The Iredell County Partnership for Young Children (ICPYC) cut the ribbon on their new office building in Statesville Tuesday morning, marking a new chapter for the organization.
“We’re evolving,” said ICPYC Board Chairman Allen Smith. “I think that’s the question, if this agency can evolve. We can’t always stay the same. In this time when the budget changes and we have so many other influences, we still have children at risk that need services.”
Due to a $500,000 Smart Start state budget cut, ICPYC was forced to consolidate its Mooresville and Statesville locations into one smaller building, which is about one-fifth the size of just the previous Statesville site on East Broad Street.
The new building, located at 433 S. Meeting St., will save $6,000 a month in rent, but the entire workforce could not be kept. Seven employees were laid off in the process, something Smith said was unavoidable.
“Personally, it tore my heart out,” Smith said. “That’s not what we wanted to do. But, one of our goals is to make sure we’re still providing the services to the county that we’re here to perform.”
Those services provided by ICPYC are varied and extensive. A total of seven different programs make up the organization. They are the Early Learning Resource Center, child care referrals, child care professional development, Parents as Teachers, quality support services, child care health consultant and administration of a pre-kindergarten program for 4-year-olds. All programs serve at-risk children from birth to age 5.
“What we know is that children ages zero to five get most of their ability to learn and their language in that formulative period,” said Smith. “What we want to do is take and identify adverse children. Those are children where parents don’t have English language skills or don’t read or are unemployed and make sure that they’re ready to go into school.”
The only program ICPYC was forced to cut entirely was its Play-to-Learn center, a large model classroom where kids, teachers and parents could come in and play in a group environment designed to boost social skills.
“The parents are really missing that,” said Executive Director Marta Koesling. “That’s what I hear every time I run into them.”
While the space has become smaller for the employees of ICPYC, the workload has grown for some in the new setting. The child care referral and professional development program now cover nine counties. In the past, it was only five.
Many of the programs have not changed too much because most of the work is done outside the office. Silvia Plaza-Garcia, one of three parent educators in the Parents as Educators program, makes 40 home visits a month.
“We take toys and books and information for the parents,” Plaza-Garcia said. “Literacy is a big part of what we do.”
Behavior specialist Rhonda Hamby helps families looking for child care understand their options by matching needs with the right child care center. Working with the families requires her to travel extensively.
“I was in three different counties yesterday,” she said. “This [office] is just my landing spot.”
NCPK is a state-wide program for 4-year-olds that provides them with a year of early education prior to going to kindergarten. In perhaps the greatest illustration of the difficulties ICPYC is struggling with in the face of more budget cuts, the program currently has 287 slots for children in Iredell County, with 230 more on the waiting list.
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