Today we’d like to introduce you to Richard Dean.
Hi Richard, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Twenty years ago a few members of the UU congregation of Columbia at the Owen Brown Interfaith Center saw the possibility of starting up a daycare and preschool in our space to serve the community as part of our outreach efforts. We appreciated that childcare was such a key resource for families, 2 income families, and single parent families. Quality Child care is in short supply in America, and what is available is expensive and often poor quality. For-profit centers offer minimum wage salaries, few benefits and a challenging work environment.
We realized how critical quality child care and preschool is to the key to the success of children. Data from the Perry Report shows that just 2 years of quality preschool significantly improved the lifetime success in terms of college entrance, home ownership, prison, unemployment and other measures. We realized that children develop 90% of everything they will ever know and most of their social skills in ages 3-5 years. Many kids fail kindergarten! They are not prepared with the knowledge and social skills they need.. They face failure, act out and become the troubled kids we see in elementary through high school. We thought there could be a better way.
We developed the Cradlerock Children’s Center, a non-profit model for our center to address the challenge of delivering quality care. We built this on three foundational principles
1. Quality in programming and care is at the core of our center and never compromised,
2, Our staff work in a supportive environment and a living wage with essential benefits live health care, sick leave, and retirement packages,
3. Support to the community with scholarships for challenged families
Our beginnings were exciting and challenging. This was difficult and expensive. Child care regulation are daunting. Competition for enrollment is competitive. Finding good staff is difficult. The excitement of the early days saw 100 volunteers working over 100 days to renovate our space in preparation for the startup. This was followed by the sobering reality of operating a startup center. We needed to find capital to support losses for the first few years.
We managed to survive and over time we got better at finding good people and building on Success. Amanda Morton became our guiding light. Working first as a volunteer, then as our administrator, then as director, and now as our executive director, she embraced our mission and crafted a staff and program that has brought us to where we are today. We are arguably the best center in Howard County. We are at capacity with 90 children, and have a waiting list for 90 more. Our tuition is about 20% less than for profit centers. We pay our staff 30% more than the Maryland average. By those measures we both serve our mission and satisfy our core principles!
We are celebrating our 20th year anniversary this Month. This brings with it a new vision and new challenges. We envision and expansion in size and in scope. We plan to move into an expanded facility that will improve our services and expand our enrollment. We are also reaching out to share our non-profit model with others who would take up this hard work. We have already helped centers and are engaged in new startups who share our vision and need our support.
I have been involved with Cradlerock from the very beginning. I have served a President of the Board of Directors from the outset. Early on, I did everything from renovation to child care. Now I help provide strategic review and direction. Every day, I count Cradlerock as a blessing in my life.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Cradlerock struggled in the first few years. WE underestimates the losses we would incur as we built the program and enrollment. We did not appreciate the personnel management issues. We had a management kerfuffle and had several staff resign. I can remember filling in for missing staff. I would open at 7am and leave for work at 9am. Then I would return at 4pm to help close at 6pm and find my way home to collapse. Finding good Directors, and building a culture of quality and mutual support took time, but it finally came.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am an engineer. Most people would see that as being a nerd. Yeah, that fits me. But my larger skill has always been as a problem solver. Working at NSA, I helped build systems to solve challenging national security problems. As a volunteer, I could see people and processes with an engineer’s perspective and learned to build these systems as well. Often my volunteer work gave me leadership opportunities I never got in my job. At Cradlerock I got the chance to build a complex structure that organized volunteers and staff, delivered critical children’s programs, worked within the constraints if county regulations, and had to compete with other centers and break even financially. This personal and professional development helped me grow and flourish in both environments.
I am in my second career at Morgan State University where I teach Electrical Engineering. A great opportunity for me to prepare young people in Baltimore to for a career in engineering.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
Cradlerock is a success story we want to share with our community and beyond. We are happy to share our experience and our program with like minded people who want to replicate what we do. We have begun that. When people see that challenge of quality child care and pre-school and want to make a difference, we stand ready to help you on this journey and perhaps avoid the pitfalls we experienced. We are like franchise for non-profits – without the overhead.
Pricing:
- Our Monthly rate 3’s, 4’s $1470
- Avg Others rate 3’s, 4’s $1954
- Our Avg Hourly wage $20.03
- Avg Hourly wage for MD $15.51
Contact Info:
- Website: https://cradlerockcenter.org/
