Press Releases

TLC: The Learning Center Kicks Off Fund Drive
Charles City Press
November 22, 2000

With tales of child care nightmares, both as parents and employees/employers, the TLC: The Learning Center Board of Directors officially kicked off a $175,000 fund-raising campaign last week with a breakfast gathering for business and industry representatives.

“We have a house, but the house is empty,” remarked TLC Board President Sally Frudden in explaining how the former Fareway building in Charles City had been donated and funds obtained from grants and previous contributions to cover the necessary remodeling and renovation costs for the new Family Resource Center. The things needed to go inside of that building for the planned community child care center – the tables and chairs, desks and computers, toys and crayons, pots and pans ... and teachers – are still missing.

“We need the community’s support to acquire the things needed to serve 78 youngsters – birth to fifth or sixth grade – with before and after  school programs for five days a week, from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m.,” Frudden continued.

Renovation work is under way at the facility at 404 North Jackson St., which when completed will house both Head Start and the local Northern Trails Area Education Agency offices, as well as TLC: The Learning Center.

“This will be so much more than just a babysitting service,” said Frudden. “It will be a place, as the name suggests, where our children can learn and grow and become better prepared when they enter school. And it will be a ‘community’ child care center, open to and affordable for families of all income levels.”

The problem of quality, dependable child day care – as in the lack of – was brought up over a year ago at a town meeting sponsored by P.I.K. (Positive Influence on Kids). A task force was formed to further study the problem and to see if a solution was feasible, from which the TLC: The Learning Center Board came out of.

Paula Kruthoff, manager of human resources at Salsbury Chemicals, talked at last Thursday’s fund drive kick-off of the problems both parents and employers go through when children or child day care providers get sick.

“We’ve all gotten that phone call early in the morning from the day care provider who can’t do it or else you wake up to find your child is ill. It can cause a lot of problems for both sides,” she commented. “There’s lost wages and lost productivity. It affects a lot of things when there is not a dependable alternative for quality child care to turn to.”

Dave Fuchs is a comptroller at Sherman Nursery and the father of three children. He too knows all about the problems associated with finding and keeping quality child day care – especially considering he and his wife have gone through a dozen different home providers to date for a variety of reasons, including one being shut down by the Department of Human Services.

“It can be extremely stressful,” he said. “Sometimes you have no choice but to stay home from work or split-shift with your spouse because you have no other option. Someone has to stay with the children.”

Frudden added that not only has it been shown there is a need for a dependable, quality community child care center able to accept ‘drop-ins’ as well as regular clients, but that such a center would also be a valuable economic development tool that could benefit the entire community.

“A labor shed study done for the Area Development Corporation by the University of Northern Iowa reported that there are 600 women around Charles City who would come to work if they had quality child care for their children,” said Frudden. “These mothers would make good employees because they are high school graduates and have been in the work force before.”

Currently, their only alternative, Frudden noted, is private, home-based day care providers.

“And they are operating at maximum capacity and are stretched to the limit,” she said.

Statewide, Iowa leads the nation in percentage of school-aged children with working parents at 83.2 percent, according to Frudden.

“We appreciate that businesses need a stable workforce to be productive,” she said. “A key to this stability could be reliable, quality child care for our working parents. We know businesses wish to attract good workers. Good child care could do that!”

And, Frudden added, once a company has good employees they certainly would like to retain them.

“Losing good people because of child care is a painful, costly proposition,” she remarked.

Providing quality, dependable child care is not a money-making venture, at least at none of the community child care service providers researched by the TLC Board around the region. Every one of them requires some subsidizing from an outside source or the community in general. The TLC Board members said this project will be no different and likely need some continued community support for at least the first few years.

“No one involved in TLC: The Learning Center is in it for the money,” commented Dan Frudden, Sally’s husband and a fellow board member. “We’re in it for the kids of this community. It is the kids – and in turn the community – who will benefit from this.”

“There is a ‘can-do’ attitude in this town when a community need is identified. We make it happen,” remarked Sally Frudden. “Well, this is definitely a community need and we need to once again find a way to make it happen ... for our working families, for our employers, and for our children.”

For more information or to arrange for a presentation to a group regarding TLC: The Learning Center, contact Sally or Dan Frudden at 641-228-2074.

New TLC: The Learning Center, AEA team up for 'dream director'
Charles City Press
By Mark Wicks
Managing Editor
January 2001

Talk about your ‘dream team!’

The new TLC: The Learning Center has announced the hiring of a director for the early childhood learning and community child care center planned for the ‘Family Resource Center’ now under construction in the former Fareway building in downtown Charles City. And who better to oversee the operation of this very unique venture than one of the most respected early childhood consultants in the state.

“She’s one of the best I’ve ever worked with and I’m excited that she’ll be joining us,” remarked TLC board member and Charles City elementary school principal Doug Bengtson in an earlier report to the board of directors.

She’s so good, in fact, that several board members noted that in their wildest dreams they couldn’t have hoped for a director of this quality and background to help them establish the first-of-its kind child care facility in the area. But TLC: The Learning Center had two very key factors at play making this possible. First, the aforementioned new director, Rosemary Geiken, has long been interested in being able to do exactly what the opportunity with TLC offers.

“Being able to work with kids and help give them a chance to succeed from the beginning, it’s what I’ve always dreamed of,” said the 48-year-old Geiken. “The importance of  (early childhood learning) is tremendous, because we’ve seen kids who don’t get the right kind of early childhood care fall through the cracks. By the time they start Kindergarten it can already be too late.”

And secondly, her current employer was willing to share her with TLC while still allowing her to continue what she’s doing now – and earning enough to allow her to accept a lesser-paying position with the fledgling community day care and early childhood learning center.

“Essentially we’re sub-contracting with Northern Trails Area Education Agency (AEA) for her services,” explained Dr. Sally Frudden, president of the TLC Board of Directors. “She will be considered full-time with AEA as an early childhood consultant, with AEA in turn ‘selling us’ x-number of days of her service a year so we can utilize her at The Learning Center.”

“It really is the best of both worlds,” said Geiken, who will be working out of the local AEA offices in the very same Family Resource Center building which will also house TLC as well as the Floyd County Head Start Program. “Even when I’m not at TLC, I’ll be right in the same facility. And in continuing with what I’m doing through AEA and the partnerships I’ve established there and as part of the statewide Early Childhood Network, we’ll be able to keep the ‘big picture’ view – looking at the total child, total family and total community aspects. This sharing agreement is perfect for that, especially with the connection we have on the state level keeping us tuned into the latest information, studies and ideas.”

She added that as part of the Early Childhood Network, she and early childhood consultants from all across the state meet once a month to pool their program and research notes and figure out what works best.

“I know from talking with other consultants they are very excited about what’s happening in Charles City with this early childhood learning center,” said Geiken. “This will not be quite like anything I’ve ever seen before. It truly will be a learning center and not just a day care. We will be teaching social confidence, interaction and social skills kids today need to have in order to be successful when they hit school. We’ll be teaching them how to take turns, how to wait, how to enter into a game, etc.

“We’ll also be collaborating with the Early Childhood Department at UNI, who will help evaluate our  program, provide informational links and research, as well as helping us with staff training. They are starting a brand new 3-year-old-on-up center there, and are looking at us and our birth-through-two program with real  interest.”

Extensive background

Geiken has devoted her entire professional career to early childhood education and development, graduating from the University of Northern Iowa in 1974 with degrees in Elementary Education and Special Education. She took some additional related courses after that, then went back to school and earned her Masters in Early Literacy and Reading from UNI in 1992, as well as her certification in Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten instruction.

Sandwiched around that was employment with the AEA out of Tripoli working with a Kindergarten through fifth grade and Special Ed resource room, and teaching positions in Aplington (long-term substitute teaching in early childhood classrooms and a six-year stint teaching second grade) and Dumont (third grade teacher). In 1995, Geiken joined AEA #2 out of Clear Lake as the early childhood consultant for 24 school districts in the area, including Charles City.

“In-between all of that there was also a lot of pre-school and daycare experience,” she said with a smile.

A native of the Hampton/Dumont area, who grew up in Mason City, Geiken has been in Iowa her whole life and is extremely familiar with this area. She has already moved to Charles City for her new position, which in reality she began on Jan. 15 but had to wait until the Northern Trails AEA  Board of Directors approved the sharing agreement with TLC on Monday to make it official.

While Geiken said this sharing agreement was somewhat unique in how it was set up, Dr. Dean Meier, the chief administrator for Northern Trails AEA, noted that a similar sharing agreement was entered into just a couple of years ago between NTAEA and the Charles City School District for the split services of Shirley Kelly. Ironically, it was Kelly who first informed Geiken of the TLC project over a year ago and piqued her interest.

“This is a true collaborative effort between AEA and TLC,” said Geiken, “and I have heard nothing but positives from AEA about it. Everyone’s excited about this. To me, it was just meant to be.”

Look for summer opening

The remodeling and construction of the Family Resource Center facility should be finished by mid-to-late May, with TLC: The Learning Center hoping to open its doors by mid-summer at the latest. A fund drive is still under way to provide all of the interior necessities such as tables, chairs and other equipment, as well as create a solid financial foundation from which the center can operate. Community day care centers traditionally are subsidized on a regular basis by the area they serve, much like the Charles City Family YMCA with its annual ANSU drive. However, it is the non-traditional ideas behind the center that the all-volunteer board comprised of community members and the new director feel will make TLC: The Learning Center take off and fly.

“It’s structured for success,” reported Geiken. “There’s a need for it, that’s been shown, and the board has taken everything into consideration, especially the collaboration aspects with the school district, AEA, Head Start and UNI Early Childhood Development. If it doesn’t work here, it isn’t going to work anywhere.”

She added that “this will be a licensed day care center, meeting the state’s level of quality, staffing and safety. We’ll also be going for national accreditation, which is a step above the state level. We want to be the best we can be.”

She noted that TLC wants to work closely with Kindergarten teachers whom will be getting the kids coming out of the early childhood learning center “in order to make that transition as smooth as possible.”

Geiken also pointed out that TLC  doesn’t want to compete with home-based day care providers.

“We’re looking at any way we can help each other,” she said, “whether through training or information sharing, networking between other daycare providers or even providing an alternative for them to use when they can’t or don’t want to take kids on a particular day. Basically we’re talking about a huge support system.”

That support system will also extend to parents.

“There are lots of parents out there who want to do well by their children but have no idea what to do,” said Geiken. “We want this to become a safe place for them to come to and get information... before it is too late. We want to give them the support they need.”

Now hiring

Between now and TLC’s opening Geiken will be busy working with the board to get policies in place, applications out, obtaining equipment and materials, getting a curriculum in place, meeting licensing requirements and filling out her staff. According to Frudden, that staff will consist of a lead teacher, who Geiken will work very closely with in all aspects of the operation, as well as four other teachers and approximately five ‘floaters.’

“Our lead teacher will be another key person, just like Rosemary, and will be required to have some sort of professional degree and some experience  with young children in a preschool setting,” Frudden explained.

Individuals interested in applying for that or any of the other positions at TLC: The Learning Center were encouraged to contact Doug Bengtson who chairs the personnel committee.