers. That was his career. He ran over 200 child development centers across the country for a company called Nobel Learning. And Leeanna most everyone knows as a forceful figure here in the town of Rangeley for a variety of causes; Rangeley Health and Wellness, the Rotary and formerly vice president of the Franklin Savings Bank. So I have a very strong team working with we have other members as well, but they may not be as well known by the community.

And so, when you had the public question and answer session the other day, how did that go?

I think it went well. I think people did not know fully what to expect from us and our intention was to inform the public and perhaps they had heard some rumblings around town about this child center being in process but really didn’t have an outline of what was happening, so we wanted to make sure to deliver the truth to the citizens in the town. So we had a fairly good turnout somewhere around 35 people were there. We were really grateful for the support and endorsement from Rangeley Lakes Regional School and Georgia Campbell, the Superintendent, considers this a partnership with them and we’re very proud of that. We hope to work increasingly closely with the school as things develop. Specifically, we’re working with them to ensure that our curriculum is consistent with what they introduce to children when they arrive in their pre-K and kindergarten program. So it’s scaffolded on the earliest learning that takes place in a child development center and is consistent all the way through their elementary and further education.

And did you discuss, you know, whether or not people felt there was a real need for it, or was it something that everyone pretty much agreed upon?

Ohh we did not hear any opposition at that meeting to the need we heard rather support for this concept. I think some people might be skeptical of the scope of what we’re trying to do, but we believe that there is a an increasing population in town. We’ve had Georgia tell us that there’s definitely an increase in the elementary numbers at the school and that enrollment is up and that she expects it to continue to grow overall. So we certainly want to build not to maximum capacity at opening, but to have the flexibility to expand if need be. We also believe very strongly that there’s enough capacity in this town to support the existing childcare providers that is Little Mountain School and several in home providers who are operating wonderful and successful operations right now and the population should be able to support all of the above. We don’t intend to, nor do we want to put anyone out of business who’s running a successful program right now. We know there’s a gap in need. There are long waiting lists. There are endless number of parents who tell us they can’t get their kids into a childcare program and then that leads to an extended 3 plus year maternity leave when they have children before they’re able to go back to work. And also we hear from realtors that when people are looking to move to Rangeley, one of the first questions they ask is ‘So what do you have here for childcare?’ Which is a difficult question for them to answer for the early years. Everybody knows the school is fantastic, but it’s those zero to four years that are difficult for families to find childcare provisions for.

And another thing you were thinking about sharing with everyone was the community benefits for the proposed childcare center, which I’m not sure people had thought of. Do you want to speak a little to that?

Thank you. Great question. We understand fully that there is a labor workforce shortage here in town and by enabling parents of younger children to reenter the workforce, they hopefully we will help rebuild the workforce here in town. We know that most people who cannot get back into the. workforce have stated that the number one reason is for a lack of childcare availability in Rangeley. That’s based on survey results. We completed 2 surveys in the past two years and consistently we saw the same explanation. ‘I’d go back to work or I’d go back to school or I’d extend my work hours if I could find consistent and reliable childcare for my children.’

One other great benefit of having a childcare center is that were one teacher or to have an emergency or to become ill, or any number of other things that intervene in people’s lives, the childcare would not have to shut down, which is the case currently, because there’s one provider for each group of children. We would have coverage that would enable childcare centers to stay open in the event a teacher or supervisor has an emergency that calls them away and that would enable people to continue to go to work and not have to take extra time off, which I think is really important. So not only does this enhance the workforce, it also promises school readiness for children. There’s endless amounts of research, some is cited from the University of Pennsylvania Center for Social Studies, and the Brookings Institute is another, that cites endless research on the importance of early childhood learning early. The statements are that for every dollar invested in early childhood learning, there is a return on that investment of anywhere from $8 to $14.00, depending on the study that you read. And by that I mean that investing in early childhood learning creates school readiness for the children. They show up, prepared and ready, and there’s such a gap for children who don’t show up to school in kindergarten ready that they never are able to catch up. And what does that mean? That leads to depression, substance abuse, inability to complete their schooling and that’s where the social costs of not supplying early childhood learning for our youngest citizens is so important.

Yeah, it seems like a dangerous kind of snowball effect and like you were saying, when you have one care provider and that person falls ill, that affects the person having to mess up their schedule and then their schedule usually being someone else’s schedule is affected and so on and so forth.

Exactly. It’s a cascade and it’s unfortunate. So by consolidating different age groups into one building with a director who is there to fill in for those times, we would prevent that kind of problem.

So now that people are getting excited about it, what is your hopeful timeline looking like?

Another great question. So it’s all about, at this point, ascertaining that we have the funds to complete the project. We do own the land, free and clear. We are very grateful that we were able to find a piece of property that is adjacent to Rangeley Lakes Regional School. The school is happy because they need a second egress as well as the concept of having teachers be able to go back and forth with the younger students and get to know children. For example, before they would arrive in kindergarten, be acquainted with the incoming population. So the biggest obstacle right now is ensuring that we have adequate funding to get this project completed. We are waiting for $1,000,000 in grants, $750 of federal funds that’s been approved by the Senate and is waiting for congressional approval. We have $250,000 of state funds that we’ve been told is earmarked for us and it’s just a question of some of the paperwork being completed. So that’s our first million. Our goal is $2.8 to $3,000,000. Right now we’re waiting for bids back from the contractors to formalize our exact budget, but we believe that we’re in the right ballpark. We have over $500,000 in private philanthropy that’s been raised. We have a bunch of grant applications that are out that will total if we receive full funding over 200,000 dollars additional. We’re working with the banks in the Northeast to try to obtain new market tax credits, which is a very complicated financial vehicle, but something that would conceivably help us fill the gap in funding that we need. All of these efforts are ongoing. The fundraising efforts are ongoing and with any luck, to get back to your original question about timeline, we could break ground early spring and it should be a 9 to 12 month effort to get the building completed. Originally we had hoped to break ground this fall, but things are delayed in Washington as well as some of the other funding sources that we were optimistic about that didn’t materialize. So we’re just being cautious. Rather be safe than sorry in terms of groundbreaking before we know we have the funding in hand.

So am I hearing 2025 opening?

Could be the end of 2024. Could be 2025 and again it all depends on when we can ascertain these funds will be available to us.

And have you given any thought about recruitment?

We have. We’ve given a great deal of thought to that. There is an agency in Lewiston, ME called Coastal Concepts Corporated (CCI). They operate many childcare facilities in the state of Maine. In one scenario they may operate this for us, which means they would take on all the HR, all the training and supply the teachers and so forth for us. In another scenario, we’ll run it ourselves. We would hire all the teachers. There is a program at UMaine Farmington for early childhood learning specialist, so we’ve been in touch with them. They would be very excited to have their students come and intern with us, and if they graduate anywhere from 10 to 20, early childhood specialists each year, we believe that we could offer some nice opportunities to their graduates. So we’re hoping for both those things to provide potential staffing for our needs.

Well, I would hope that someone would either read about this through the Rangeley Highlander, or hear about it on WRGY and plant the seed that they would want to go down this avenue, so that they could be a part of it.

Me too. I agree Stephanie. You never know. And having publicity such as you’re providing here is always a great way for people to consider. ‘Hmm, maybe that would be a great thing for me to do’, and I’d love to hear from anybody who has an interest. There are certain licensing requirements depending on which level of employment you’re looking for. But none of them are too arduous and anyone is considering it should certainly take it seriously.

Yeah. I mean, I think sometimes people, they do find that childcare is they’re calling, but there’s not a lot of avenues for it, right in our local community, and you know, maybe hearing about it will, you know, encourage them.

I hope so.

So great, all of that sounds wonderful. Was there anything else you wanted to add?

Well, the only other thing that I want to do is thank so many people who have been incredibly supportive. Our partners, I mentioned Rangeley Lakes Regional School, my team who’s working on this with me. I certainly could not do this without their help. Many, many donors in the community. And of course there’s still plenty of room for more community members to participate there. Arctaris has been incredibly supportive. They’re the owners of Saddleback. By providing us their development expertise and the larger community development effort that they have underway is very supportive of childcare. So a lot of people have made this work. So far we’ve had all kinds of advice given gratis, and people discounting their services and so forth, and it takes a community to build something as aggressive as this center will be. It will be just under 5000 square feet. So it will be able to accommodate the need that we see in this community based on census data and school registration data and information we’re getting from town hall about building permits from information from the realtors in town. So we do believe that this is a huge community need and it takes a group effort to get something like this finished. So thank you to anyone and everyone who can participate with us.

Well, I mean, this is a volunteer effort on your part and it must be that you volunteered in other organizations before. Is that why you’re kind of leading this to a certain degree?

Well, as I mentioned in the beginning, my friend Beth Brunswick did ask this of me and that was the number one reason, but I love Rangeley and I want to see Rangeley prosper. I believe there’s economic growth potential here which would increase the tax base and help everyone in town. As long as we can provide childcare or affordable housing, healthcare and other important needs for healthy community. So, those are the reasons that I’m doing this.

For more information or to lend support, you may email Ellen Oppenheim at ellen.opp@gmail.com.

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