Family Learning Center in Edwards set to close after 25 years unless it can find a new child care space
With its lease set to expire and nowhere to go, the nonprofit early child care provider announced it will close in August 2025
Family Learning Center/Courtesy Photo
Nearly six months after celebrating its 25th anniversary, the Family Learning Center in Edwards announced to parents and teachers that it would be closing in August 2025. After that time, the nonprofit child care provider will no longer have a space.
The Family Learning Center has rented its preschool center in Edwards from St. Clare of Assisi School and Parish for 24 years. According to Whitney Young, Family Learning Center’s executive director, the lease has been renewed in five-year increments with the most recent term set to expire in 2025.
“FLC has been, for the past five-plus years, really looking to try to find a new space. We’ve had a lot of different options kind of come up, and unfortunately, they didn’t end up working out. So in the month of March, we did learn that as of now, we’re going to be able to stay in the building here until August 2025,” Young said.
“Unfortunately, we just don’t have a location and a space to move to after that,” she said.
While the lease is set to expire in March 2025, Young shared that St. Clare has indicated that they can continue to use the space through August.
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Young said that without a solid plan past August 2025, the center wanted to provide families with as much early notice as possible to get onto other waitlists. So, on Thursday, March 28, the Family Learning Center shared the news with staff and families. It’s a hard hit for those who rely on the provider for care.
“It’s so sad and it’s so disappointing that yet another daycare is closing in an environment where we need more options for daycares, not less. It’s just really putting a strain on local families,” said Tim Drescher.
Drescher’s 20-month-old son has been enrolled at the Family Learning Center since February 2023. For the first six months of their son’s life, Drescher and his wife relied on an out-of-state nanny for care as they joined the many waitlists for early childhood care in the valley. Finally, an opening at the Family Learning Center became available.
“They’ve been a huge blessing for us,” Drescher said.
For the families and parents of the 88 kids that are currently enrolled at the Family Learning Center, the challenge of finding child care — particularly for infants — is one they understand acutely.
Carrie Eckenhoff — whose 2.5-year-old and 6-month-old kids are both enrolled at the Family Learning Center — said it took her family a year to find care for their oldest child.
“We were kind of in and out of nanny shares and piecing things together,” she said. “We were really grateful when we got into FLC, and then we had sibling priority for the younger one. And it’s been really nice having them both at the same place.”
For Eckenhoff and her husband, finally finding the right care provided great stability in their lives.
“It’s a relief to have good, reliable child care. We’re both working parents, and it allowed us to focus on work and feel comfortable that our kids were taken care of,” Eckenhoff said.
Drescher and his wife are now expecting their second child in May. The family was able to get him on the priority waitlist immediately when they found out they were expecting. It’s a process they’ll now have to start over should the Family Learning Center close.
“We’re just going to have to get into the so-called rat race with every other parent that has children you know that works locally in the valley. And the wait lists are just going to get longer and longer for everybody, is what it comes down to,” Drescher said.
Even with the advance notice, some of the parents are still concerned about finding care.
“It was really thoughtful the way that they shared with us with so much advance notice. We know we have a lot of time to figure something out. I’m just not 100% confident that we will have something figured out by then,” Eckenhoff said.
The Archdiocese of Denver, which oversees the school and parish, has had a $1 annual lease with the Family Learning Center for those 24 years, according to Kelly Clark, the director of PR and publications for the Archdiocese of Denver.
Clark added that the lease is “definitely a goodwill lease agreement for the benefit of the families in the Vail Valley.”
In a provided statement, Clark said “The Archdiocese of Denver is grateful to Eagle County for making preschool education a priority for families in the Vail Valley.”
“The lease is not up for renewal for another year and a half and discussions about its future would be premature at this time. We remain grateful to the Vail Valley Community and Family Learning Center for their partnership with us,” Clark added.
According to Young, the church and school “want the building back.”
“Ultimately, I guess they’re wanting to regain the space for the use of their school and their church programs as well,” she said. “It is their space, their building. They do have plans for it and to use it.”
Clark and the Archdiocese of Denver declined to provide any other details other than the statement at this time.
Searching for a location
Family Learning Center has been searching for a new location for the last four years, knowing that its lease was set to expire in 2025.
“Our biggest challenge is ultimately the land and the building. It’s just finding land that’s available for us to use, specifically, that’s between Edwards and Avon in the valley, that’s been our biggest challenge as well as the costs of renovations or doing a building,” Young said.
Even with sharing the news of closure with parents, the organization is not giving up its search for a space.
“Where we’re really focused right now is trying to keep our ears and eyes out there in the community to see what possibly pops up,” Young said.
This year, the Family Learning Center was awarded a nonprofit infrastructure grant from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs. Per the terms of the grant, the provider can only use the funding for capacity, not programs, so they used the funds to hire Robin Thompson, a nonprofit consultant.
Thompson is helping the organization to fundraise and create a strategic plan to try and stay in business.
“We still need to support the operation. We still need to get out there and fundraise and help people understand that we’re still here and there’s still kids here, and we still need to support them and their families,” Thompson said. ” We don’t want people to think that you know we don’t need to raise money, because we do.”
Young added that the goal is to “keep those doors open until the absolute last day that we possibly can and be providing the same quality care that day as we are today.”
Filling a ‘unique need’
Since its founding in 1998 — and establishment as a nonprofit in 2000 — the Family Learning Center has aimed to provide affordable care to those who need it the most, Young said.
“It just fills such a unique need in the valley. There are all different types of families, and I don’t know who is going to be able to fill that. I feel concerned for our community in that regard,” Eckenhoff said.
Overall, the school aims to have one-third of its students be enrolled with CCAP, one-third with Early Head Start and one-third as tuition-paying or using the school’s own sliding tuition scale based on need.
As of April 1, 2024, the Family Learning Center had 88 kids enrolled at the center. Of those, 45 children were enrolled in the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program, a state assistance program provided to low-income families. Eighteen of the kids are enrolled in Early Head Start, a federal assistance program for low-income families. The remaining 34 children are enrolled through tuition rates.
Family Learning Center is the only non-school district early child care provider in Eagle County that provides assistance through Early Head Start.
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Should Family Learning Center close, Cristina Betancourt Santos, Family Learning Center’s site director, said that the federal program is “planning on taking the Early Head Start active enrollment to the district if they have enough teachers to circumvent.”
“That’s the tentative plan right now,” Betancourt Santos added.
In addition to serving these high-need families, over 75% of the kids enrolled are English language learners, Young said. In recent years, the Family Learning Center has also worked to support bilingual educators in getting early childhood certification. Its teachers speak English and Spanish to all the children enrolled.
In this way, “our staff and our employees really reflect the culture and our population, so it feels like a family,” Betancourt Santos said.
“Families can see themselves in teachers and in us, while our culture and diversity still shines through,” she added.
“We lead and serve families in different socioeconomic households; and they are all receiving the same quality care, the same food program. They’re receiving breakfast, lunch, and snack each day that they’re here as well,” Young said.
Parents said they feel this care in the environment the Family Learning Center has created.
“The teachers there are great. You can really tell that they care,” Drescher said. “They really do care about the children. It’s just a really positive atmosphere and everything, and it’s just really sad to see it go.”
Because of this family environment, telling families and staff about the center’s potential shutdown, was “definitely an emotional experience,” Young said.
“There were certainly some tears shed,” she added.
“We have just really been able to create just a family-oriented kind of culture here and connection,” Young said. “I think families were really sad to hear that they might not be able to receive care from our location anymore. And they’d have to go some they’d have to find out new things. And then I think there was also a little bit of that fear of, ‘What are we going to do in a year and a half?'”
Jon Stevenson’s 2.5-year-old has been enrolled at the Family Learning Center since October 2022. Like many other parents, they were on multiple waiting lists for over a year before a spot opened at the school.
“If we did not have FLC, I don’t even know what we would’ve done,” he added.
Stevenson added that the experience at the Family Learning Center has been “phenomenal.”
“We love it. The teachers are super engaged with the child. They love them just like their own kids. The administrators have been phenomenal. We love the lunch program they have,” he said. “Our daughter has excelled since attending there. It’s just daily education and everything that the kids learn off each other, not just off the adults.”
The news of the school’s likely closure is not only a loss to his family but “it’s super sad for our community,” Stevenson said.
For the center itself, the next year and a half will be focused on looking for a new location as well as supporting its family and staff the best it can.
“Here in the building, we’re just going to make — whether this time is really until August 2025 or we find something else — we are focused on making this next year’s classes strong and amazing for all the families, all the kids, all the teachers,” Young said.
“We want to support the families, but we also want to support our employees into building their portfolio, building their educational background, building their experience. So when it’s time to part, they have other options in our community as teachers,” Betancourt Santos added.
While the school and families are being realistic and exploring additional options past next August, they are also hopeful that a new space or opportunity might become available to keep the nonprofit in operation.
“I’m hoping that by getting the word out that some opportunity arises for FLC to basically like survive somehow after 25 years of being a stable nonprofit in this valley,” Drescher said.
