After closely reviewing the current and prior participation rates, Metro High School has made the decision to end its in-house daycare program and dual-credit early learning course for students and assist future students seeking daycare by establishing community partnerships. The closure will occur at the end of this school year.

“Metro High School has worked with the current student who will need daycare next school year and will work with any future students on options for daycare services and childcare education,” said Cynthia Phillips, executive director of high school programs. “Although we greatly honor the benefits that this daycare program has provided to prior students and parents, there are opportunities that now exist to serve teen parents that Metro will partner with. This allows us to re-examine the current $418,426.61 daycare programming cost in order to expand courses at Metro. It is important to Metro to find caring, personalized and fiscally responsible ways to serve all students.”

While the decision was not easy, it was based on the following:

• The daycare program has experienced a steady decline in participation from both students and staff.
  • For example, the highest participation occurred in 2009-2010 with 51 children related to students and 10 children related to staff. Currently, there are 1 – 2 student-related children who intermittently attend. Metro High School is making community connections to provide services for existing and future students seeking daycare.
• There is a child development/childcare classroom component associated with student participation in the daycare program. With low numbers of children in the daycare on any given day, the dual-credit early childhood classroom curriculum cannot sufficiently occur. Metro High School is finding less students are signing up to take the class, and therefore participation in the program has declined.
• An opportunity now exists to re-examine the $418,426.61 resources to provide new programming options for students in the areas of music courses and business courses.

“The Metro High School daycare has always been a great program that both the Metro Principal Dan DeVore and I have supported,” said Superintendent Noreen Bush. “The program was originally created for students’ needs, but due to declining student participation CRCSD has made the decision to end the Metro program and seek community partners to provide daycare options for any Metro student who is interested.”