About Meskwaki Child Care

The facility will accommodate 76 children from six weeks to age five. It is set to open in early 2024.

While our early learning center is being established to address the child care needs of our Tribal citizens, child care services will be open to all Native children in the surrounding community as space allows. Tuition fees will be offered on a sliding fee scale to ensure that care is accessible and affordable to Tribal families and fees are estimated to be no more than 10% of household income, a national threshold for affordable care.

Program Highlights

Family Cultural Events: The recreation and early learning center will be built from a foundation of Meskwaki culture and tradition making it a prime location for hosting family cultural events. As the early learning center becomes operational, the staff will work with the Tribe and elders in the community to organize and host these family events. These events will be open to the community and promote intergenerational engagement and sharing.

Workshops for parents and their children: Most often parents don’t have time to stop and play with their children at drop off or pick up time. In many cases only one parent drops off and picks up the child so one parent rarely sees teachers and the facility. Workshops will allow parents and children to explore together and at the same time promote our program to potential families. This feature would generate additional income through community parenting workshops as well.

Food and Nutrition: Good nutrition practices are a vital component of children’s overall physical, dental, and cognitive development. Young children experience rapid growth in the first years of life, and therefore need adequate food intake to support their growth and energy needs. School-aged children exhibit a similar rapid growth rate and thus have a need for nutritious, energy-producing foods as well. The Child and Adult Care Food Program is a program of the United States Department of Agriculture designed to provide partial cash reimbursement for food costs to child care centers to assist them in meeting the nutritional needs of children. The Tribe will apply to administer the Child and Adult Food Care Program that is available to early childhood programs and to before- and after-school programs. In Iowa, staff at the Department of Education administers the program.

Teacher and Provider Education and Development: Establishing a regular, ongoing training system that promotes deeper, more meaningful engagement for teachers and providers will create an early care and education workforce prepared to educate young learners as well as their families. To do this, the Tribe will establish an internally-operated staff training program that occurs during the workday, eliminating the need for after hours and/or weekend trainings. The design of this approach is such that teachers will grow their knowledge in targeted areas over time, providing for a greater depth of knowledge than can be achieved in short, singular training sessions.

Parents Night Out Child Care: This provides an opportunity to parents and guardians to complete important responsibilities that are not conducive to having children or to spend some time building their own relationships or their relationships with individual children.

Meskwaki Language Immersion: In the future, the Tribe will explore incorporating language immersion programming in our early learning center.

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