Daycare center coming to NICE Community Schools

ISHPEMING TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WLUC) - After lengthy planning, NICE Comunity Schools is getting its own daycare center.

Faculty brought the idea to superintendent Bryan DeAugustine two years ago. As of last month, that idea is becoming a reality.

“We started to look into it, and one thing led to another,” said DeAugustine. “We got the ‘okay’ from the state to open a daycare for our teachers and our support staff members.”

This coming year, the district will have pre-school age kids in Aspen Ridge School’s elementary building. According to DeAugustine, this will help employees’ concerns about full and costly daycare elsewhere.

“We’ll be open every day,” he stated. “We made it as affordable as we can so that it’s cost-neutral, and they’ll be able to bring their kids to work and not have to worry about it.”

DeAugustine says his district got some information from CLK Public Schools in Calumet, which has a daycare of its own.

“That really helped us through the process,” he said, “so we were glad to learn from what they did and glad to hear that theirs is working well. It just gave us more confidence that this would be a program that we could put into place.”

The center will start with eight to ten kids, with DeAugustine seeing it as a permanent program that could expand.

“If we have a group of parents here at {Westwood} High School with young children that want to use the program,” he explained, “then it’s possible that we will open a room here at the high school as well.”

DeAugustine says high school students will have volunteer opportunities to assist with the child care. The new daycare will be operational at the end of August.

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