Reinbeck council approves daycare funding request

REINBECK – Amidst a crowd of over 50 people who packed into City Hall on Monday night, the Reinbeck City Council approved a $180,000 funding request for the Little Rebels Learning Center, an issue that’s become somewhat contentious over the last several weeks.
Since February, the Little Rebels Learning Center has been full to capacity, says Robin Moore, director of the daycare portion of the center.
“Right now, we have a waiting list of 21 kids,” Moore said. “We’ve had to start turning families away.”
Moore said the center has had numerous families looking to move to town, who have called to ask if there is room at the daycare for their children. But each time, the center has had to tell them there’s no more room, Moore says.
“I had one family from Evansdale call and ask if we had a spot open, and when I told her no, she said ‘Well, I guess we’ll just have to find another small town to move to.’ And they’re not the only ones,” Moore said. “When we realized these families were choosing not to move to Reinbeck because there was no daycare for their children, we decided we needed to do something about it.”
So, the learning center board and directors put together a plan for an expansion project that would significantly increase the center’s capacity, and eliminate the waiting list.
But, they faced an obstacle with funding: as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, the center would not have enough funds to undertake the project alone, so they decided to reach out to the community for help.
After securing $180,000 of funding from the Gladbrook-Reinbeck School District, representatives from the learning center approached the city about matching the school’s $180,000 contribution. In their plan, they suggested the city could use a portion of the $500,000 gift received from the Richard Grimm memorial. For the remainder of the project, the learning center would be responsible for fundraising another $180,000 themselves.
Here, however, they met some opposition.
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