Board now picked for Palouse day care

Palouse parents are now at work creating a non-profit organization to run the day care in Palouse. Members have already been picked to serve on the board that will manage the non-profit.

Jens Hegg, president of the new board, said he and other board members are now working to raise funds, become certified by the state as a non-profit and receive a license to run the day care.

Secretary of the new board is Andra Edwards. Other members include Brad Loomis, Kim Akin and Dana Anderson, Hegg said.

All the board members have children in the day care with the exception of Akin, who works at the WSU child care center.

The board plans to keep the Little Sprouts Child Care and Early Learning Center name.

Hegg said the board wants to keep the employees of the day care. The board has already decided to simultaneously cut the benefits but raise the salaries of all employees.

“The big issue right now is we’ll be taking over Oct. 1, but we don’t have any financial buffers. We need to do some fundraising to create that,” Hegg said.

Without any start-up funds, Hegg said getting the day care off the ground could be difficult. A fund-raising committee composed of board members is already searching for grants and opportunities to raise funds for the day care. Hegg said they also need an operating reserve.

The school board voted to buy special billing software, called ProCare software, to help the keep track of bills.

“It’ll automate the billing and staffing in order to minimize errors and make things run more smoothly,” Hegg said.

Billing will also be changed, Hegg said. Parents will be asked to pay at the time they check in their child, to eliminate late payments, one of the main reasons the day care was struggling.

The Palouse school board came close to voting to shut down the day care in April. It had been losing an average of $33,354 per year from 2005 to 2010.

After the community learned the day care could close, parents asked the board for time to come up with a solution.

In mid-May, those same parents presented the board with a detailed business plan for a non-profit.