WYMORE - Just over a year after they learned they had received a grant to make the project possible, Blue Valley Community Action now boasts a space all its own: a new Head Start center in Wymore. 

On Friday morning BVCA officially opened the doors of its new space that provides early education, healthcare, and preschool preparedness programs to about a dozen 3- to 5-year-olds in Southeast Nebraska. At the tail end of what's at times been an uncertain at best year for the national future of the Head Start program, Friday's grand opening represented a major milestone.

"This year has been hard for Head Start, I'm going to be completely honest and transparent in that, but this year has also shown us how strong we are and how strong our support is and that we have a lot of people who believe in us and the things that we do," said Kyanna Volkman, BVCA's children services director. "It has really brought our staff together. Where other people may have felt the weight of that uncertainty, we have really strengthened ourselves and come together. We have a lot of belief and a lot of joy in the things that we do, and this building is kind of our promise to our community that we are here. And as long as we are able, we will do this and we will do it the best that we can."

Class has been in session here for the last two weeks, helping provide the foundation for these young children to eventually move on into the school system in a few years. 

"Part of our mission is to help people grow," BVCA CEO Shari Weber said in her address to Friday's large crowd. "Our families, we help them grow by helping them set goals, so that they can become self-sufficient over time. Our children, we want them to have a positive experience in the preschool classroom so that they are able to go on to kindergarten and to school and have success because they've had fun learning in our environment. Our children are our future. So we want to start them off right at this young age and give them the ability to be great leaders as they grow older."

It took the Wymore Head Start staff less than a week at the end of October to completely move from their previous shared home in a local church to this brand new space. And this entirely grant-funded new building been designed specifically to be an ideal home for Head Start educators and students.

"Every single element that you see in this building was considered," Volkman said. "The colors, the type of floor, where carpet is, where carpet's not...the size of the toilets, how far away toilets are from each other, how tall those sinks are, where the soap is...where doors are to go out to the playground. It has all been carefully curated and crafted to be the perfect child care center. Is anything perfect? No, but this is pretty close."

And the new space has been constructed in a short timeframe. The BVCA brass first learned they had been awarded a grant to fund construction of this center - and a separate one in Geneva which is in line to open next year - in September 2024. It took them a couple of revisions to finally get approved, Weber said, but with that hurdle finally cleared, they ultimately contracted with Ayars & Ayars to get the building process started earlier this year. 

"We don't get to build buildings very often, so they made it a very easy process," Weber said. "When we got the grant, they said, we'll start March, April, and we'll be done in September, October. And I was like, that seems like a hefty time frame to me, but they 100% did just that. So it's been fabulous working with them. Thank you for helping make this dream a reality."

"When we got that original proposal, we said, no way can you have it done that fast. But here it is!" said Jefferson County commissioner Mark Schoenrock, who is also a member of the BVCA executive committee. "We have this rising generation here, and we are going to have a great facility now to help provide them a very solid foundation. These little folks are going to have this beautiful facility, and our staff will be here to help lay the foundation for that rising generation."

"It's not every day that we get to build a new facility such as this. So the fact that we are getting to do it not once but twice is quite impressive and it's definitely something that we have a lot of pride in," said Volkman. "And we're very humbled with that, but we're also very proud of the fact that we get the opportunity to do this for our teams, our families, and our communities because, yes, we work with our families that are in our programs, but the goal of our programs is to have that trickle effect into our communities and building our future leaders and creating that foundation for the children within our communities who will in turn, hopefully continue to have those positive impacts on the community."

The new facility was purposefully created entirely through input from the people who will be, and are currently, working in it every day. It's equipped with office spaces for the staff, a conference room that doubles as a severe weather shelter, a playground and a kitchen on the same floor as everything else - an improvement from the previous setup.

Of course, the centerpiece is the classroom itself, and there's one more room that is currently set up for indoor play. If they receive more grant funding in the future, it could be expanded into a second classroom space for infants and toddlers.