Starting next school year, a day care will open on school grounds for all Tomball ISD employees.

“We want to provide a place for staff members to bring their kids within the district,” Director of Career and Technical Education, Jessica Ozuna said.

The day care will open the first day that teachers come back for their staff development in August until the last day that teachers work which is in May. However, the days that the day care opens and closes will vary from year to year.

“It would be really interesting to see if this saves [staff members] money,” Assistant Principal Russell Evans said.

Construction will start in May, with some of the classes in the CTE building being moved to the end of the hallway in the Star Academy upstairs for the final few days of school.

For parents who work, paying a day care every day can become quite a problem due to the fact that it can be extremely expensive, as it may cost up to $40 per day.

“I think it will be very beneficial not only for convenience but also for cost and I will also say for quality of education because parents can pay anywhere from $600 to $1,200 per child in other daycares,” Evans said.

The teachers at the daycare will be degreed professionals and it will be licensed by the state so it’ll be a licensed child care center where the kids will have the chance to learn.

“And we also wanted to help our little ones be more prepared for kindergarten whenever they get there. So as part of it we are going to help them learn as much as they can before they get to kindergarten,” Ozuna said.

The daycare will not only help educate the children at the day care but it will also benefit students who are wanting to become future teachers by giving them the experience they need with working with kids.

“In addition to that, we wanted to provide a place for our future teachers to learn and observe and get experience with this practice in early childhood education,” Ozuna said.

Students in the TAFE program will have the chance to work one on one with children 3 to 4 years of age. This way they will get a hands on experience and learn about working with children as well.

“People who bring their kids, they’re not going to have to pay for weeks that we’re closed like Spring Break and Thanksgiving and Christmas. If they send their kids to an outside center they usually have to pay for that even if they don’t go,” Ozuna said.

However, the daycare will be placed on school grounds, on the CATE building which means that those clases will have to be moved inside.

“So I think what going to happen is those classes will be moved back inside and I think there’s still a small portion of the upstairs that will be utilized for certain classes,” Evans said.

Evans says that he is excited to have the future day care so close and that he has already signed up his children.

“We know that child care can be a stresser for parents sometimes and so we wanted to try and help out with whatever we could,” Ozuna said.