The BulleTin • Sunday, FeBruary 13, 2022 A7
CENTRAL OREGON’S CHILD CARE DESERT
BUSINESS COURSES ACCELERATE
CHILD CARE PROGRAM OPENINGS
BY ZACK DEMARS
The Bulletin
Ryder Talcott and Kendal Sweeney
are close to opening an outdoor pre-
school in Bend, but the journey has
been a long one.
The pair plans to open a 16-slot
outdoor preschool in Bend in the fall,
combining Talcott’s background in
the outdoor industry with Sweeney’s
experience as a preschool teacher.
The idea behind Maverick Out-
doors is exactly what it sounds like:
Kids will spend all four hours each
day outside, rain or shine, playing
and learning about the outdoors. The
first classes will be just morning pre-
school-aged sessions, but the pair plans
to expand to afternoon sessions for
school-aged kids to fill gaps in the child
care schedules of working parents.
“There are so many benefits of be-
ing outside,” Sweeney said. “Getting
their hands in the dirt can be benefi-
cial. Spending 15 minutes in the sun-
shine can be beneficial.”
The couple have been thinking
about developing an outdoor pre-
school since 2017, when they met a
family hiking with their 1-year-old
through the Appalachian Trail and
wondered what it takes to get kids
outdoors at young ages, but they
credit a program from the Central
Oregon Community College Small
Business Development Center with
helping to turn their idea into a busi-
ness plan and getting them off the
ground months or years sooner.
The Center’s Early Childhood Edu-
cation Business Accelerator has been
offering free 12-week business courses
and $5,000 in funding for early-stage,
in-home child care businesses since
the program’s first cohort last fall.
“The course touched on many
things that we were aware of that we
needed to iron out for our business,
but that we hadn’t done yet. It really
helped us to understand specifically
how certain areas, like accounting,
like risk management, whatever it
may be, applied to our specific situa-
tion,” Talcott said.
Without the course, Talcott and
Sweeney believe they would’ve had to
wait until next year to open.
“We’ve definitely had a lot more en-
ergy around it ever since getting into
the program, so I feel like it’s definitely
coming together more quickly than it
ryan Brennecke/The Bulletin
Kendal Sweeney and Ryder Talcott plan to open a 16-slot outdoor preschool in Bend this fall, combining Talcott’s background in the outdoor industry with Sweeney’s experi-
ence as a preschool teacher.
would have otherwise,” he said. “This
course just gave us the extra step for-
ward in order to operate earlier.
Sweeney and Talcott were two of
the 10 participants in the accelerator
program’s fall cohort. Of those 10,
seven have launched businesses, and
program leaders hope the first three
cohorts of the program will help get
child care slots for 250 children into
the region, according to SBDC Direc-
tor Ken Betschart.
The program is free to participants,
who attend six biweekly class ses-
sions and meet one-on-one with Lisa
Tynan, the instructor of the program,
for personal business coaching on the
topics discussed in the course.
Registration details
Those interested in joining the spring
cohort of the SBdC’s accelerator pro-
gram can still register.
Classes, available in english or Span-
ish, take place once every other
week, with business coaching ses-
sions on off-weeks.
Those interested in participating can
contact denise hudson at neigh-
borimpact for more information:
deniseh@neighborimpact.org.
Once participants complete the
program, they get a free year of soft-
ware designed for in-home child care
businesses to streamline marketing,
enrollment and fee collection tasks.
Once they complete their state certifi-
cations, the SBDC grants them $5,000
in seed funding to help with their
launch, too.
One of the central topics is the basic
math of any business: Evaluating the
actual cost per enrolled child and set-
ting sustainable rates to charge.
“All these providers have hearts of
gold, they are doing this because they
love children, and the heart is in the
right place,” Tynan said. “But they are
doing themselves a great, great disser-
vice if they’re not paying themselves a
living wage. They’re not able to grow,
they’re getting burnt out, the qual-
ity of the program goes down, so we
want the opposite to happen.”
The program’s second cohort
started last month with 23 partici-
pants enrolled — 12 English speakers
and 11 Spanish speakers, who will
take the courses using materials trans-
lated into Spanish.
The third group starting this spring
will be the last that’s funded by De-
schutes County and the city of Bend
as part of a pilot program, but Bet-
schart is hopeful the program will
prove its success and get funding for
future years and serve as a model for
similar programs statewide.
e
Reporter: 541-617-7814,
zdemars@bendbulletin.com
Redmond Proficiency Academy runs child care for school employees
BY ZACK DEMARS
The Bulletin
When COVID-19 hit, some
teachers at the Redmond Pro-
ficiency Academy found them-
selves taking care of dozens of
kids, all from their homes.
Not only did they teach their
classes remotely, but some also
had their own children to take
care of at home as daycares
closed under pandemic restric-
tions.
Such was the case for Laurel
Eberhart, an RPA high school
teacher.
“My own child care closed,
and so I had a 9-month-old at
home, and I was teaching from
home with a 9-month-old,
which is not ideal,” Eberhart
said. “A couple other teachers
were all in the same boat, and
we were like, ‘what can we do,
if anything?’”
School staff had previously
batted around the idea of
opening an on-site daycare to
expand the high school’s early
childhood education career
and technical education track.
At first, the idea seemed im-
possible once the pandemic
began — but once they invited
staff to drop their children in
an unused classroom for day-
care, they saw that it could
work, and that staff would be
on board.
The result was the school’s
Learn & Play program, which
offers child care for both em-
ployees and community mem-
bers just across the street from
the school.
It’s been a big boost for the
academy and its staff. Eber-
hart, for example, says she
couldn’t find care anywhere
else.
“It’s nonexistent anywhere
else. If I didn’t have Learn &
Play for my own two kids this
year, I would be the parent
who quit my job,” Eberhart
said.
“I would not be working this
year if I didn’t have it.”
Hillary Kirk, who now over-
sees Learn & Play, says Eber-
hart isn’t alone.
“What I heard from some
staff members was just this
relief,” Kirk said. “The idea
“What I heard from
some staff members
was just this relief.
The idea that they
could find affordable
child care that’s
accessible to them
was really kind of this
factor in relieving that
anxiety that someone
can be a working
parent and can start
a family and still be
able to do this in a
successful and caring
way.”
— Hillary Kirk, oversees
Learn & Play
that they could find affordable
child care that’s accessible to
them was really kind of this
factor in relieving that anxiety
that someone can be a
working parent and can start
a family and still be able to do
this in a successful and caring
way.”
The program started in
RPA classrooms left empty
by the school’s shift to online
classes but has moved across
the street into a building the
school now rents.
In launching Learn & Play,
the academy had the advan-
tage of already being in the ed-
ucation business. That meant
some of the most intense hur-
dles providers face in getting
their child care businesses up
and running, like some zoning
restrictions and required in-
spections, were already taken
care of.
State licensing rules also
mean child care centers op-
erated by schools and local
governments don’t have to be
certified by the Early Learning
Division.
“We weren’t starting from
the bottom,” Kirk said. “The
More Information: Employer-supported child care
aside from the raw benefit of increasing the availability of child care
in the area, rPa leaders say having daycare available onsite is a bene-
fit the school uses to attract potential employees, especially during a
challenging labor market.
Some at neighborimpact, which assists the region’s child care provid-
ers in their operations, have pointed to rPa’s model as a good exam-
ple of employer-supported child care, where employers use child care
options as a benefit to attract and retain employees.
a number of other models of employer-supported child care are
in place across the country, like micro-centers running in the spare
rooms of office buildings and child care subsidy payments to employ-
ees, according to an employer toolkit neighborimpact released this
year, available online at bendbulletin.us/3rirpKM.
infrastructure was already
there.”
Six employee families have
their kids enrolled in Learn &
Play, as do about 18 other Red-
mond families.
The program’s waitlist has
grown quickly, with RPA em-
ployees advised to get on the
waitlist early if they plan to
have a child. The farthest out
families have gotten on the list
is around 14 weeks of preg-
nancy, Eberhart said.
The high demand can be a
struggle, but it also provides
opportunities for the acade-
my’s older students. The acad-
emy runs a Career and Techni-
cal Education program in the
daycare, so high school stu-
dents interested in early child-
hood education as a career
path can work in for-credit
internships or paid positions,
getting necessary certifications
and hands-on experience along
the way.
e
Reporter: 541-617-7814,
zdemars@bendbulletin.com
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