Fredericktown Local Schools is the only public school district in Knox County with a latchkey program. Local officials believe latchkey programs could help mitigate Knox County’s child care shortage. This is the first in a two-part series examining how Fredericktown’s program operates and what other districts might be able to learn from it.
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FREDERICKTOWN — Child care takes many forms.
There are private, independent child care centers, situated in residential or commercial districts, with licensed staff and administrators who make the operation go.
There is in-home child care, where licensed professionals will meet families where they are.
There are family members, neighbors and trusted friends who fill in the gaps when needed, serving as “mom” or “dad” while one or both are away.
And there are also latchkey programs. These are before- and after-school programs located in or near a child’s school, run by licensed child care professionals who may or may not work within the district.
These programs are technically separate from the school district itself – they must meet their own licensing requirements, for example – but they also operate within the district’s organizational structure, serving essentially as an extension of the school day for students whose parents may not be able to make the scheduled pick-up and drop-off times.
The Area Development Foundation has identified child care as a need in Knox County. A recent study conducted by the agency concluded the county does, indeed, face a shortage in licensed child care spots – so much so that it would need to triple its current inventory just to keep up with demand.
ADF Vice President Sam Filkins believes latchkey programs are a part of the solution. But when he and others looked into the situation in Knox County, they discovered this form of child care is rare.
St. Vincent de Paul School in Mount Vernon offers a latchkey program for its students (preschool through eighth grade). But Fredericktown Local Schools is Knox County’s only public district with a latchkey program.
It began more than 25 years ago, according to former organizers, and it continues today – serving roughly 100 families of school-age children in the Fredericktown community.
Parents call the program vital from a child care perspective; district officials call it crucial from an educational and community-building perspective; and students, by all accounts, find it fun and challenging, something to look forward to before and after school.
How has Fredericktown made this work over the past two-plus decades? Why did the program launch in the mid-1990s, and how has it evolved to meet the community’s needs since then?
Furthermore, what could Knox County’s other four public school districts learn from Fredericktown’s experience – and how might they go about starting latchkey programs of their own?
We spoke with organizers, parents and district officials to find out.
How it started
Fredericktown’s latchkey program began the way many things do in Knox County: through a partnership designed to fill a need in the community.
Robin McClay was a new mother at the time. While she didn’t join the program until 1997, roughly two years after it began, the Fredericktown native does recall how it came about.
“I believe it was a cooperative agreement between the school district and the Fredericktown Area Church Association, knowing there was a need in Fredericktown for child care,” McClay said in an interview with Knox Pages.Â
The program was run out of the cafeteria in the old elementary school on High Street. It was open to school-age students in kindergarten through fifth grade, and it was funded through admission fees (parents paid a set amount per session), fundraisers, and grants from the Knox County Department of Job and Family Services, which McClay said helped offset costs for low-income families.
The school district donated the space to the program, which was after-school only at the time. It was staffed by current and former teachers, McClay recalled, as well as qualified community members. Fredericktown Area Church Association board members served in an advisory role. Children could play, work on homework and eat healthy snacks while under adult supervision.
The program was popular from the beginning, McClay said. And it didn’t take long for the former teacher to get involved.
McClay took over as the program director in 1997 when her son, Ben, was just a year old. She’d been a teacher, having taught first grade for four years at Cardington-Lincoln Local Schools prior to the birth of her son, and she wanted to get back into education.
“I wanted to stay home with my kids, but still be involved with the school somehow. So it kind of worked out as just a part-time job for me,” McClay recalled.
“At the time, I was looking for something, and the current director was moving on, so this kind of just fell into place.”
One of McClay’s main focuses early on was adding before-school services to the program. This would benefit parents who couldn’t make drop-off times, either due to work or other scheduling conflicts, just as the after-school program benefited parents who couldn’t make pick-up times.
“What we could really sense from the community was that they needed before-school care,” McClay recalled. “Because with elementary school not starting until 8:45 or 9, that’s late for a parent that works.”
Fredericktown added the before-school latchkey program in 1998, and McClay said it was an immediate hit. Enrollment for the morning program quickly surpassed that of the afternoon program, as parents took advantage of the opportunity.
“It was huge at one time,” McClay said. “It was nice for the parents because they knew their kids were at school already, so they didn’t have to have transportation (from either their home or another child care facility to the school), and we also offered them breakfast.”
McClay ran the program for six years before stepping down to take a full-time teaching position at Fredericktown (she taught second grade for two years before switching over to first grade, where she’s taught for the last 18 years).
She called the experience “rewarding.” The program’s staff and the families they served formed deep, meaningful relationships over the course of the school year, McClay said, given the hours spent and the trust they’d built with each other.
“We did kind of grow to be a family,” she said. “It’s just a need that parents have, before- and after-school care, and knowing their kids were already where they needed to be for the day (meant a great deal).”
The latchkey staff served, in many ways, as the front line of the school system, McClay said. These were the only district-adjacent folks many parents saw every day, particularly if their children were in the before- and after-school program, and that meant they served a crucial role in the communication process.
“Parents would talk to us about things they needed to relay to the school, and we could kind of be an in-between, between the parents and the school,” McClay said. “Because honestly, we were the faces they saw most of the time, especially if their kids came before and after school.”
McClay said she had many latchkey students all six years, as they worked their way from kindergarten through fifth grade. Now, 20 years later, she has some of their kids in her first-grade classroom.
This has been one of the most rewarding parts of all, the 1988 FHS graduate said.
“It’s been fun to watch those kids grow up,” McClay said. “You just come to feel like a little bit of their extended family before and after school.”
How it works now
Fast-forward two decades, and many of the bricks laid by McClay and others remain in place.
The program is in a different location now. After 20 years in the new elementary school, it moved up the hill to the old high school and current administrative building on Columbus Road this fall to accommodate district growth.
But its structure – and purpose – remain the same.
“I think this program is important to our school system. I think it’s a benefit,” fourth-year program director Pam Cline said. “I think child care is really hard to find, and this is just another way to support our parents and kids.”
Fredericktown’s latchkey program is a state-licensed, non-profit corporation administered by Fredericktown Local Schools. All staff members “are hired according to the standards set forth by the Fredericktown Board of Education and the Ohio Department of Education,” according to the program’s mission statement.
It is open to school-age children, kindergarten through fifth grade, who attend Fredericktown Local Schools.
Parents can drop their children off beginning at 6:15 a.m., Monday through Friday, and they will be transported via bus to the elementary school at 8:20. Then, after the bus brings them back to the facility at 3:50, parents have until 6:15 p.m. to pick up their children (the after-school program is only available Monday through Thursday).
The program is not open on days when school is scheduled to be closed, or when it’s canceled due to inclement weather or emergency situations. When school is delayed, the latchkey program is delayed the same amount of time. The program remains open on early-release days.
The program may also provide all-day services on district days off, as announced by the director. Parents typically received two weeks’ notice of such offerings.
Enrollment costs vary. It costs $12 per session for families with one child attending (if a child attended the before- and after-school program, for example, it would cost the family $24 total that day).
Families with two children attending get a 20% monthly discount on the second child’s enrollment, and families with three children attending get a 30% monthly discount on the third child’s enrollment.
Certain families may qualify for reduced latchkey fees based on household size and income. Those who qualify may pay $9 per session, per child (with the same 20% and 30% monthly discounts built in for second and third children, respectively, as described above).
Fredericktown’s latchkey program is funded almost entirely through enrollment fees, Cline said. This income pays for staff salaries, supplies and administrative expenses, such as training and license renewal costs.
Fredericktown’s latchkey program currently has five staff members, including Cline. Three of the four direct-care staff members work with Fredericktown K-5 students during the day, as teacher’s aides.
All staff members are trained, licensed child care providers, Cline explained. They have to pass BCI background checks and obtain student aid licenses before undergoing training in communicable diseases, child abuse and first aid (including CPR training, which is conducted by an external provider).
“We have a very strict training process,” said Cline, who leads the program’s orientation training.
Fredericktown’s district treasurer handles the latchkey program’s finances.
“I do billing and I collect from the parents, but I put it in a bank account under the school’s name, and they issue our payroll checks and pay the bills,” Cline explained. “We don’t pay rent, so there’s no expense involved in that way, with utilities and physical space.”
The school district also donates space – the latchkey program has its own room, on the west side of the administration building, and also has permission to use the cafeteria, gym, playground and other areas throughout the campus – and office supplies, such as use of the printer and copier.
“There are certain expenses that get absorbed by the school,” said Cline, noting that Fredericktown’s latchkey program buys its own educational tools and snacks.
Last year, Fredericktown’s latchkey program served the families of 89 students. Some came every day, Cline explained, while others arrived a handful of times.
Cline said it’s taken a community effort – including full buy-in from the district – to make the program work.
“We have tremendous support from our schools,” Cline said. “I’m very thankful for that.”
Next in this series: We’ll give you an inside look at how the program operates, what it’s meant to the Fredericktown community, and what it might take for Knox County’s other four public districts to replicate this system.
