In East Dayton, children attend the Twin Towers Head Start program in the Lincoln Hills neighborhood. Soon, they will move around the corner and up the hill into the new Lincoln Hill Early Learning Center — a state-of-the-art facility. It will accommodate 250 students and be operated by Miami Valley Child Development Centers.
Berta Velilla, the president and CEO of the nonprofit said, “The zip codes that are part of the East Dayton community, the level of poverty, the level of individuals who don't have jobs or full time jobs is pretty high."
The new center will be at the corner of Nassau Street and Demphle Avenue. It will feature 14 classrooms for infants, toddlers and preschoolers, a fully equipped kitchen, internal play area, technology throughout and space for family programs.
“We know that the human brain develops faster in the first five years. So providing strong opportunities to learn and to acquire skills to be healthy, you know, to be equipped with what is needed to learn during this age is so important,” Velilla explained. This new facility will enable MVCDC to vacate older facilities.
Lead Teacher Rhonda Howard is thrilled about the new building and says it will give her team more space and resources to work with their students.
“A nice building space for the children, to do gross motor activities, space to do indoor activities when the weather's not permitting green space gardening and just for the parents to have space for them to come and train,” Howard said.
Children will also learn about healthy nutrition and gardening at the urban farm next door. It’s operated by Missions of Mary.
The national office of Head Start awarded a $9 million grant to the Miami Valley Child Development Centers for this new building project. The nonprofit is partnering with the City of Dayton and numerous community groups to make the project happen. During the groundbreaking — about a dozen children wore hard hats joined adults from MVCDC and its partners, they all grabbed shovels and turned dirt.
Scott Siegfried is chief innovation officer at MVCDC. He said ten years ago their group visited the Harlem Children's Zone in New York. Afterward they returned inspired to create similar community partnerships to help low-income families here in our area.
“We noted that this area here, where we're standing right now, is really starved. It's really a child care desert, there isn't much for preschoolers and certainly even less for infants and toddlers,” Siegfried said. “We knew from all of that demographic research that we had to have something here. And we need to do it in harmony and partnership with the community, with the partners that really contribute to the lives around us.”
The center will cost an estimated $12 million and is expected to open early 2025.
