Tia's after school program has been offered at Tam Valley Elementary for decades! This program and Tia are pillars in our community. TCSD is working to support this program as it evolves.

TCSD has had to make significant changes to Tia’s after school program. This program change was required after discussions with the School District in June. Specifically, the School District discussed the need for TCSD to demonstrate that the program can meet state requirements for aftercare programs and that a new MOU is required between the School District and TCSD.

Primary Objective

Honor the amazing program Tia has built and offered for generations of Tam Valley families.

Goals:

Keep the play-based program
Keep Tia with the kids
Affordable program accessible to all families

State and School District mandates we need to meet include:

Market Rate rent for the space
School age child to adult caregiver ratio of 1:14
Emergency card information on file and accessible by district
Staff CPR & First Aid trained
Staff vaccinations on record
Enrollment and weekly attendance records digitally filed and accessible

Changes to prepare for include:

Fees will need to increase to support staffing, rent and management of the program. All snacks will be provided. The goal is to keep the rates lower than most childcare offerings but given the low rates of the program historically, be prepared for an increase that may be up to 8 times the current rate of $5/day.

Registration will be online and will require a one month commitment minimum. Parents can choose to sign up for longer periods of time if they are comfortable with the commitment. A limited number of drop ins will be offered because it is very important to Tia that no child is turned away. However, we need to have a solid, committed base of families so that we can staff accordingly.

All families will need to be registered to use drop in. Please prepare to sign up even if you are not committing to a full schedule.

Background

TCSD has always supported this offering with Tia running all aspects of the program. Many of her procedures were based on historical practice. Unfortunately, times have changed and the school district is requiring more oversight and intervention. TCSD does not have the staffing to provide the infrastructure needed to run the program so the school district looked for partners that could take over the program. Unfortunately, most would have charged significantly more and not allowed Tia to continue to participate in the program. We are fortunate to have found a community partner who is already providing care to children in our community who may be able to expand to include a program at Tam Valley. Tia will be in her full role as childcare provider but have less back end work for billing and registration.

Working Together

It is important to note that while these changes are hard on everyone, the school district, TCSD and community partners are working together to find a solution and keep the program accessible to all families.

The school district has lowered the market rate rent for the first year to facilitate launching the program.
TCSD is not collecting any administration fees
TCSD is facilitating the implementation of an online registration system that will allow the new program to be compliant and require less staff time for administration.

The Way Forward

The partnership agreement and working with the school district to meet the compliance issues is taking some time. Our goal is to have a fully functioning program by late September/early October. We understand the difficulty this places on parents who need childcare and we are working as quickly as possible to launch a revised program to serve the families of our community that will be compliant with the School District and State Law requirements. We will share information as it becomes available, here on our website, in our newsletter and on social media.

The two letters below were distributed to the parents of children in the program.

Tia’s After School Program