Gov. Kim Reynolds talks improving child care in Waterloo stop

WATERLOO - The Iowa governor and lieutenant governor toured one of Waterloo's newest child care centers, looking for ways to help expand child care access across the state in the wake of a new task force studying the issue.

Gov. Kim Reynolds and Lt. Gov. Adam Gregg stopped at It Takes a Village in Waterloo, which offers 24-hour child care for up to 105 children.

The center partners with Friendship Village, a long-term care center across the street, for everything from its meals to fundraising for its outdoor playground equipment, co-director Susie Schaefer said during the tour.

'You're pretty lucky,” Reynolds told a classroom of children during the tour. 'This is really nice.”

Before COVID-19, Friendship Village residents would stop over for activities with the children.

'A big part of our day care is our residents,” Schaefer said. 'It has been a real experience for all of us to be able to share that.”

But it was business partnerships that helped get the center off the ground, said Lisa Gates, Friendship Village president and CEO.

'We've had a tremendous amount of public support as we built this,” Gates said, noting the foundations that chipped in.

'I think that's the key component that we're picking up,” Reynolds said. 'It really does take a lot of community coming together.”

The center, built in 2019, is also one of the success stories for the Black Hawk County Child Care Coalition, which has tackled the problem of too few child care providers in the Cedar Valley.

'Five years ago, six years ago, we really saw a struggle within this community for funding for our child care programs,” said Mary Janssen, children and family services director at Child Care Resource and Referral of Northeast Iowa. 'So we flipped it to be a community conversation.”

That conversation, the leaders told Reynolds after the tour, led to the Coalition, which began conversations with business owners on workforce recruitment and retention and led to a greater awareness about child care.

'It's going to take leaders like that in other communities that say, ‘We're going to do this,' ” said Dan Levi, who helps lead the coalition. 'This is a benefit.”

Reynolds has been touring child care centers around the state in the wake of her new child care task force and $13 million in new state funding to assist child care expansion projects.

She said the Waterloo center, and the partnerships that led to it, could be a model for others in Iowa.

'You need to find those leaders in each community that really want to embrace this and really want to make it work, and then get the right people around the table to continue to move it forward,” she said.

'And then I want (the state) to be a partner to that. I want to figure out where can we be helpful, where can we provide you the information that you need to keep moving forward and to make that vision a reality.”