THE FOLLOWING IS A NEWS-GAZETTE STORY BY JENNIFER BAILEY
ABOVE: Melissa Hollingsworth, director of Danville Area Community College Child Development Center.
DANVILLE — Melissa Hollingsworth, director of Danville Area Community College’s Child Development Center for the past two years, has a unique perspective on the facility, having spent much of her life at it in one form or another.
As a child, she attended programs at the center. After she aged out of those programs, she began volunteering there instead. She worked at the center while attending DACC, and after becoming qualified as a teacher, she began working in that capacity. Eventually, she worked her way up to assistant director, and in 2022, director.
So when she voices concerns about finding sufficient staff and returning to full classrooms, you know she’s speaking from the heart.
The Child Development Center is a state-licensed preschool program serving children ages 15 months through 5 years and school-age children 6 to 12 years old. The Department of Children and Family Services regulates the services provided to make sure they meet standards for staffing, discipline, health, safety, curriculum and more.
It’s licensed for 77 children, but right now, it has 36 during the school year.
Only two classrooms are open — a 2- to 3-year-old classroom and a 3- to 5-year-old classroom — despite having four rooms available.
Each classroom is staffed by a head teacher and a teacher’s aide.
According to DCFS requirements, because she as the director has to go to the classrooms, the center can’t have more than 50 children. When Hollingsworth was director her first year, she also was the teacher for the 2-year-olds’ class, because she didn’t have enough staff.
It helps that the Child Development Center serves as a lab for DACC students majoring in early childhood education, elementary education and nursing programs. For instance, Hollingsworth said, the center previously had about 16 students at a time serving as aides. It has seven right now and will have eight this fall for the two classrooms.
But many of the DACC students seeking an early childhood degree already have home daycares or already have jobs and need the degree to fulfill their previous employments, she said.
Finding head teachers is difficult right now, and it’s everywhere, she added.
“COVID wiped out a lot of people from education,” she said.
One of the complications for hiring is that, through the years, the center has moved toward more quality child care.
“The state has a program called Accelerate Illinois which looks at quality childcare,” she said. “So, they bring external people in to evaluate our environment, the interactions we have with the children. We’re really looking for that upper quality, and so I can’t just hire anybody off the street.”
Hollingsworth said other day cares can hire someone who has taken three education classes. But to work at the center, you have to have an associate’s degree.
Looking to the future
Hollingsworth’s goals for the center for the future include being a full center again.
“I would love to open up all the classrooms again and have the 77 children that we used to have,” she said. “I just feel like the community needs that. The community needs us. Our students need us and on campus.”
When Hollingsworth’s predecessor Ana Nasser was with the center, they extended the playground to have a third one for the separated classes.
“It only goes like halfway. I’ve always wanted to extend it all the way, and I always thought it would be cool to have a bike path go all the way through the playground,” Hollingsworth said, adding that right now, the children can only ride at the top of the hill.
“I would just like to have a better, more engaging playground for our children,” Hollingsworth said.
During the summer for school-agers, the center has three classrooms of children.
Aug. 19 will be the first day of fall classes at DACC and the return of two preschool classrooms at the center. Center hours are 7:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Longtime head teacher and Assistant Director Shanna Forthenberry teaches the 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds. She previously taught at the Center for Children’s Services and has been in the education field for 20-plus years. Teaching the 2- and 3-year-olds is Rebecca Balla. She came on a year ago through DACC’s early childhood program.
Changes, challenges
Since being employed at the center, Hollingsworth has seen a lot of changes.
“When I started here, we didn’t do a whole lot with letters. Because back in the day, it wasn’t appropriate,” Hollingsworth said. “They would learn that in kindergarten and first grade.”
But then a literacy program through the University of Illinois began teaching that preschoolers do need to start letters and name writing. The research really proved that children that age can do it, and it did make a difference in their reading abilities, she said.
The children also daily have math, science and art lessons, and other activities, such as circle time, small group, motor skill and diversity activities and sensory table.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact, with new health requirements in place, especially lots more cleaning.
“Then that kind of turned into our staffing issues,” Hollingsworth said.
A center stalwart
Hollingsworth grew up in Catlin and her mom, Mary Jane, used to work at the center in the early 1990s.
“So, I went through the school-age program,” Hollingsworth said.
When she aged out of that, Nasser had her volunteer in the toddler classroom.
“By then we had built this building,” Hollingsworth said of center’s current home, built in 1997.
While in junior high, she spent two summers volunteering full-time in the toddler classroom.
Later, after graduating high school, she became a DACC student. Hollingsworth said she needed a campus job, and Nasser counted on her to work at the center.
So Hollingsworth said she worked three years while getting her associate’s degree in psychology.
“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be,” Hollingsworth said.
She took some other classes, including on early childhood education, and went on to earn a general bachelor’s degree from Eastern Illinois University in Charleston.
After a position opened at the center in 2008, Hollingsworth was hired as a 4- to 5-year-old classroom teacher. She did that for a couple years. Then she taught in the 3- to 4-year-old room, the 2- to 3-year-old room and the toddler classroom.
Several years ago, she served as assistant director under Nasser, then became director in 2022.
Hollingsworth’s earliest memories from when she was a child at the center in the old building, one of the old Veterans Affairs buildings, is of the ceilings being very tall, and there were no doors or bathrooms.
“This building is a blessing,” Hollingsworth said. “I try and remind people of that.”
She said she was a well-behaved child and thought she was so cool when Nasser let her go by herself where they washed all the paint brushes.
They also went on a lot of field trips in the school-age program back then, Hollingsworth said, reminiscing about going to airports, the Pepsi plant and water plant.
“We used to go everywhere, the zoos, the museums. I just remember going a lot of places. And I don’t think a lot of those places I would have ever gone to if I wouldn’t have been here,” she said about the center.
Hollingsworth said she’s been at the center long enough now that her previous little students are at the age they can come back and work for her. Her first class would now be graduating with their associate’s degree.
Hollingsworth said with Nasser being the director for so long — 33 years — she feels proud she’s accomplished keeping the center open with all the challenges.
“I tried to rise to that level,” she said about Nasser’s previous leadership.
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