After 40 years helping to build brighter futures for thousands of children, the Community School for People under Six needs help building itself a new home.

Our child-care center will be displaced with the construction of the new Chapel Hill/Carrboro Elementary School No. 11 and is reaching out to the community for support. The elementary school will be built on the county-owned Northside site on Caldwell Street where we are located. We face a June 30, 2010, deadline to secure a location and to move to a new home.

Community School for People under Six is a nonprofit 501C3 center. With a five-star license rating from North Carolina and national accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, we strive to provide high quality early care and education for all children ages 2 months to 5 years, specifically low- and middle-income families. Established in September 1970, we have a multicultural, community-based philosophy. Our center is licensed for 73 children, and serves up to 57 children and their families while maintaining low staff/child ratios to support their developmentally appropriate curriculum and to prepare children for a brighter future.

The school system has offered us an old pre-kindergarten site now owned by the Town of Carrboro. It requires a large amount of renovation/construction and has only three classrooms (approximately 2,600 sq. ft.) compared to our current seven classrooms (over 4,000 sq. ft.). We must raise $600,000 to meet renovation and construction costs, plus cover removal and replacement of old playground equipment, add fencing and move our plants and trees to the new site at 102 Hargraves St. If we do not raise the money we will have to reduce our enrollment by approximately 12 children and reduce our staff from 16 to 12. This could potentially affect our ability to maintain the five-star rating we have held for the past 10 years and our national accreditation by NAEYC for the last 15 years. We would only be able to make repairs needed to open the center and run it at lower standards.

Community School partners with the Orange County Early Head Start to provide 14 spaces in our center for children ages 2 months to 3 years old, and with the More at Four Pre-Kindergarten Program to serve 12 children who are ages 4 and 5 and will be enrolling in kindergarten in the fall. We serve 90 percent subsidized families under the Department of Social Services, Child Care Services Association (Smart start, UNC and United Way Scholarships), Child Care Network, NCAARCA-military, Early Head Start and More at Four. The remaining 10 percent enrolled families are private pay families.

Our program will celebrate its 40th anniversary in September 2010. We provide a tremendous service to children and their families with great dedication. Even former Vice President Gore visited the center in 1994. So for the Community School families and staff, the old saying that "there is no place like home" is so true. We feel like we have lost our home; and must work diligently to make a "new home" for ourselves. Please help us achieve this goal; the Community School for People under Six needs your help!