Mount Vernon and Lisbon Schools have both signed agreements with Champions to help provide child care.

Lisbon approved that change at a school board meeting in early March, while Mount Vernon approved the change at March 24’s school board meeting.

Mount Vernon superintendent Matt Leeman said the district will still have before and after childcare with the arrangement, this just takes Mount Vernon out of being the sole provider for staffing for the childcare.

Mount Vernon Schools will have this childcare agreement in place by June 2, as long as Champions has their proper licensing from the Department of Human Services for the Mount Vernon School district.

Leeman said that when it comes to the agreement the school has for things like students being able to complete swim lessons at the Mount Vernon pool, that will be covered by the school district’s insurance.

The agreement for Mount Vernon will help the district provide better salaries for childcare workers.

“We were already struggling with maintaining staffing for childcare for our program because of Lisbon’s better pay rates for employees,” Leeman said. “The current staff can roll on and continue with Champions, and they will be responsible for making sure they have the staffing ratios for the students each day.”

Leeman said there will be a slight increase in rates for childcare at Mount Vernon to bring closer to the market rate in Linn County.

At March’s school board meeting, superintendent Autumn Pino explained the district was looking to create meaningful opportunities to educate students early on from six weeks old to graduation day.

One question the district has been wrestling with has been how they can sustain a quality childcare program that honors the needs of Lisbon’s families, demonstrates value for employees and remains solvent and sustainable long-term for the Lisbon community.

Pino explained that some of the challenges for LECC continue to be how to meet the growing needs of the Lisbon community. As well, scaling up the small scale operation of the daycare at Lisbon to be more robust and adapting to the needs of the changing employment landscape of Lisbon community.

Pino said the district interviewed child care centers in the area to learn more about care, policies, business models for long term viability.

“Upon further review, we learned that there was a way to honor the rich history of LECC, its families, and our employees by partnering with Champions to create a bright future,” Pino said. “In engaging in conversations, we were able to find a solution that provides all three answers to the question outlined above, and allows us to have the appropriate ownership and influence to make LECC successful and sustainable for a long duration of time.”

Bre Ties and Pino said the district chose to partner with Champions to provide the same affordable care with more family scheduling flexibility, and many of the staff families know and love.

“Champions partners with local directors, principals, teachers, and parents to create more than 1000 before-and after-school, full day, and year-round learning environments that spark wonder in children,” Pino said.

The partnership makes Lisbon Early Child Care Center stronger moving forward.

“Even with our awesome expansion work over the last two years, our waiting list continues to grow. We are passionate about meeting the many needs in our community,” Pino said.

This partnership amplifies our quality of care and gives us greater access to expansive resources focused solely on best practices in child care. This provides LECC the unique opportunity to scale up our business model and set the bar higher related to cutting edge care over the next several years.”

Families on the waiting list do not have a change of time for their availability for child care.

Both districts can eliminate the contracts with 90 days notice, and the contracts are for three years.