EASTER SEALS CENTER TO CLOSE

Planned closing of the Easter Seals Child Development Center in Cape Girardeau has parents scrambling for other child-care arrangements and some school districts pondering how they will provide services for special-needs students.

Parents were told when they dropped their children off at the center Friday morning that Easter Seals Missouri had decided to close the Cape Girardeau center on March 10. The center serves children ages 6 weeks to 8 years old with and without disabilities.

"We've got two weeks to find other care, and it took me longer than that to find a place the first time," said Jennifer Singleton, whose 1-year-old son just moved into the toddler class at the center.

She said she called numerous child-care services when she was getting ready to return to work after her son, who is not disabled, was born but found few licensed child-care services that accepted infants.

After calling around on Friday, Singleton thinks she may have found another child-care provider for her son. But she said she worries about the adjustments her son will have to make, and she will miss the excellent care he received at Easter Seals, which focused on development and education.

The closing will be difficult for parents, said Jerry Ehnes, Easter Seals Missouri vice president, who was in Cape Girardeau on Friday. But declining enrollment at the center had created an increasing deficit that the state Easter Seals office in St. Louis felt was growing too large, he said.

To help ease the transition for parents, Ehnes said a parent night has been set for 6 to 8 Wednesday. Representatives of other child-care facilities will set up booths so parents can find alternative arrangements to fit their children, he said.

For children with special needs, a qualified staff member will help parents for as long as it takes to find a qualified program, Ehnes said.

"We're committed to helping these families find other care for their children," Ehnes said.

However, Sharon Van De Ven, the parent of a 6-year-old daughter with Down's syndrome who has had been in Easter Seals programs since she was 3 months old, worries that programs like those at Easter Seals just aren't out there.

"I think Katie will be OK," said Van De Ven, although she is unsure where she will place her daughter until she begins kindergarten next fall. "But I feel for the babies and their moms and dads who won't get the benefit of Easter Seals that we've gotten the last five and one-half years."

Van De Ven said her daughter has blossomed in the inclusive atmosphere the Easter Seals center provides. "The disabled and the non-disabled benefit so much from being around each other," she said. And programs like Easter Seals provide support for parents that is hard to find elsewhere, she said.

Van De Ven said it is frustrating that just as the center got a great staff hired and things were beginning to fall into place, state Easter Seals officials decided to close the center.

Ehnes said he understands the frustration parents feel, but Easter Seals Missouri had done everything it could to boost enrollment to no avail.

The center opened in 1998 intending to serve children with and without disabilities. Due to educational policy changes and changes in law, state administrators say, many school districts that previously contracted with Easter Seals now operate their own programs for children with special needs.

Ehnes said enrollment was down to 33 percent of the center's licensed capacity of 109 full-time students. There are about 50 children enrolled at the center, but because some of those students attend only part time, enrollment is equivalent to 34 to 35 full-time students, Ehnes said. Nine of those children has special needs.

Enrollment of children ages 3 to 5 with disabilities has dropped significantly, state administrators said, while enrollment of other children with and without disabilities has also declined.

"If we had just been able to maintain a stable enrollment, that would have been a positive sign," Ehnes said. But the decrease in tuition and grant money the declining enrollment brought kept pushing up the deficit.

"We have to remain fiscally responsible to our donors," he said in explaining the decision that he termed "extremely difficult to make."

"When Easter Seals goes into activities, we don't expect to operate at a profit or even break even," Ehnes said. "But loses should be manageable, and the loses here are not manageable."

Ehnes said the same marketing plan has been used for the centers in Cape Girardeau and Columbia. The enrollment in Columbia has increased. The plan at both centers included setting up partnerships with community organizations and working with school districts and Head Start.

Ehnes said the state office had tried but was unable to assess why the Columbia program was gaining students while the Cape Girardeau center was losing them.

Three school districts, Woodland, Leopold and Nell Holcomb, contracted with the Easter Seals center to provide services for special-needs students.

Jack Mann, principal and director of special services at Nell Holcomb School, said the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade district is small and doesn't have the special-needs population to warrant implementing its own early childhood special-needs program.

"The most special-needs students we've had was three, and some years we don't have any," said Mann. He said this year the district has two students for which it was contracting services with the Easter Seals center. Mann said he is confident he can make adequate arrangements. Still, he expressed disappointed that the center was closing.

Ehnes said the closing means there will be no Easter Seals office or services offered in Cape Girardeau since all the services were funneled through the center.

"We will evaluate what the community needs in terms of what we can provide," Ehnes said. No time frame has been set for that evaluation, he said.

Dan Seger's son, who is in the 4-year-old class at the Easter Seals center, isn't a special-needs student. So Seger doesn't think he will have problems finding other child-care arrangements for his son. But Seger doubts he can find arrangements he will be as happy with as he found at Easter Seals.

Seger said the integration of children with and without disabilities drew him and his wife to the center.

"It's taught them to look at all children with the same eyes," said Seger, whose 5-year-old daughter also went to the center before entering kindergarten in August.

Seger said he paid $85 per week for his son to attend the center. "You can find cheaper places, but not with the quality of staff they have there," he said.

Seger said he is concerned about the impact this will have on students like a vision-impaired child in his son's class. "He has just blossomed since he's been at the center," Seger said. "I'm afraid children like that are going to suffer from a financial decision made by someone who knows nothing about what's going on here."

Van De Ven is also worries about the impact the closing will have on children, especially the special-needs children.

"It's going to be kids who are supposed to benefit the most from Easter Seals who are going to suffer the most from this closing," she said.