No one has a solution for the serious shortage of preschools in San Miguel County.
A countywide task force recently was formed to try to figure out what to do about the ratio of children to facilities available, said Megan Berry, director of the Rockies Afterschool Program.
“There’s been such a child boom, more people having kids, and I just don’t know if the town (of Telluride) projected well enough about what was going to happen,” Perry said. “The schools are becoming full, and we’re trying to figure out a place to build to expand the elementary schools and all the preschools have waiting lists.”
Even if Telluride and the county had known there would be so many children born in the past few years, there would have been little officials could do to add more slots, she said.
“It’s hard to start up a preschool with the pricing of real estate,” Berry said. “Even if they use space in town, the amount to rent or buy is really high.”
Berry said the task force has met a few times and is in the process of gathering statistics as to the actual need and is seeking outside help.
“Summit County had a task force and went through the same process, so we have their facilitator coming to meet with us,” she said.
Having no place for children under school age is hard on working parents, said Allan Gerstle, a member of the task force and director of Social Services for Ouray and San Miguel counties.
“Scores of children are on the waiting lists,” Gerstle said. “If someone were to move into town today with a good job and had a child of preschool age, they couldn’t get their child into any child care center. That’s a given.”
There are about a dozen licensed child care centers in the county, Gerstle said, and there’s no way to force them to expand.
“Each one has a capacity issue based on the real estate,” he said. “Even though the need is there, do they want to expand or are they happy serving the number of kids they’re already serving? They also have staffing issues, and every one of them have to compete for employees with everybody else.”