By FRED KRONER
The ripple effect was quickly being felt throughout St. Joseph once the district made the decision about how to start the school year.
Instead of the traditional full-day approach, the COVID-19 pandemic demanded that changes be put in place at virtually all schools in the state. The St. Joseph-Ogden district settled on doing morning and afternoon sessions, at least for the outset of the school year.
One group of grade school students are in the building from 8-11 a.m. each morning. Another group arrives for a noon-to-3 p.m. time slot. A similar plan is in place for the middle school students.
Many working parents faced a dilemma, what to do with their child during the time that he or she was not in school.
Local day-care providers had limited openings.
“Our Children’s Committee here at SJCOC (St. Joseph Church of Christ) became aware of a childcare need about six weeks ago through personal relationships and the Saint Joseph Community Facebook page,” senior pastor Kyle Arnold said.
The turnaround time for when the need would take place was short, but Arnold couldn’t sit back and do nothing.
“While we knew it was highly unlikely we would be able to help,” Arnold said, “we decided that as a church, we can’t say we are FOR our community unless we are trying our best to fill community needs, so we set out to at least try.
“After our leadership gave the go-ahead, the committee started looking into possible daycare solutions and started floating the idea on community pages to make sure that we weren’t misreading the need.
“From there, with the desperate need confirmed, the whole program kind of became our main priority, trying to find a way to fill that need for the community in the safest way possible.”
The desire to help and the ability to help are not necessarily one and the same.
“After spending about four weeks with a team of approximately 10 people, we had chased down several legal avenues of hosting a day program,” Arnold said. “That meant insurance changes for our church, working with local fire and health departments, filling out packets of paperwork for the department of health and family services, etc.
“You name it, and it had to be done. We ended up getting to a point where we knew we could actually pull something off, but it wasn’t going to be until about a month into the new school year. That being said, once we discovered that we could indeed, legally provide a day program in that time frame, we also knew that the moment schools went to ‘online only’ classes, that we would no longer have the legal coverage we needed to continue the program.”
Arnold soon learned about another option.
“That is where the YMCA program came in,” he said. “A local resident, aware of our efforts, put us in contact with the YMCA in regards to a similar program they had started with churches in Champaign.
“After discussing our desire, but also our roadblocks, we came to an agreement. We would allow the YMCA to use our facilities for their programming, thus filling the need for day programming, but they would bring their own legal coverages with them.”
For Arnold and the church, it was a true win-win scenario.
“Mostly, they could offer the one thing that we couldn’t,” he said. “As a pre-licensed organization, they would be able to offer day programming regardless of any potential future changes to the school schedule.
“They also informed us they could have it up and running by the time school started.”
That news was enough for the Church of Christ to back off on its quest to go solo.
“Even though we were gaining momentum towards operating our own program, the YMCA was able to provide the two things we just couldn’t,” Arnold said, “the ability to have the program in place before school started, and the ability to continue the program despite any future scheduling changes with the school system.
“We officially partnered with the YMCA to use our facilities to house their program starting Monday, Aug. 17th.”
In less than a month, the plan had gone from conceptual to reality.
“The amount of planning required by volunteers in our church was significant,” Arnold said. “Even with the YMCA taking most of the load once school started, our church still had to meet a whole lot of requirements for the state to simply host the program.
“At one point, there was a bullet list of over 100 things our Children’s Committee had to address with our building to ensure that we could provide safe and effective learning spaces for the program. Thankfully we were able to make everything work out.”
A fund-raiser featuring the St. Joseph Dairy Queen earlier this month helped to generate more than $1,000.
“That went towards buying new smoke detectors and exit signs for our Children’s Wing,” Arnold said.
The program has now been in place nearly a week, but is still a work in progress and may be tweaked.
“There are still a lot of things we don’t know, since everybody involved in this process was putting together something brand new in a completely truncated timeline,” Arnold said. “What I do know, is that the church is providing space for the program in addition to anything we already have in place, like usage of our current internet, etc.”
The church is not charging the YMCA a rental fee “so that they could offer the lowest price possible,” Arnold said, but did ask for $10 per child per month to help with any overhead costs associated with general building use.
“This program has an indefinite timeline attached to it and will be offered every day that school is in session,” Arnold added.
He anticipates that the church can effectively and safely handle approximately 80 students.
“There is currently plenty of space available in the program,” Arnold said.
In years past, the church had partnered with the YMCA for some summer programs, but not in recent years.
“Offering any additional programming is fairly new to our congregation,” said Arnold, who has been the senior pastor at the church since December.
The church staff is available, as needed, to help with oversight, but Arnold said, “the program will be run by paid YMCA staff.
“The YMCA staff will be offering tutoring and activities for the children throughout the day by making usage of our fellowship hall, classrooms, gym and outdoor spaces.”
There are no restrictions on how long the church will make its facility available.
“We are prepared to partner with the YMCA as long as there is a need in the community,” Arnold said. “We have discussed a potential need for after-school care once school returns to normal scheduling, but that conversation is on the back burner to simply providing for the need we have right now.”
While helping to fill the current void is critical, Arnold emphasized that he doesn’t want to do anything long-term that will be detrimental to local businesses.
“We do want to be forward in saying that it is not our desire to take any business away from any local daycare providers in any way, so that will always go into our decision making,” he said. “We are not looking to make money off of any venture, but simply asking what our community needs, and trying to find creative ways to help fill those needs, especially for young families.”
Since Arnold and his wife relocated to St. Joseph at the end of 2019, “I believe we have only had six worship services in the building since we started,” he said.
Arnold is pleased that the Church of Christ has been able to impact a wide array of community residents.
“The biggest thing for us is that we saw a need, and we just want to provide for that need,” Arnold said. “We have a lot of young families in our congregation that really love this community.
“The question that keeps all of us up at night is this: If our church disappeared tomorrow would anybody even notice? We want to be more than a building on a street corner. We want to be a place that is known for loving our community. Sometimes the easiest way to show somebody you love them is to care for their needs, and that’s what this is.”
He recognizes that not every need will be met every time, but he believes it’s important to do as much as possible.
“At SJCOC, we are all about Saint Joseph, and while we may not be able to fill every need, we wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if we didn’t at least try and see how God wanted to show up,” Arnold said. “In this case, we never dreamed any program would be in place by the time school started, but here we are.
“Our faith level in our church family has increased as we have stepped out in faith to do something that seemed impossible and we have seen God show up. It’s our hope that we can share that faith with our Saint Joe community as we continue to show up for them, too.”
