BY MILES LAYTON

GATESVILLE — Gates County leaders voted Monday night to give New Beginnings Daycare more time to find its footing, approving a resolution to keep the program open until February 2026 after emotional pleas from parents, co-founders, and staff who described the center as a vital lifeline for local families.

The decision came after a tense joint discussion between the Gates County Board of Commissioners and the Board of Education about the daycare’s future, its financial struggles, and the county’s responsibility to help preserve childcare access in a rural community where few options exist. GCS’s Local budget has loaned the Daycare funds over the last 3 years, totaling $150,000, with another $25,000 slated to cover current payroll.

The meeting drew parents, educators, and community members who filled the room to urge transparency and cooperation. Several said the daycare — operated under the school system’s umbrella for more than two decades — had become entangled in financial confusion, unclear oversight, and communication breakdowns between school and county leaders.

Parents plead for transparency and time

“I come here as a parent to multiple kids that have gone through or are currently in New Beginnings,” said Kassandra Rountree of the Hobbsville voting district. “I don’t think there’s any argument to how important this resource is for the community and how important it is to have a safe space for our children to grow into human beings that give back to this community.”

Rountree said that while parents understood the financial pressures facing the daycare, the “lack of transparency and discussion about where the daycare stands” had made it difficult for families to organize and help. “There’s a lot of gray area when it comes to when they’re fully under the school system and when they’re not,” she said. “If it’s under the school and it’s under the school’s budget, that needs to be discussed publicly.”

She called for open access to audits, budgets, and fundraising goals. “For the community to be able to rally and raise funds and give this daycare a chance, we need to know what it needs to raise. We need to know the goal. We need to know where it’s going. We need to know what grants are being taken advantage of,” she said. “There are resources out there… We just want to be given a chance.”

Rountree urged honesty about the daycare’s future so that “parents or teachers that have to find work” and “parents who have to find childcare” would not be blindsided. “It would be a real shame to lose something like this in this community,” she said.

Co-founder calls closure “a loss that cannot be measured in dollars”

Carolyn Hurdle, one of New Beginnings’ co-directors, talked about the daycare’s two-decade history. “Our center has been proudly serving the Gates County community since the early 2000s,” she said. “Generations of families have entrusted us with their children, many enrolled in siblings year after year. New Beginnings is truly a unicorn — one of a kind in our state — and was recently honored as Daycare of the Year by the News Herald.”

New Beginnings Daycare operates as its own separate entity within Gatesville Elementary School — put simply, the daycare operates as an enterprise fund on a revenue/expense platform. 

But despite that success, Hurdle said declining enrollment and rising costs have left the center in crisis. The daycare operates three classrooms — infants (birth to two years, $225 per week), toddlers (two to three years, $215), and preschoolers (three to five years, $205) — rates roughly comparable to regional centers. Yet with only 19 enrolled children, well below the 40 needed for stability, “we are now facing serious financial challenges,” Perdue said.

“The resulting uncertainty has led several families to withdraw their children, further worsening our financial position,” she explained. She added that the hiring of a second director in August increased payroll costs “without corresponding enrollment growth.”

Despite those challenges, she said staff and families “remain committed to keeping New Beginnings open.” Teachers have organized fundraisers, paused food programs to save money, and even “purchase classroom materials out of pocket.”

Hurdle proposed a partnership model with the county to develop “a strategic plan built on SMART goals — specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound — to strengthen our operations.” She added, “The true cost of closing our center cannot be measured in dollars and cents. It would mean the loss of a trusted, nurturing environment that has shaped the lives of countless children and families.”

County manager outlines $94,000 deficit

Gates County Manager Scott Sauer provided a detailed breakdown of the daycare’s financial picture. He said the school system budgeted $314,000 for salaries and benefits for fiscal year 2025–26, but spent $367,000 in the year that ended June 30 — exceeding its budget by more than $50,000. Operational costs also ran $12,000 higher than expected.

“The audit reflects… that we finished the year June 30, 2025, with a $94,000 deficit for the childcare program,” Sauer said. He noted that the official audit did not appear to identify that deficit, possibly because of confusion about how childcare programs were listed. “The audit as it is written… states that the Child Care Fund is used to account for the after-school care program,” he said, though that program is administered separately by the Cooperative Extension office.

Sauer explained that the daycare has long been treated as an “enterprise fund” — a self-sustaining program supported by tuition and grants, not taxpayer dollars. “It would appear that last fiscal year we had income adequate to meet the current year’s payments by parents,” he said, but enrollment declines and new expenses have since changed that outlook.

School board chair: “We cannot continue to financially support operations”

Board of Education Chairwoman Sallie J. Ryan confirmed that the daycare has not been financially self-sustaining for several years. “The daycare was started 22 years ago, and at that time it was self-sufficient,” Ryan said. “It has not continued to be this way.”

Ryan said the state’s $15 minimum wage mandate for school employees “was when we first started having some difficulty in making payments.” Though daycare teachers are paid hourly, they are classified as school employees and must receive the same minimum pay and benefits as K–12 staff. “Those daycares [in the private sector] do not have to pay $15 an hour. We do,” Ryan said.

To keep the center afloat, the school system has repeatedly diverted funds from its general education budget — $50,000 in 2023–24, $75,000 in 2024–25, and another $50,000 this fiscal year. “We are running into a big dark hole with trying to keep this open,” she said. “At the end of the day, the funding that we have is for K–12. We cannot sacrifice the K–12 education system for the daycare.”

Ryan said the Board of Education voted last month that “New Beginnings Daycare will not be operated by Gates County Schools past December 31, 2025.” The school board, she said, was open to transferring ownership to a private operator. “We are very open to that,” Ryan said. “But we also have a school to run.”

Commissioners urge time, options, and “not making quick decisions”

The commissioners pressed for clarity on the school board’s vote and on whether the staff or families had been notified before Monday’s meeting.

Commission Chair Emily Truman said, “If we’re having these conversations and a decision has been made, we need to know that upfront. Because that’s going to redirect how conversations go in regard to the daycare in general.”

Commissioner Nathan Berryman emphasized that the county and school board “have to work together to figure out our solution.” He said the goal should be to bring expenses back “within the operational range of revenues.” Berryman and other commissioners floated ideas such as recruiting new families, contracting staff instead of employing them directly, or transitioning to a privately managed model under a lease.

Board member Terri Riddick explained that state childcare regulations limit how much staffing costs can be reduced. “The daycare is under state stipulations of how many people have to be in a room,” she said. “If you’ve got one teacher in the room, then there’s got to be somebody else there if they need to go to the bathroom or if they’re sick.” Those ratios, she said, vary by age group and require careful staffing even when enrollment fluctuates.

Commissioner Dave Forsythe voiced frustration that the issue had reached a crisis point without earlier notice. “We talked about budget back in May,” he said. “Fifty thousand seemed like something that easily back in May could have been brought to our attention. I feel like it’s all been said and it’s just like throwing my hands up in the air and saying, what do you do at this point?”

Still, Forsythe offered a motion to bridge the gap. “I will personally support funding the $50,000 to allow y’all to get through, maybe in the school year or something,” he said. “Rather than trying to make a quick decision — I think quick decisions are generally bad.”

Truman agreed, proposing that the board hold a special meeting “in the very near future” to collect data and define options. “Now that we have the information from the Board of Education, we need to do some back-end work on our side to figure out what our actual options are,” she said.

Community weighs future paths

Sauer said it would be legally possible — though complex — for the county to take over the daycare, perhaps initially as an employee benefit program. “There are counties that offer daycare services for their own employees,” he said. “Under the scenario that’s been suggested, utilizing the school facility, that’s sort of a hybrid that would require some quick study — not impossible, but some quick study.”

He added that hours of operation could also affect enrollment. “If we’re trying to serve the working parent that might have to drive in from Suffolk or Ahoskie, a five o’clock pickup would be a real burden,” he said. Ryan acknowledged that the current 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule “is very inconvenient” for teachers and parents who commute.

Truman said the issue was not about the quality of care but about sustainability. “We had email after email from parents stating the quality of the care that is there, the quality of the staff there,” she said. “The comfort they have knowing that their children are in the county that they’re working in.”

Resolution extends operations to February 2026

After two hours of discussion, commissioners voted unanimously to approve a resolution allowing New Beginnings to remain open until February 2026. The move gives time for a transition to private management or another partnership model, and for community leaders to study funding options.

Forsythe said he supported the extension “so we really do have time to work this out and it doesn’t throw everybody out in the cold right away.”

Rountree, who had spoken first, said afterward that she was grateful the commission gave the daycare more time. “We just wanted honesty and a chance,” she said. “Now we have a little of both.”

Perdue said the staff “will continue to do everything we can to keep these doors open.”

Ryan said the school board “respects the county’s action” and will cooperate with the transition. “Nobody wants to see the daycare close,” she said. “But we’ve also got to be realistic.”

For now, the decision buys time for Gates County to decide whether — and how — its only public daycare can remain part of the community it has served for more than two decades.