Gorge Local - In Business: Kiddie City is first childcare facility for Cascade Locks

It took three years to open the first two centers in Hood River and in Parkdale. Then, on Oct. 8, a third facility became the first licensed childcare in or near Cascade Locks. It opened on Oct. 21 with enrollment for 20 children. Some slots in Parkdale were open, too.

Kiddie City’s pending application for a $416,000 childcare infrastructure grant could create an additional 20 childcare slots in Cascade Locks, by funding the division of space into two more classrooms for different ages.

The license allows up to 16 kids in one classroom, but “that’s not ideal,” McNulty noted. “Preschoolers and toddlers need a lot of space to run around, and then if you’ve got infants crawling around, it can get messy." About three classrooms are ideal.

Kiddie City has no backup plan if the grant from Business Oregon and the Department of Early Learning and Care doesn’t come through. But McNulty said she feels relatively good about their chances.

“We’re wishing on the shooting stars,” she noted. Even if the grant doesn’t go through, this self-described “relentless human being” won’t give up on expanding in Cascade Locks, she implied.

Grant winners will be announced around November.

When McNulty first opened the Parkdale facility in 2022, families drove from homes as distant as Stevenson, Carson, Goldendale, The Dalles and Dallesport to access her services. McNulty responded by opening the Hood River space in 2023 before starting in Cascade Locks.

“No one wants to have to drive 45 minutes just to drop their child off somewhere!” She estimates some 250 families use Kiddie City — about 50 at each location, ranging in age from six weeks to 12 years old.

The Hood River and Parkdale spaces are church tenants — with the Hood River space, were McNulty stood, made luminous by wildly-colored, rainbow-smeared murals of various Bible scenes. “We’re just roommates,” she said; the space used to house Horizon Christian School. The new Cascade Locks space inhabits part of the community school.

McNulty said she always directs her customers toward government applications for free childcare — and some parents are surprised by the level of financial help they receive, she said. “We actually urge everyone to apply, because we’ve even had married couples get free childcare,” she said.

Kiddie City accepts all forms of state aid and support, and the Parkdale facility holds a preschool promise grant that provides free care for 3-5-year-olds.

“We’re trying to provide the best child care employment in the Gorge,” McNulty said, adding Kiddie City offers all the benefits and pay they can afford, and helps employees get their credentials through the Office of Childcare.

Those credentials come in stages. With each higher credential they achieve, employees get a pay raise. “And also a degree or a piece of paper isn’t the end-all, be-all. We want to help people with both,” said McNulty, who compiled training hours and college credits to reach her Director’s certification before reaching her associates degree.

For aspiring childcare providers, McNulty recommended the “awesome” Early Childhood Education program at Columbia Gorge Community College (CGCC), where she was able to find free tuition and learn from mentors. “It’s not that they’re not helpful,” she noted. “There’s a lot of pieces to opening child care,” with licensing, business, and training aspects.

All three facilities are remodels of existing spaces. “We can pretty much work with anything, as long as it’s in close range of bathrooms, if it has exiting to the exterior, stuff like that,” McNulty noted. Building a new facility from scratch, with time, cost and permitting, would be much harder.

While just one permit allows a childcare to operate, getting it requires two visits from the licensing agency and check-offs from the fire marshal, building department, sanitation department, health inspector, etc. Each wants something different: The building department wanted doors in classrooms for children to exit in case of emergency, while the licensing agency cared more about bathroom proximity.

That complex licensing is a barrier, and McNulty said she thinks it’s a big reason why there’s so few childcare facilities. “The first time I went through the process, I did get raked through the coals,” she recalled. Figuring out the requirements, the professional certifications and paperwork, and problem-solving — without a mentor who’d done it all before — was hard. McNulty managed through stubborn persistence, she said, and now she’s thinking about working as mentor to others.

She appreciates the complex licensing, though. “It’s the highest tier of childcare because we have to go through so many rules” to ensure safety and liability, she said.

Of course, the children are the ultimate beneficiaries. “I would like to say their [the children’s] experience is joyous,” McNulty said. “We prioritize fun.” Instead of screens and battery-powered toys, children are encouraged to interact with each other, and with creative things, like “toys that you can manipulate in multiple ways,” McNulty said. The presence of phones or tablets isn’t usually an issue — parents are asked not to allow their kids to bring them.

“It’s a hard job because there’s so many pieces to it. But I’ve always been someone who gets bored doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again,” McNulty said. Luckily — with errands, billing, shopping, grant-writing and teaching to cover at three childcare facilities — this working mother of three is unlikely to get bored any time soon.

“There’s such a need. I want to be able to fill the void of childcare and provide the best,” she said.