Henderson County Needs More Child Care! - By Miranda Gullberg

We have been facing the challenges of the current child care desert since my oldest son, now five, was born. My husband and I secured a spot at a child care center in Roseville, which is 20 minutes from our home and the OPPOSITE direction of my place of employment.

There were no full-time spots available at that time, so my mother-in-law kept our son three days a week until the center had a full-time spot for him. Ultimately, our oldest attended this center until he was four-years-old and our middle son was able to attend full-time until he was three. Both are now attending a Preschool for All Program in our school district.

We welcomed our third son in September and thought we had a spot secured for him at this same center after I returned to work. I was told our baby would probably have to start part-time, as they had not hired another classroom aid to replace the one that would be leaving later in the fall. Fast forward a few weeks when I learned that our baby would not have a spot for up to SIX MONTHS because they still had not found someone to replace the floater and there were multiple babies ahead of mine on the list.

We sent our son to an in-home provider for three months, but she decided she wanted to do something different. Fortunately, our original child care center was able to start him a few weeks later, but at almost six months old!