By Linda Sutter – September 1, 2022

Director Conger of the Del Norte Child Care Council is not someone who is kind to newspaper reporters. In fact he literally stated in an email he did not want to answer anything from the Crescent CityTimes, but he stated you can tell people who have concerns to call him. NOt with that attitude Mister.

Knowing that retaliation runs rampant in Del Norte County, the next best thing to find out what is going on with the Child Care Council is to write to the Board of Directors. It should be noted, the Child Care Council deleted two programs this past year without explanation and which caused much hardship to this community that depends on these programs.

The deleted much needed programs were Court Ordered Supervised Visits and the After school child care programs.

The letter that was generated by the board members had this to say regarding such programs and other things. It should be noted that the Smith River School was also affected by the after school child care program.

“It is with a heavy heart that the Del Norte Child Care Council (DNCCC) had to discontinue the supervised visitation program at this time. With recent staff turnover, we are not able to meet the requirements of the grant. As far as re-applying at a future date, that is something we will always consider. We want to make sure we operate with high fidelity and can produce quality services that work both for families and the employees to do their best work.

As far as your question to the closure of an after-school program; I am guessing you are referring to last year when the school district launched their free after-school childcare program. When this was offered at Redwood School 16 months ago, DNCCC was informed that our program was no longer needed. We are on good terms with the schools and are available to come back if funding changes or they can’t offer their afterschool program.

We would also like to take advantage of this opportunity to mention some of the new services and opportunities DNCCC has added recently. Our preschool site, Little School of the Redwoods, has completed a successful summer program where we were able to open up Classroom 2 for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. Little School of the Redwoods is operating at capacity and will be starting Fall Semester on September 6th. DNCCC has significantly increased our funding for the Wonder Bus, which has created several new event opportunities that we are now doing and scheduling. DNCCC is starting a brand-new Mommy & Me course this fall, which is just one example of many new community trainings and services we are offering this year.

As a board, we are dedicated to this community and want to offer quality programs that support our families.”