"It's time to go. I can't pretend that I can make it work when it's not looking like I can."

These unfortunate words belong to Darlene Beiling, the owner and operator of Napanoch's Creative Stages Daycare Center, which, after five years of serving the community, will be closing at the end of the summer.

Much like the Ellenville Cooperative Nursery School, which we reported on two weeks ago, Creative Stages, which provides care for kids ranging from six-weeks-old to five-years-old, has seen its enrollment numbers dwindle to the point where continuing to remain open has become a financial hardship. In Creative Stages' case, however, Beiling feels as though the risk to try and push through one more year is simply too great a burden to bear.

"In the summertime, our enrollment went down, which is very typical — we've done that before," says Beiling. "But come September, our enrollment is not increasing. So do I go into this big financial hole again, or do I pull out now while I can before I'm way too over my head that I'm going to walk away buried? So I've just decided that it's best for the business to close."

"I was devastated…"
The reaction from the parents who've had their children enrolled in Creative Stages share Beiling's sadness at the loss of this recent pillar of the community.

"We were shocked," says Joe Calderon, an Ellenville parent whose child has been enrolled at the daycare center for the past three years. "My son's been enrolled since he was three months old, and it's been great…if I won the lottery, I'd say, 'what do we need to do to keep it going?'

"This is a devastating blow to the community," he says. "They were the most down to earth people you'd ever meet."

Pam Dymond, who works in the human resources department at the Ulster Correctional Facility, actually becomes choked up while discussing the subject of the daycare center's closing. Dymond has sent her three-year-old daughter Elise to the center since she was nine months old, and since learning about the center's closure, she says that she's actually been losing sleep worrying about what she's going to do.

"I was devastated," she says tearfully, recalling when she learned the news.

"I don't worry about my daughter when she goes there," Dymond says of the time Elise spends at Creative Stages. "She's safe and happy, and she enjoys being there…there isn't anything like it in this area."

Dymond has just recently found an alternative to Beiling's daycare center in the form of a family friend's house, where she'll be bringing little Elise after Creative Stages closes its doors this summer. Calderon, likewise, will be enrolling his son at the Ellenville Cooperative Nursery School — providing he can get his son potty trained by the time classes begin, a requirement for the school. He's even considering taking time off from work to stay home with his son if necessary, a situation which will put a serious dent in his family's income.

"If Darlene told me they were going to open it back up, I'd have her back in Creative Stages in a heartbeat," says Dymond.

Ups and Downs
Beiling tells of some of the tough times the daycare business she started five years ago has endured up until this point, including a plea to Wawarsing's town government two years ago for help to remain open. According to Beiling, she was joined at a Town Council meeting by supporters who didn't want to see the daycare center closed due to financial difficulties.

"We had hundreds of parents who showed up to try and keep the daycare open, because they were going to close the daycare because I was behind on payments, and I was struggling so badly," recalls Beiling of the showing of solidarity. "The family members came to show their support. [The Town Board] did approve of resigning the lease."

Despite this victory, however, times were still tough for the business which has fought against the odds to stay open even for as long as it has. Beiling cites rising oil prices to heat the center's high-ceilinged building and the bleak economic situations for parents who had enrolled their children as major factors for the center's closure.

"My staff has always worked for less than they're worth, and what they deserve," she says. "Me too — I took no paychecks for the first two or three years. I always made sure that my staff got their paychecks first. It was kind of like I was playing this financial game to make sure that I was fair to everybody. It got to the point where it was personally not worth it to me, and not worth it to my staff to make them feel like they're not in a secure job… It's a very stressful thing when you try to pay your staff, but you don't get parent's payments because they can't afford childcare, and you don't have any help to help them out — it's difficult."

"When you're in the business of day care, and I know this is kind of cliché, you're really in it because you love children," she adds.

"It's never a money-maker."

As to whether or not she would consider a fundraiser to save the daycare center, Beiling says that the damage to her business has already been done.

"Our enrollment is already so low that it would be a big risk, and I'm not willing to take that risk," she says. "I've got a family, and my husband already has taken up all the slack for us, and it's not fair to him either, so it's kind of a personal decision, and I feel it's in the best interests of everybody that I do close. That's not sure, that's not a sure thing — this community's already hurting, so who can afford a fundraiser?"

Now that the business is closing its doors, Beiling is on the lookout for a new job, though she's not yet sure what that will be. Even still, she has good memories and feelings of the time she spent taking care of Napanoch and Wawarsing's youngsters.

"I'm very sorry that it has to end. I thought I would be here for a very long time, but unfortunately, it didn't work out that way," she says. "We had a wonderful program…this past year we were full and we were jumping — whenever you walked into any of the classrooms, there was a lot of activity going on.

"I'm very proud; I'm not walking away with my head down. I'm walking away with my head held up high, knowing that for the past five years, we provided an excellent service to this community."

COMMENTS about this article (8)