BEST High School in Kirkland provides daycare for the children of the moms who have come back to school to finish their education. At this time, the daycare has 10 children, ranging from the four months to four years. We take them as young as six weeks.
Carolyn Friedli started the daycare more than 20 years ago to help teen parents finish their high school education.
Most of the teen parents are receiving help from a program called Working Connections through DSHS and have a majority of their child care paid for. They are required to pay a monthly co-pay to the district. The rest of the program is funded by the district.
BEST High School was started in 1968 by two Redmond High School counselors, with one teacher and 25 students. Since then, BEST has grown to more than 175 students and 11 teachers.
Tracy Bumgarner has been the director of the child lab for almost nine years. Her background is in family and consumer sciences and she has a masters in school counseling.
Kat Farkas has been an instructional assistant (IA) in the daycare at BEST for two years. At the end of this school year, Kat will be leaving BEST to complete her internship in school counseling. Although she will miss BEST, Kat is looking forward to obtaining her master's and the new opportunities to work with and help teenagers.
I am the supervisor/ IA in the daycare and have been with BEST since April 2006. I worked in the Lake Washington School District preschool for five years before coming to BEST. I truly enjoyed working with the preschoolers but was also interested in taking on another challenge: working with teen moms and their infants/toddlers.
We are looking for volunteers between 8 a.m. and noon, Monday to Friday, to read a child a story, rock a baby to sleep, play with the toddlers, etc. Volunteer hours are from 8 a.m. to noon, Monday-Friday.
BEST High School and daycare is located at 10903 NE 53rd St. For more information, call 828-3289, ext. 592 or 576, or visit http://schools.lwsd.org/BEST[[In-content Ad]]
