Program focused on helping high school students who might consider a child care career

MASON CITY — Bringing new people into the child care workforce is one of the goals of the Cerro Gordo Child Care Works coalition as part of their effort to make sure every child in the county has access to reliable child care.

Mason City Community School District assistant superintendent Bridgette Exman Dunn says they want to help high school students who might want to consider child care as a career in the future or while they are still in school. “High school students are in a particular employment category or employee category where they can really be a low wage worker. They don’t need to pay for their core living expenses. They are getting work experience. Often we’ve got some of these relatively low wage jobs that have some pretty significant barriers to enter, and I would say child care is one of those. It’s similar to lifeguarding. There’s a lot of money up front, a lot of time and training up front, and it can be a barrier.”

Exman Dunn says they were able to help formulate a plan to offer a course that properly trains those interested in child care.  “We sat down with NIACC and Iowa Child Care Resource and Referral, and literally in an hour, we had built a  non-credit program for our students, our high school students who wanted to do this. We were able to build it into our Wednesday schedule, so they could do it completely on school time, completely supported by school staff, NIACC staff and Child Care Resource and Referral staff, and at no cost to them. They didn’t have to pay for any of the background check, any of the courses, including some NIACC courses that they were able to take.”

Exman Dunn says they are able to coordinate with some of the child care centers to help with transportation for high school-aged workers. “Additionally for some of our students, the opportunity  to work in a child care center removes another barrier for them because some of our students don’t have transportation. Their parents didn’t give them a car, and they’re trying to make enough money to buy their first car, which gives them access to a whole lot of other opportunities. The great thing about our child care centers is that we already have school buses that arrive to all of those centers in the middle of the day, at the end of the day, We can work with students  to help them with transportation to their job.”

Exman Dunn says 14 students completed the initial round of the program