Kids First Daycare in Frontenac told parents Wednesday that it will shut down on June 26, ending more than two decades in operation and setting off an immediate search for new daycare arrangements for 30 children and 15 employees.
That deadline landed at the worst possible moment for Lynn, a Girard resident who commutes to Pittsburg for work and only started taking her infant son there a little over two months ago. She said she opened the message from the center and got the news in pieces, first through a Bright Wheel notice about small renovations she received a little over a month ago, then through the closure letters handed out Wednesday. By the time she arrived at the daycare on Wednesday morning, she said several staff members were crying.
Lynn said she had gone to her son’s room as usual and greeted him before heading out, only to realize the day was not going to follow its normal routine. She said she was disappointed, especially because the center had already raised prices and, in her view, seemed to be settling into a better rhythm after the recent work inside the building. The facility’s board said the shutdown was unavoidable because rising operational costs and declining enrollment had made it impossible to keep the program going.
The contrast left parents and staff with a blunt question: how to replace a place that many families had just gotten used to. Frontenac has two other daycare providers, Little Feats and Toddler Time, and Kelly Cumiskey-Barnes said both are licensed through the state. But whether they have openings for displaced children was not answered, and that uncertainty matters because child care slots around here are hard to come by.
The loss will not be replaced quickly. New Foundations is projected to open in Frontenac by early fall, but that still leaves a gap between June 26 and the start of the school year, and no one has said how many of the affected families will be able to land elsewhere. For Lynn and others like her, the immediate task is not planning ahead. It is finding a spot, fast, before the last day at Kids First Daycare arrives.
