The Sparta White County YMCA constructing a new childcare center designed to serve up to 99 children and address a shortage of available and affordable care for working families.
CEO Kyle Goff said the organization identified childcare as a top priority during a strategic planning process involving community leaders, business owners, and the school system. Research found that White County currently has only seven licensed family childcare centers for a population of nearly 30,000 people.
“You start to hear stories from parents like they have just gotten pregnant and they’ve already went ahead and put their name on a waiting list with a childcare here in the county,” Goff said. “So availability is one, second would be affordability.”
Goff said the facility is being funded through a Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development grant and is designed to meet all Department of Human Services and state fire marshal licensing standards. Goff said the center plans to operate from 6:30am to 6:30pm to accommodate traditional work schedules, with future goals of exploring second and third-shift care.
Goff said the lack of access has become a significant economic development issue, noting that 20 percent of Tennessee parents left the workforce last year due to childcare challenges. Goff said data from the Center for American Progress indicates the ratio of children to available childcare spots in White County is as high as 11 to one.
“We don’t have the specific number only in White County, but we do know in the Upper Cumberland as a whole for us to reach our workforce participation goal of 68 percent, we would need an additional 6,000 spots,” Goff said. “But I’m hopeful that this is at least able to put a dent into the need for working families in the community.”
Goff said the project has been in development for four years and included purchasing land on West Turntable Road using a donation from the Snodgrass Family Trust. Goff said owning the property was essential to ensure the building met specific state requirements and to provide long-term stability for the program.
“We wanted to own the property to give us the autonomy and the agency to do the proper build that we’re going to need to do to meet the specs that will be required by the state fire marshal’s office and DHS to meet those regulatory standards so we can be licensed,” Goff said. “We’re in this I mean this has been a four-year project now, early 2023 I went to Washington DC to lobby for federal dollars for childcare in the Upper Cumberland.”
Goff said the new center is expected to create between 27 and 30 new jobs, including 16 teachers for eight classrooms. Goff said the YMCA aims to offer competitive pay to recruit high-quality talent and mitigate the staffing shortages that often affect the childcare industry.
“This is a big task, it’s a big liability, we’ve had to be very patient with this, we are doing this as an act of service to the community to try to help,” Goff said. “We realize all those challenges and we we really are just here to help.”
Goff said construction is expected to be completed by winter, with the enrollment phase beginning in the spring of 2027.