Dear Board Members, my name is Brian Faga. I would like to highlight some opportunities for how the infant/toddler program can be more efficiently managed.

Waitlist Management

There are extremely long waitlists but the program is not full. Several people have even been discouraged from getting on waitlists due to the length, so the waitlist is an underrepresentation of the interest in these programs. This is a lot of missed revenue.

Classroom Planning

Classrooms are not filled — expanding to 12 infant/toddlers per class would maximize revenue relative to administrative costs. The classrooms at Bloomin' East and West have 3 teachers per class, with 2 being present at a time, for a total of only 8 students.

In 2023/2024 at Bloomin’ East the infant/toddler class had 11 students, then it was reduced to 9 the following year, and this year it is only 7. Prior to the new school supervisor, there was a part time position for a teacher to work 12pm-5:30pm to meet the ratios. Currently, this position is full time. This is an obvious loss of revenue.

A new young toddler class was just opened - furniture brought in, teachers hired and this will now be a waste of tax payer dollars.

The administration hired full time teachers even though they didn’t have any specific classroom placements. In some classrooms the number of teacher absences due to illness or other factors is quite high — temporary staff members could address these needs.

During Summer, some of the classrooms were overstaffed and teachers were paid just to meet full time requirements. Staff should be given prior notice that summer work hours may be reduced according to the necessity of the classroom.

The 2's and 3s classrooms at East are also operating at a deficit. This shows it's not the 1:4 infant ratio that's the problem, but rather, the district's management of the program. If the Infant and Toddler programs are cut without addressing these issues, what’s to stop the same thing from happening to the 2s and 3s next?

Bloomin’ East just moved into a new location but half the classrooms were left vacant. The reason given by the administration is that there wasn’t enough teacher talent. According to recruiters, this isn’t the case. Perhaps the marketing of teacher positions needs to be improved. There seem to be poor staffing and recruitment efforts across the board.

Bloomin West Summer Care was shut down, despite it being sold out every year previously. This forced families to an hour round-trip commute each way and/or hire a nanny.

Mismanagement of simple things - right now there are sibling discounts on an infant rather than the preschooler (standard business practice is to discount the less expensive child's tuition).

Administrative bottleneck

It seems like the wait list and classroom selection are a manual process. Compared to private alternatives, effective use of technology could cut these costs and allow the program to scale up.

Communicaton/Timing

Communication/Timing regarding things like Summer Care are often communicated last-minute after other options have closed. Cranbrook's summer program registration is in December. Roeper's is in January. At Bloomin’ the summer registration got pushed to April, twice. Many families are forced to choose other options as availability is limited. Communication about waitlist position and wait estimation is also lacking — wait times can be as much as 2 years or as little as 6mo and don’t seem to correlate with position on the list. This forces families to look elsewhere.

Administrators at East are not doing a good job of communicating program dates, the waitlist etc with West.

Summary

In short, the school district's poor program management drove the finances into a deficit. This can all be fixed with better program management, improvements to manual administrative processes, eg. using technology to automate things like waitlist management and position notifications, classroom planning and registration, etc.