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City of Fort Collins
 

Social Sustainability

Social Sustainability

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The City of Fort Collins is actively engaged in addressing the challenges and barriers to childcare in our community. The City’s role is to support, promote and partner with childcare and early childhood education initiatives and programs in Fort Collins to deliver strategic and sustainable results that positively impact this critical economic and social issue.

The Fort Collins City Council has identified affordable and accessible childcare as one of their priorities for 2021-2023, with the intention to continue to identify barriers and needs related to increasing the supply of affordable childcare, looking at a variety of solutions including development incentives and flexibility to ensure that childcare is not a career and lifestyle limiting factor in Fort Collins.

View an examination and examples of the City's role and scope in supporting childcare here.

What problem are we addressing?#

Barriers to childcare, which include:

  • Access: qualified facilities and quality programming
  • Affordability: fee reductions for income-qualified families
  • Workforce: childcare workforce recruitment, training and retention

Prior and Ongoing Work#

  • In aggregate, the City directly invested and committed $295,000 in 2021 towards addressing childcare barriers in Fort Collins.

  • In 2018, a new 20-year, reduced-rate lease for the City-owned property at 424 Pine Street was created in partnership with Teaching Tree Early Childhood Center, a local nonprofit organization. Teaching Tree invested significant capital into facility renovations, doubling the number of enrollment spots available to 215 infants and children.

  • Funding was committed in 2018 to The Family Center/La Familia, a local nonprofit organization, to expand classroom capacity at their childcare center, allowing space for up to 20 children to be served.

  • The City has provided funding to the Early Childhood Council for Larimer County (ECCLC) to address the childcare workforce retention and career development needs of early childhood education providers in the community.

  • Funding is provided to the Poudre School District to operate the ‘PSD After 3’ after-school and summer enrichment programs at six Title I elementary schools. Approximately 600 elementary-aged children are served each year. 

  • City staff are involved with community thought-leaders to support systems-level solutions to childcare barriers, including participation in local childcare strategic objective work groups.