Kiddie Company Enrichment Center has taken children from six weeks old all the way up to sixth grade for many years. This summer, however, the range of ages is about to alter.

The director of Kiddie Company, Meghan Weintraub, recently announced that starting this summer, the center will prepare for the departure of the school age classes.

“There are increasing regulations on buses,” Weintraub said. “And it is getting very difficult to find bus drivers. So, after great consideration, we decided to eliminate the need for bus drivers all together.”

As a result of the school age departure, one class for each of the age groups will be added. “By August, there will be four new classrooms,” Weintraub said,  “one preschool room, one toddler room, one nursery, and one pre-k.”

Assistant director Devon Cano also explained some of the numerous reasons for getting rid of school agers. “The demand for nursery availability is high,” Cano said. “And in order to be able to add a nursery, we needed to also add toddler, preschool, and pre-k rooms so those babies have somewhere to go when they age out of the nursery.

“We also want our focus to be more on daycare and pre-k so we can have more programs available for those children,” Cano said.

Brittney Grum, a toddler teacher at the center, sees benefits to this transition as well. “I don’t really see the school agers too often,” Grum said. “But I think it’s good that they’re getting rid of them to focus more on the younger side of the center.

“We get a lot of parents with younger children who we have to turn away due to the limited space we have, and I think this’ll change that.”

Brian Francetic, a math teacher at Mayfield High School who has younger children, also thinks eliminating school age children is beneficial to the center. “I think it’s important because their first five years are so important,” Francetic said. “There needs to be someone able to teach them, and by getting rid of the school agers, that’ll open up a lot of space so that more younger kids can be taught.”

Not only will there be new rooms, but some of the old rooms will be renamed. The rooms at Kiddie Company are named by the age of the children and a number. Classes with 1 after their age group are the youngest, and those with 5 are the oldest.

The age group that stands out the most, the nurseries, are the classes whose names will be changing the most. Nursery 1 is the only nursery that will be keeping its name. Thanks to Nursery 1B having to switch its name to Nursery 2, all of the other nurseries above that will be increasing their number by one.

Weintraub and the owners, who also happen to be her parents, just recently began thinking about the switch. It wasn’t until the middle of winter that they started to contemplate the change.

“When our main bus driver quit in December, it caused us to reevaluate how much stress we have versus how much income the school agers actually bring us,” Weintraub said. “In the end, we decided that the income was not worth the stress, and we began the process of removing the school agers.”

Right now, there are currently a large amount of school age students already enrolled in the center. Cano explained what happens to them when this change takes place.

“We have been recommending them to other centers nearby,” Cano said. “We made sure that we gave them roughly eight months notice before the change actually takes place. That way, they have ample time to find other arrangements.”