New Child Development Center will open on campus

By Elizabeth Royse

Child Development Centers of the Bluegrass will open its doors to a new center on campus in August.

The center, which will be located on Alumni Drive across from Commonwealth Stadium, will offer a full-time preschool program for both children with disabilities and typically developing children ages 6 weeks to 5-years-old.

The center will manage itself from its new location on UK’s campus and will offer priority spaces to more than 100 UK faculty, staff and students, said Executive Director Stella Crutcher. She said the center has spaces available for 166 children in the Lexington area.

“The new center will offer the same CDCB services as the current center,” she said. “It’s just expected to be expanded.”

The current child care center, located on Springhill Drive, provides care for more than 50 children.

The new center will cost around $5.5 million to build, with half of that money coming from the CDCB, Crutcher said.

Though the campus center offers first priority to UK community members, “CDCB will continue its mission to provide the highest quality early education and intervention services to children with special needs in the community,” Crutcher said.

This includes UK families whose children have special needs, Crutcher said.

It will offer occupational, physical and speech/language therapy both for children enrolled in their preschool as well as for outpatient clients.

Accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, Child Development Centers of the Bluegrass is a four-star program that uses the Assessment, Evaluation and Programming System as a foundation for its assessment plan and curriculum, according to the CDCB website.

Each of the center’s lead teachers in the classroom will be responsible for designing the classroom environment and providing a curriculum to support social, emotional, intellectual and physical development for all children, according to its website.

Weekly tuition rates are $210 for infants (6 weeks and older), $205 for toddlers (2-year-olds) and $190 for preschoolers.

“There is no discount for UK faculty, staff or students that have children in the center because to sustain the budget, the tuition needed to stay at a set rate for all children,” Crutcher said. “We do, however, offer children who receive therapy services through CDCB, a rate of $10 less per week.”

The new, larger center is basically a “win-win for everyone,” Crutcher said.

She said it offers another quality option for UK families in the community.

For more information about the center and how to apply, visit cdcbg.org.