Hour Kids has been well received in the community since we opened over three years ago. We have even won the esteemed "Emerging Business of 2019" award from Minnesota Women's Venture. We have steadily grown each year and have had several children age up from our infant room into our Preschool room, most recently, we have officially sent three groups of Kindergarten-ready children off to Kinder!
Since we have opened we have remodeled, renovated, and invested tens of thousands of dollars back into to our program. We've prioritized new equipment, toys, staff development, increased compensation and bonuses, and raised our health, safety and general cleanliness standards. We have added a new classroom, earned our Parent Aware stars and began our national accreditation process. Additionally, our owner has returned to graduate school for a shiny new MBA and several of our long-term staff have been promoted into leadership roles (and are also back in school). Suffice to say- we've been a busy bunch! Covid or not, our mission remains the same: to provide high quality childcare and learning experiences for all families that use our services, whether that's full-time, part-time or one-time.
With all growth comes change. Our most recent change has been positive, we are adding more families and more children to our roster each week. We've been very lucky and proactive to keep COVID outbreaks from happening and our children and families have been so supportive and kind throughout COVID. We are so fortunate to have such wonderful parents supporting us, backing us and even sending us tokens of appreciation from kind emails, to morning treats. Relationships with parents are just as important as our relationships with their children. What has helped more than that has been their respect for our profession and respect for us as caregivers. Things are great and we look forward to Fall.
Some additional updates:
*We no longer provide Saturday care, the utilization has been too low for that to be a sustainable option for us. We apologize to anyone that affects.
*We are bringing back catering now that enrollment is picking back up!
*We will officially welcome Marneka as our NEW DIRECTOR as of 9/1/2021.
*Additionally, our longest-term staff member Katie, will become our new Assistant Director!
*We have started being able to take our children on field trips and have several coming up between now and October! So far we have visited Cliff Fen park, and have the Works museum, Rockin' Jump, the MN ZOO and Chutes and Ladders on our agenda.
*We had our annual licensing inspection and only got two minor corrections; one for forgetting to note a crib was "no longer in service" on a form, and one for a staff member being a credit shy of what she needed (a course that we thought counted no longer did). Of all the 400+ items they check for, only getting two minor write-ups, is a bummer, but is also a learning experience- we'll take it.
*We have officially begun our search for a second location. Yay!
*We are seeking new staff, if you know anyone that may be a good fit, please send them our way!
That's it for now. Stay safe, stay healthy and please choose kindness even when the rest is hard.
-Krissy
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