LCC picks up $250,000 daycare grant

LAUREL — The building blocks for a new daycare center are starting to stack up and take shape.

Laurel-Concord-Coleridge Superintendent Jeremy Christiansen reported that he was successful in receiving a $250,000 Child Care Capacity Building Opportunity grant.

The new center will be named Building Blocks Early Childhood and Family Development Center. But beyond the name, Christiansen said it was too early to share other details. Keith Knudsen, also involved in the project, declined to comment further.

In his report to the school board at its regular meeting last week, Christiansen said he recently attended a Cedar County Community for Kids meeting with other partners working on the childcare initiative. At that meeting, representatives discussed additional partnership and support opportunities.

Additional grant applications are being developed for the new childcare along with consultation with designers, engineers and contractors.

Christiansen said he’s working on developing an interlocal agreement between LCC and Building Blocks for board consideration.

“We will know much more to share in a couple of months,” Christiansen said.

In other school news, the board approved a five-cent increase in school meals for adults and students, including breakfast and lunch, for next year.

The increase is similar to those made over the last several years, Christiansen said, and does not cover food program costs with food prices increasing 15 to 25 percent over.

“While the increase in meal costs to families helps to offset those ongoing increases to program costs, the meal program still must be subsidized by the school district,” he said. “Each year the district typically budgets around $100,000 to support the meal program.” For the 2023-24 academic year, students in kindergarten through fourth grade can eat breakfast for $2.25 and lunch for $3; students in fifth through 12th grades, breakfast $2.35 and lunch $3.15. Adults can eat breakfast for $3.45 and lunch for $4.45.

Christiansen also reported on construction progress at the new school facility with delays due to asbestos removal.

He said asbestos removal was estimated to take five days but instead took about 19 days with the removal of ceiling structure in the hallways outside the former math classrooms, kitchen and Legacy Gym areas.

The delay won’t affect the project schedule to open the high sch ool on time for the start of classes in August.

For the elementary renovation and new construction phase, the asbestos removal has resulted in an adjustment of about two weeks with a substantial completion date set in early January 2024, Christiansen said.