DILLER - Access to quality childcare is a chief concern across Nebraska, and that’s even more true in the more rural parts of the state. To try and develop some solutions to these challenges, this week a statewide organization joined forces with a small daycare in Diller.  

Hiring and retaining quality staff, plus enrolling enough kids for that staff to work with. Slogging through the regulations required to get the doors of a daycare open, plus generating enough income to keep those doors open. 

Those are some of the challenges that childcare centers of all sizes are facing – but they are affecting operations in rural Nebraska even more acutely, especially when they feel they’re not on the same playing field as similar centers in larger regions.  

"We are seeing a gap between childcare center regulations and in-home care center regulations, and rural child care is kind of caught in the middle, where bigger child care regulations just don't lend themselves to smaller rural centers financially or just common sense wise. And we're trying to find a nice happy medium," said Taylor Ruzicka-Scheele, owner and director of Sweet Peas Academy in Diller. "It's like a Class D school trying to play in a Class A state tournament. And it's just not going to work when you just don't have the numbers that Class A schools might have. So we're just trying to bridge that gap."

To bridge that gap, Sweet Peas Academy in Diller played host this week to leadership from Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services - CEO Dr. Steve Corsi, interim director of the Division of Public Health Ashley Newmyer and Director of Legislative Services Nicole Barrett - alongside representatives from both local and state government: Jefferson County Commissioner Mark Schoenrock and an aide representing State Sen. Teresa Ibach. Together, the group worked to generate some solutions that Corsi and company pledged to take back up Highway 77 to Lincoln.  

"As a farming state, I’m thinking, my gosh, I was behind the wheel of a tractor, a swather, cutting hay and baling at 12 or 13 years old...you would think, if you can put a 16-year-old in a combine, why can’t you put them in one of these?" Corsi said, gesturing to the daycare. "We’ll put together a letter that we’ll send to the governor’s office. And maybe something happens and maybe it doesn’t - but you know, if we don’t try...? If you never take the shot...? We can’t bring industry into small-town America unless we have this."

"I'm hoping after our conversation today that they're noticing that childcare professionals want to be a part of the solution. It's just more of how do we get to a common solution. And some of the things we talked about today are [relevant to] the breadth of Nebraska, something that even large centers in Lincoln and Omaha are facing," Ruzicka-Steele said. "But for rural childcare, I hope that we're able to come together and kind of create a third tier, per se, for smaller childcare centers. So you could have your large childcare and then maybe smaller rural childcare, just like they have for subsidy rates and things like that. I'm hoping that we can kind of create more common-sense rules that still keep kids safe and happy, still keep our staff paid well. and help rural child care centers be able to thrive, especially if they're non-profit or for-profit." 

Sweet Peas will be celebrating its one-year anniversary next month, but getting to that point has not come without challenges. It’ll take time to solve some of the deep-seated issues in the field, but the hope is that this small daycare in Diller – which is home to only around ten toddlers on a given day – can help set a standard for other childcare centers of its size across the state.  

Since they first seriously embarked on the endeavor to open a daycare center in Diller last summer, Taylor and her husband Kolin have tried to approach their operation with the same mindset any other young couple considering childcare might have, especially with Kreighton, their first child, joining the party a few months ago. 

"Our motto from the get-go has always been affordable and quality childcare for rural Nebraska," she said. "We have friends that live in Lincoln and Omaha who have different daycare choice - we talk about school choice a lot, but daycare choice is also primitive because we don't necessarily always have daycare choice down here in rural Nebraska or out in the panhandle. Your daycare is what you have in your community and that's what you've got. And everybody - every family, every child - deserves quality childcare that's affordable. And I'm just really thankful that currently we're able to provide that for our community."