Kids Campus family should grow

Two in a row! (Another front-pager with photo)!

By Janice Kurbjun
Times staff writer

The Kids’ Campus, an extension of the Carbon County Higher Education Center, plans to expand in size as well as numbers as it seeks to contract with Memorial Hospital of Carbon County to care for the hospital staff’s children.

Working in symbiosis with the community, the Kids’ Campus previously adopted children of penitentiary workers into its initial community of youngsters from the higher education center. It now plans to add to its family 28 new slots set aside for the hospital in an agreement awaiting approval by representatives from each party.

Kids’ Campus officials planned to expand their facilities when the taekwondo center vacated the property connected to the child care center’s playground, Kids’ Campus Director Nicole Wright said. “The landlord offered it to us and we took it, because the current space does not provide much room for the kids.”

The new lease creates a courtyard complex with two buildings on either side of the playground. The infants and “wobblers,” up to age 2, should receive care in the new building while the toddlers, the “pre-pre-schoolers,” and the preschoolers, from ages 3 to 5, should remain in the older building, Wright said.

Some renovation is required for the new building to be fully functional for the Kids’ Campus, Carbon County Higher Education Center Director Dave Throgmorton said. Throgmorton hopes work begins in the next few weeks so the complex can be open by the end of March.

The hospital saw the opportunity to negotiate with Kids’ Campus officials when it signed the new lease, said Nurse Manager Dawn Dingman. Wright said the expansion had been arranged when the hospital began expressing interest in adding children to the Kids’ Campus.

“It would give our staff a place to take kids without having to take classes,” Dingman said. Currently, it is hard to find infant day care, a specialty of the Kids’ Campus, in Rawlins, Dingman said.

Once the contract is finalized and signed, the hospital can add another tool to its belt in recruiting future employees. “It was one of (the nursing community’s) suggestions to get childcare as a recruiting tool,” Dingman said.

The 28 slots should be open to all members of the hospital staff, she said. The number is based on surveys issued by the hospital board where employees had the opportunity to express their needs. The numbers have been adjusted to accommodate the children of new employees.

The Kids’ Campus currently receives two-thirds of its funding from the higher education center, while the penitentiary contributes one-third of the funding, Wright said. She expects the contract to contain the hospital’s contribution for the expansion. “(The hospital’s subsidy) is important so we can continue to have our employees,” she said.

Wright spoke of retaining folks of the caliber of Tera Voss, the preschool teacher at the Kids’ Campus. From Encampment, Voss received her bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of Wyoming. “We’re glad to have her,” Wright said. “She has so much knowledge.”

The contract between the hospital and Kids’ Campus officials should be ironed out by the next hospital board meeting on Feb. 28 at 5:15 p.m. The hospital has made a verbal agreement, but the official contract has yet to be written, Wright said.


The future is bright

By Janice Kurbjun
Times staff writer

Building and occupancy expansions are the immediate focuses for Kids’ Campus officials, but Carbon County Higher Education Center Director Dave Throgmorton said he sees other advances in the future of the Kids’ Campus.

“We are exploring the possibility of a brand new Carbon County higher education facility,” he said. The school contracted with Pedersen Planning Consulting, based in Encampment, to evaluate its needs — staffing, space and curriculum. Funded by a grant from the Wyoming Business Council, the evaluation should be finished by early February.

“Before we get carried away with this space that we’re leasing,” Throgmorton said, “we want to see what their report says about a permanent home for the higher education center.”

Also in the works at the Kids’ Campus is the possibility of developing the child care center into what Throgmorton called a laboratory school. “I would like to see it as a place to teach nutrition and parenting skills to parents, and maybe neonatal skills to future parents,” he said.

Such skills are currently being taught at various places around Rawlins, but Throgmorton hopes the Kids’ Campus might become the primary place to hold such classes. “I’m not anxious to step on toes,” he said.

The laboratory school would be both a place to bring parents into their child’s learning and a place for the Carbon County Higher Education Center to expand its curriculum. Higher learning in elementary education, curriculum development and other courses could be fostered there.