MIDLAND, Texas — A once crazy idea turned into a reality Tuesday night as Midland College had their ribbon cutting ceremony for a new facility.
"In about 2015, we had a group of community reach out to us to see if there was more that we could do in terms of providing high quality childcare seats," said Midland College President Damon Kennedy. "At the time, we didn't have a perfect arrangement to do that. We had a couple of very successful childcare centers. But we were operating at capacity with multiple year waiting lists. And so, we spent the last eight years getting to this point and so we're opening a 60,000 square foot building today that's going to be home to 296 three-year-olds and four-year-olds going forward."
A partnership between Midland College and MISD with the financial help of several organizations, (Scharbauer Foundation, Inc., Permian Strategic Partnership (PSP), Abell-Hanger Foundation, Henry Foundation, Midland College Foundation, Inc., The Beal Foundation and Warren Charitable Foundation) the new two-story “Midland College Pre-K Academy and Center for Teaching Excellence” has a plan not just for teaching kids, but for teaching future teachers.
"So the bottom level is Pre-K three and four classrooms," Lori Smith, the Pre-K Academy Principal said. "There's a total of 16 of them. And then the top floor is education classes. So [Midland College] students that are working towards their Bachelors of Science in Education can be upstairs, and then they can come down and observe. We have observation rooms or they can go in the classroom and work with the kids to get that hands-on experience."
This school is the first Texas community college of its kind to have an approved preparation program and facility.
And the workers at Midland College hope other colleges follow in their footsteps.
"I have had some school districts reach out that are looking at doing something like this," Smith said.
This project was something that was almost a decade in the making, and for those who’s helped worked on it, it means a lot to finally have that ribbon cut.
"But it is really, really gratifying to see the work that we have all been engaged in for almost a decade now come to fruition," Kennedy said. "And then to have the prospect of people coming to Midland to visit us to see we're doing well. It's exciting."
And to the ones who worked on it directly, it means the world.
"I kind of helped develop this program and design it," Smith said. "And so to see it come from that that we started out with with the 68 kids and all the hurdles we went through to be in this beautiful building. I can't even put words to how excited I am."
And the principal isn’t the only one excited.
"The kids love it [the school]," Smith said. "They talk about things all the time and their parents say they just love it here. They just want to want to come and in the morning we get them out of the car and they're so excited to come to school so it makes me feel really proud."
And to think, about a decade ago, this was just a crazy idea.
"I think it speaks to how remarkable it is to live in Midland right now," Kennedy said. "That you can have a crazy idea like this one, and you can bring partners together: district partners, TEA funding partners, business and industry. And with that force, you can do just about anything and again, this building is an example, this project is an example."
And Midland College isn’t done, as they hope to hire more teachers for next year.
If you’re interested in this program, visit the Midland College website.