This story is part of an ongoing series, Powering Change: Panasonic and De Soto. If you'd like to share your excitement or concerns about the electric vehicle battery plant, you can do so here.
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With thousands of employees expected to start at Panasonic this year, child care is a big need for the small community.
There is only one child care center within De Soto city limits, Happy Campers Montessori School. Not unlike the rest of De Soto, Happy Campers is an 88-child school that’s planning for thousands of new people at Panasonic.
“We reached out to them to say, you know, how many employees do you guys think you have? Do you guys have an idea as to who has childcare, where the need for childcare is?” said Christina Rose, Happy Campers' program director.
The need for child care skyrocketed after the closure of a previous daycare. Rose said Happy Campers’ first location in Shawnee was called to help.
“We knew that families were really struggling," she said. "That was the only center in the De Soto area. So, families really had to disperse out to Eudora, Lawrence, Lenexa."
Happy Campers opened in De Soto last summer with help from the state.
“With Panasonic coming and opening up, we knew there was going to be a great need for child care,” Rose said. “We worked with the Women's Business Center and worked with the state of Kansas to get some funding that we needed to open up our second location.”
De Soto's child care struggles aren’t just due to limited availability, the high concentration of manufacturing jobs means employees don’t work typical hours.
“One of the biggest things that we found is there's a lot of 10-hour, 12-hour shifts,” Rose said.
Happy Campers will work with those schedules, but the school only has so many spots available.
“We're trying to fulfill and save some spots and make sure that we can accommodate that. While at the same time, we don't want to deny spots for families and for a local community that needs them,” Rose said.
This problem isn’t specific to De Soto. A February point-in-time survey from the state found availability only meets 55% of potential child care demand in Johnson County.
Happy Campers expects to be full by fall. However, Rose said the school is hoping to expand its facility soon.
“We know that we're probably going to have to double our capacity intake, our availability fairly in, probably, the next six months here,” Rose said.
Rose said the only other options for childcare in De Soto are a few in-home providers.
The school district has early childhood programs for children ages 3-5 located in Lenexa, but the district has a waitlist.
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KSHB 41 reporter Olivia Acree covers portions of Johnson County, Kansas. Share your story idea with Olivia.