[B]urlington has broken ground on a new child care center in the Old North End, with spots for 23 kids. The project comes as part of a citywide effort to tackle the national child care shortage that especially impacts underserved neighborhoods.
According to the city, 350 children are born in Burlington each year, but fewer than 200 child care spots are available for kids ages 0-3. The new center, through Champlain Valley Head Start, aims to help fill that gap, with 15 spots for kids ages 3-5, and eight more for kids ages 2 and under.
The project is part of the city’s Early Learning Initiative, which plans to create 85 new child care spots in Burlington (begun in 2018), including those at the new site, along with expansions at the YMCA and Sara Holbrook Community Center. Seventy of those spots will be for infants and toddlers.
“Affordable child care has been a struggle since I raised my kids in this neighborhood,” City Councilor Brian Pine said in a statement. “The city is taking some forceful steps to address a long-standing problem.”
The initiative has two parts: providing capacity grants to help create additional child care spaces across the city, and offering scholarships to get kids from low-income families into those spots. Champlain Valley Head Start is one of four organizations that got a capacity grant this year.
“It is exciting to see this innovative municipal initiative making a real impact, and significantly expanding the number of spaces available for Burlington families who need child care,” Mayor Miro Weinberger said at the Monday groundbreaking.
The City Council is slated to consider the project, along with three other grants, next Monday. Creating the new center will use $250,000 in federal funds and $90,000 in city funds, through payment-in-lieu-of-taxes funds, which do not increase the city’s operating costs.
The other projects up for consideration are a preservation grant for Burlington Children’s Space in the Old North End, a grant for expansion at the Pine Forest Children’s Center in the South End and a grant for growth of early childhood education at the Fletcher Free Library downtown.
The scholarship portion of the Early Learning Initiative has provided a one-year child care scholarship for 18 eligible applicants born between Aug. 31, 2017, and July 1, 2019. The city plans to broaden the program in future years.
“We know now that early childhood is our best chance to create the ultimate level playing field,” said Aly Richards, CEO of the advocacy group Let’s Grow Kids, in a statement. “Burlington’s ELI project is an example of the kind of determination and innovation we are going to need to solve our state’s child care crisis.”
