Amid already limited early childhood care options, Eagle County preschool remains in danger of closing
The Family Learning Center is still in search of a new home, or the school will be forced to shut its doors after 26 years
Family Learning Center/Courtesy Photo
As Eagle County struggles to provide sufficient early childhood care and education options for its workforce, one of the county’s current facilities may shut down next summer.
The Family Learning Center in Edwards, which serves 97 infants, toddlers and preschoolers in Edwards, first announced the news of its potential closure in April, when it learned that its landlord, St. Clare of Assisi School and Parish, did not plan to renew its lease in 2025.
Workforce, housing, and child care form a trifecta in Eagle County, said Cristina Betancourt Santos, the school’s site director. If one side of the triangle is lacking, it affects the entire community, and “everybody knows somebody who needs child care,” she said.聽
“It’s great to see that people are sharing about these new centers that will be open in maybe two years, three years … but the concern is, we are in a child care crisis right now,” said Whitney Young Keltner, the Family Learning Center’s executive director. “If we build the centers in two years, three years, it’s not addressing the issue of us losing a center that hosts almost 100 families currently.”
If the Family Learning Center closes, “it means, again, we’re scrambling to find spots for both girls, hopefully the same center, where they will be happy, where they’ll like their teachers, their classmates,” Rhodes said.
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“This impacts everybody in some way or another,” Young Keltner said.
The Family Learning Center’s offerings
The Family Learning Center for 26 years has created a community culture among its students, staff and families, all of whom come from different, diverse backgrounds.
“It’s the Family Learning Center. Family is a big part of it,” Betancourt Santos said.
The school provides care, food and education across nine classrooms, making it the biggest private nonprofit early childhood education center in the upper valley. The school also provides child care 10 hours a day, a unique offering for many working parents, and offers bilingual education and wraparound services to support families.
“When you think about education, our school is often the nucleus for where families feel like they can go for resources or questions,” Young Keltner said. “If a family doesn’t have that until their child is five or six years old, they miss that nucleus.”
71% of the Family Learning Center’s students utilize some amount of assistance from the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program, a low-income child care assistance program.
Danielle Miller, an Avon resident, spent 10 months on waitlists before her son, now 3, was accepted into the Family Learning Center. By most families’ standards, that wait period was short. “What I found is the normal childcare waitlists in this valley go up to three years,” Miller said.
Her family has loved their time at the Family Learning Center, Miller said: “They’re phenomenal.”
But Miller and her husband both work full-time.
“If (the Family Learning Center) actually closed and we didn’t have another out, my husband and I would have to leave our jobs,” she said.聽
The impending closure forced her to make the difficult decision to move her son to a different preschool when he was accepted after three years on the waitlist.
“I made that decision to move him because I thought they were closing,” Miller said. “It was a really hard decision to make.”
Miller’s daughter is still a student at the Family Learning Center.
Rhodes has also started to look elsewhere, though both her daughters are currently still enrolled at the Family Learning Center, where they are happy and like their teachers and classmates. If the Family Learning Center does close, it might require Rhodes to send her daughters to two separate schools, or for them to attend school on separate days.
“It’s been hard because there hasn’t been a good fit yet because the spots are so limited,” she said.
Finding a space
The Family Learning Center staff is “still very actively searching” for a new home for the school, while continuing current operations through August 2025 when the lease ends, Young Keltner said.
To sustain current operations, the new space needs to have at least 10,000 square feet of indoor space, and would ideally be near Edwards, as most currently enrolled families live in Edwards or Avon.
“This is where people want to be. This is where they want to stay,” Young Keltner said.
There are some opportunities for new spaces “on the horizon,” Young Keltner said. “It’s going to take funding.”
Keeping hope alive
Among the school’s 36 staff members, Betancourt Santos said, “I feel a sense of hope.”
Many parents remain optimistic, as well.
“I’m hoping that it will stay open, and that the community will pull together and either they will extend the lease or find a permanent spot,” Rhodes said.
“Whitney is an incredible director,” Miller said. “And she’s fighting.”
The school has a current waitlist of about 200 between infants and preschoolers. Despite the threat of closure, the school has new families joining the list each week.
“I thought that if we shared that we were having to close, people wouldn’t be adding themselves to our waitlist and teachers wouldn’t be applying to work here, not the case,” Young Keltner said.
Despite the looming threat of the school losing its space, “We’re not going to stop trying,” Young Keltner said. “I don’t see how losing a center is going to still be okay in this crisis.”
You can contact Whitney Young Keltner with ideas for a future home and/or funding source for the Family Learning Center at聽WYoung@flcedwards.org.
