Early childhood education nonprofit PC Tots is calling out to the Park City community for donations to help fund two families’ tuition for a year of enrollment.
Early childhood education and care are critical to kindergarten readiness, which is a benchmark educators use when five and six-year-olds start school. PC Tots has two openings for the two-year-old class.
PC Tot's Business and Development Manager, Katie Madsen, said they'd have more openings coming soon as COVID restrictions ease. They've had to cut back on classroom numbers this past year.
"In order to bring some of these kids in that need help with paying, it's very expensive,” Madsen said. “For these two kids that we want to enroll right now, we need to raise about $30,000 to cover those costs. And that $30,000 will help us bring them in and have them in our center for the first year. And then we can keep raising money if they would like to stay longer as well."
PC Tots grew out of the Park City Community Foundation due to the increasing need for quality, affordable early childcare. The sliding scale tuition plans open the program to low-income families.
"And our full pay families pay $925 for infants and $825 for kids who are two up to five years old,” Madsen said. “Our full-pay families will pay the same currently but anyone who's getting help, it is more of a sliding scale, and even for our full-pay families, it is quite a bit cheaper than other daycare centers in the area. So everyone is receiving a discount, but then our low-income families are receiving even more."
Madsen said they frequently have waiting lists for the different age groups. Parents must have childcare to keep working and will often use unlicensed, home care.
"With PC Tots, they're there with a lot of people,” she said. “They're there with teachers. There's a lot of their peers if they are children who English is not their first language, then they have a lot of exposure to English. They become a lot more kindergarten-ready than kids who don't. There's a really big gap right now in Park City and Summit County, with South Summit [School] District as well, with kids entering school, having a really large gap between English language learners. They don't have the English exposure and other kinds of learning going on. So, you don't have the English closure and other kinds of learning going on that really helps them get prepared for kindergarten. It's helping the kids. It's helping the families, and it's also helping the school districts as well."
Madsen said that $30,000 to cover two scholarships sounds like a lot, but the nonprofit raises $400,000 each year to operate the center.
To donate to the PC Tots scholarship fund, visit the nonprofit's website.
PC Tots Business Development Manager Katie Madsen can answer questions about the program over the phone at 801-717-0665, or via email at kmadsen@pctots.org.
