Nebraska nonprofit addressing rural child care shortage
'Originally about three years ago, I actually went to my employer. I had lost my child care due to them changing careers, so I was looking for child care,' said Megan Pippitt, board president at Building Block Early Childhood & Family Development Center in Laurel. 'At the time, I had an infant and a toddler, which, finding one spot would have been probably okay, but finding two spots was very, very difficult.'
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According to a 2020 study from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, 58% of working parents left their job after struggling to find child care that fit their needs. While Pippitt was able to find child care with help from her family, they, like many others, had to drive out of town to drop their kids off.
'For me, for instance, I was traveling 15 miles,' Pippitt said. 'There are two providers 15 miles from us, and then another provider 20 to 25 miles from us. That's pretty basic, but there are people who are traveling even farther based on where they're working and convenience of drop-off and things like that.'
Not long after, the Building Block Early Childhood & Family Development Center was created, officially opening its doors on Jan. 27 of this year. Building Blocks takes in kids as young as six weeks to as old as 13, separating them into four different classrooms.
'Every classroom is based off of age,' center director Amanda Christensen said. 'So in the infant room, we focus really on the fine motor skills, you know, the crawling. The toddler stage where we focus a lot on the social emotional skills, the learning how to play, the interacting and then the preschool. That is a lot of preparing them for kindergarten.'
Building Blocks is already seeing plenty of interest from the Laurel community.
'Right now, we have a capacity of 70 children,' Pippitt said.
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'We roughly have about 25 kiddos,' Christensen said. 'We do have a wait list, our numbers are growing quickly, so we have a wait list for the infant room and the toddler room at the moment. And we are currently in the process of hiring two infant teachers.'
Once Building Blocks has more staff, officials expect to fill up spots fast.
'So it was super important to find land and purchase enough where we could expand because we do expect to grow,' Pippitt said.
Building Blocks will hold a ribbon cutting and open house on March 31. Officials encourage families to check out the facilities.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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