The scholarships are for families with children in preschool and meet the household income eligibility limits. The awards are based on a sliding scale, depending on the family’s income and need.
Michelle Downard with Park City Municipal explains.
“Families should expect to contribute 10% of their household income towards the cost of child care. And then the scholarship calculation would be based off of that, and combined with the cost of care.”
The program, an effort by Park City Municipal and Upwards, a national child care network, received 130 applications and has on-boarded 12 child care providers in the program.
Kristen Schultz with Early Child Care Alliance said they understand the need in the community and with government funds from the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic coming to an end, they see the scholarships as a way to help.
“All of the economic inequities are just frankly, being exacerbated now, because the COVID funds are leaving. And so several members of our community brought this to the attention of the Park City City Council.”
The council invested $1 million and Summit County has $280,000 in their budget—$150K for county employees and $130K for the community for the scholarship program to help families as well as child care providers.
“We want to make it affordable and accessible for families and we also want to support the providers overall, it's very difficult to recover the costs of providing high quality education at a tuition price that families can afford.”
More information on eligibility and how to apply can be found on the Park City Community Foundation’s website.