North Greene in-house daycare program moving right along

By Editor | April 22, 2025 |

By Carmen Ensinger

Everyone has heard of the old saying “build it and they will come.” Well the idea behind North Greene’s in-house daycare for its teachers and staff is “build it and they will stay.”
The whole idea behind putting a daycare center in the former White Hall Elementary building which also houses the District Office, Bright Futures and the Alternative School, was to allow staff with young children an affordable place to take their children in hopes of keeping them employed with the district.
The daycare isn’t free to the staff, but they do receive a discounted rate for being an employee of the district.
And while the daycare isn’t for all children, just those of staff, it still has to meet State and Department of Children and Family Services requirements.
Superintendent Jackie Kuchy has been working since the beginning of the year to get things squared away in these areas to allow the daycare ready to be opened by the beginning of next school year.
“We turned in our application and the DCFS gal came down yesterday about the missing components of our application,” Kuchy said. “She is being very proactive in helping us work through all of this. As soon as we get all the pieces together we will start doing the background checks. All of our employees are already in the system, but a lot of them, like myself, have never been fingerprinted. She seems confident that she can help us so I feel a lot better.”
Kuchy, along with Greenfield Superintendent Andy Stumpf and Carrollton Superintendent Jason Bauer, went to a shared partner insurance presentation regarding self-funding with a captive.
What is a captive you might ask? A captive is an insurance arrangement that lets one pool their resources with others. In this case, North Greene could pool their employees with employees from Greenfield and maybe other districts who might want to join in. This would help them get better quality coverage at lower prices.
In theory, switching to a group captive health plan as part of a self-funding approach can help keep costs down and gives more control.
“With this, you are not impacted by others and their loss ratio,” Kuchy said. “But the problem is, you are putting your own money up, which is your cushion and that cushion is gone if your claims exceed that. It is a new concept that is working in other places. I don’t know if anyone is interested but a couple of us went to listen to it.”
The Greene County Health Department is working on getting a grant through the Illinois Department of Public Health to set up a school based health center in the North Greene School District.
“They are in the initial planning stages of this and it will take around $100,000 to get it all set up,” Kuchy said. “You would have medical and professional services and be able to conduct appointments in house and that would expand as you move on to other sorts of services because of funding increases. Molly Peters is working on that and keeps me posted.”
Also in the area of grants, Kuchy said they received an $18,000 grant for equipment. However, someone is questioning how those funds are going to be allocated.
The district applied for a grant from the Tracy Family Foundation for The Nook and while they haven’t received a “yes” or “no” as to the request for the grant, they did get a response from them
“Someone from the Tracy Foundation wants to come and do a site visit and see the space and hear more about our plans,” Kuchy said. “So, it is not a ‘no’ and not a ‘yes’ so we will wait to hear when they are coming to visit. We did get some money to purchase a commercial washer and dryer however.”
They were also made aware they could apply for a grant for up to $5,000 for summer school for teachers and bus drivers.
A new mandate came out from the Federal Government regarding those districts who spent more than $1 million on their buildings using ESSER funds.
“Because we spent more than $1 million on each of our buildings, we now have to file this report each year for the next 15 years,” Kuchy said. “We also had to file a report with the county assessor which they don’t know what to do with either. Apparently for the next 15 years we will be reporting on this. They now believe they have an interest in our facilities.”
Following a reorganization of the board, all officers stayed in their current positions. Cale Hoesman will stay Board Chairman and Rachelle Malin will remain Vice Chairman. Rhonda Lawson will remain Board Secretary.
There is one change, however, beginning in July, meeting time will change to 6 p.m. on the third Wednesday of the month instead of 7 p.m. The May and June meetings will still be at 7 p.m.