It is huge to see the Lisbon Early Childhood Center (LECC) receive a $244,465 grant.
Back during the COVID-19 pandemic’s start, the LECC was kept open as an essential service to provide needed childcare to members of the community who needed that resource. At the same time, they had a number of children who were now attending school at their homes that did not seek or need the childcare the center offered.
Lisbon Early Childcare director Bre Ties and her staff stayed that course, maintaining all staff at the center and taking care of children in the community who needed their services, hoping they would eventually recoup some of those expenses at a later date.
The costs for running the center and keeping on staff were not insignificant, and the Lisbon School board noted that when they helped square the books for the center’s negative fund balance in September 2020. It wasn’t a problem of any staff member’s creation or decisions, the LECC was always operating to address a need in the community and something that was dictated by the governor needed to happen in the early pandemic.
The childcare stabilization grants funding from the American Rescue Plan Act and distributed from Iowa Department of Human Services reflect that necessity, even if it is being distributed well over two years following when those funds could have significantly helped many of these centers most. As Lisbon business manager Laurie Maher and Ties noted, these dollars finally are giving the center who has operated on tight budgets room to have a safety cushion once again.
Childcare is also an issue that routinely comes up in discussion in other needs in our communities, especially as they look toward population growth, and this helps provide some of these larger centers have an opportunity to continue to operate well into the future.
Kudos to Ties and the Lisbon administration staff for having that foresight to apply for this grant.