DUBUQUE, Iowa (KCRG) – New Horizon Academy, a new daycare and early-learning center, is now open in Dubuque, offering parents working downtown a convenient child care option.
“It’s huge being able to know that I have this incredible facility that I can get to at a decent time, not being late for work. I can trust it,” says Molly Dennie, a training specialist at Cottingham & Butler.
The Dubuque-based company’s new child care center sits within blocks of Cottingham & Butler’s downtown facilities, where Dennie started taking her 3-year-old and 1-year-old kids this week.
“When I’m at work, I can be at work,” says Dennie. “As a working mom, I just feel so supported.”
While the center is open to the public, Cottingham & Butler employees receive first priority and discounted rates at the center.
New Horizon Academy Director Christina Berger says 16 employees work at the center today, as it looks to hire another 16 workers.
At capacity, Berger says the center could care for up to 202 kids, ranging from ages 6 weeks to 5 years.
With fewer kids right now, Berger says she has more time for training.
“I like that we’re not starting out with 200 kids and we have the opportunity with extra teachers here right now to really instill that routine,” says Berger. “I hope that this feels like home away from home for the children.”
The two-story center features more than a dozen classrooms, spaces for nursing mothers, and a large motor-skills activities and an upstairs science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) room.
Dennie enjoys viewing the center’s app while at work, where staff provide updates on what her kids eat, when a diaper is changed, share pictures of her kids engaging in New Horizon Academy curriculum and activities, and more.
“I can pop down during the day, see my kids, eat lunch with them,” says Dennie. “I love knowing that I don’t have to make sacrifices at work or as a mom.”
Berger says the daycare is one step toward addressing a child care shortage in Dubuque County.
Iowa Child Care Resource & Referral reports approximately 15,621 children 12 years and younger reside in Dubuque County, but the area child care centers have space for 6,358 children.
“Not all of those kids will need a child care spot obviously, but the more that you have available, the more options there are and diversity of options, the more flexibility that parents have,” says Alex Baum, the Director of Advocacy, Data and Learning at the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque.
While child care centers like New Horizon Academy help alleviate the child care shortage in Dubuque County, Baum says more centers are needed.
“There’s absolutely a need for additional child care spots in this community and there is a need for spots that are available for working-class professionals to low-income, single mothers who might have multiple jobs that they’re trying to juggle,” explains Baum. “There is a need for infants up to middle-school, grade-school aged children.”
Baum notes affordable child care remains in high demand.
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