By STEPHEN BEALE
 

GOFFSTOWN - Parents at the Villa Augustina School are hoping to not only preserve what they had this year – a pre-kindergarten through eighth grade Catholic school – but also expand upon it by adding a daycare program this fall.

Greg Tracy, a member of the Villa Augustina Leadership Transition Team, said the program would be more than just a day care, a place to drop off children while parents go to work. It would instead be a structured, educational and developmental program for 3-year-olds that would complement what the school offers to 4-year-olds in pre-kindergarten up to students in middle school.

The Villa Augustina will not need a license to be a day care, since it is already certified as a school, Tracy noted. He said the teachers in the program are professionally qualified to be instructors in a day care setting. Tracy said the program could run from three to five days and be half or full days. Most of the details are still being hashed out. “It’s all in the planning stages now,” Tracy said. “Nothing is set in stone.”

The school is soliciting input and gauging interest from Villa Augustina parents as well as the greater Goffstown community. “We’re open to suggestions, to trying to satisfy the majority of families that respond,” Tracy added.

So far, he said about 10 to 15 families from the Villa Augustina have expressed an interest. He said the school wants to enroll at least eight to 10 in the day care, but could easily expand to 20 pupils or more.

Tracy said the new program is a way of boosting enrollment, which has gone from a little more than 300 a few years ago to approximately 200 students next year. Several parents in the past have inquired about day care, he added. Now that the school has the space for it, he said it makes sense to start the program.

Tracy said the timing was also right, given the crowding at other day cares in the area. Some of about a dozen day cares he surveyed have waiting lists.

Anyone interested in the Villa Augustina day care should call the school office at 497- 2361.

Reproduced by the Goffstown Residents Association.