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Children who attend the Smith Child Development Center will soon be receiving care at the Wetzel CDC while the other center is renovated.
The move to Wetzel begins in October and the project is going to last about 120 days. During that time, the children and staff from the Smith CDC will move to the Wetzel CDC.
“We’re going to do it very carefully, very slowly, one classroom at a time. We’ll start with our pre-school age kids. They’ll have their last day at Smith on the last day of September and start at Wetzel the first of October. The following week we’ll do the toddlers and the week after that we’ll do the infants,” said Jason Etchell, Baumholder Child, Youth and Schools Services coordinator.
The children will be staying primarily with their same group and they’ll have the same staff. They will receive the same care at the same times they’re used to and at the same prices. They’re just going to be temporarily at the Wetzel CDC.
Parents will still be responsible for transporting their children, however, kindergarten children attending Smith Elementary will be able to ride the daily bus with the school age children from Smith Elementary to the Wetzel CDC.
“The bus will drop them off right outside the doors of the Wetzel CDC where a staff member will greet them,” Etchell said.
There are actually renovation plans for the Smith, Wetzel and dispensary CDCs, which have been closed for a couple of years.
“A renovation design is complete, so we expect the dispensary CDC to be renovated as well,” Etchell said. “The first step is to renovate Smith CDC, and we expect that to begin at the end of this October.”
Renovation will be only to the interior of the building and has nothing to do with the exterior. It will include new flooring, new paneled walls and a new ceiling. The facility’s Internet service will also be improved.
“There will be better child facilities — toys and things. A couple of the walls will be removed to make child supervision easier, so we’re really excited about that,” Etchell said. “We know this is going to be an inconvenience for the families, especially those from Smith who are going to be displaced for several months, but we’re excited about it because this is really going to beautify the inside of the facility and help us provide the quality programs that I think the people we serve deserve.”
