Unique New Child Daycare Coming To Little Falls

LITTLE FALLS (WJON News) -- A new unique child daycare will be coming to Little Falls in 2025. The City of Little Falls and the Little Falls School District are partnering to build a new child daycare that will be connected to Lincoln Elementary School on the city's westside.

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The 11,000-square-foot center will cost about $ 3.25 million but $ 1.5 million is being covered by a federal grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Little Falls Mayor Greg Zylka says the city is excited to be working with the school district:

"We're just excited about the partnership because at Lincoln School, we have the playground, we have the cafeteria or the food service and those are two key needs that we would need for that childcare so it's just a perfect fit."

Little Falls Schools Executive Director of Operations Mark Diehl says using Lincoln provides benefits to parents too:

"It can make an immediate one-stop shop for parents who are, if they're dropping kids off for daycare those kids can head over to the, to attend pre-school as well and the parent doesn't have to come back and pick them up and take them to pre-school and then take them back to daycare it could be easy and convenient."

Little Falls Schools Superintendent Greg Johnson says they took a tour of other cities that had a school district-operated daycare and saw that the pros outweighed the cons:

"In analyzing the pros versus the cons, the pros far outweigh the cons of developing this type of partnership and getting into the daycare, childcare business and how it can benefit students, families and in every one of the districts that we met with it did have a positive impact on their enrollment."

Johnson says the childcare center will be a benefit for the district too, not just the community:

"And that will help our community and it's also selfishly, we have staff every year that are looking for childcare and struggle to find that in our area and so if it's a recruitment tool for us to be able to say that hey you know work in Little Falls and we should be, hopefully, be able to meet childcare needs as well is a win-win."

The daycare will be able to accommodate about 100 kids. Mayor Zylka says it will be a huge benefit to the city which expects to have over 500 new job openings in the next two years. A groundbreaking ceremony for the new daycare is scheduled for March 25th.

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