By After being red-tagged early in September, The Isabel Patterson Child Development Center re-opened its doors on Sept. 25.
Director of the center AlecSandria Colchico said that it was a smooth transition back and that the center was only closed for two days. A building that has been red-tagged is uninhabitable and unsafe. It was Friday, Sept. 1, when the Isabel Patterson Child Development Center first discovered the stress fractures of a wooden beam inside the preschool center. The staff at the center immediately began moving children and faculty out of the building.
The center has three programs in separate buildings: the infant toddler program, preschool program and a school age program. Only the preschool building was affected. Officials at the center quickly took action over the weekend, relocating the children and families to The Pointe inside the pyramid.
Over Labor Day weekend, director AlecSandria Colchico met with Mark Zakhour, senior manager for Physical Planning and Facilities Management on campus, to quickly decide on a temporary location to continue serving parents and their children. According to Cicero, Zakhour was instrumental in helping secure a location and providing the center what it needed.
Throughout the repairs and relocation, the services offered by the center were closed for two days until they were relocated Thursday Sept. 7 at the temporary location inside the pyramid.
“We didn’t want to have the whole weekend closed because our priority is students and student’s families,” Colchico said. “We wanted to make sure the impact wasn’t huge.”
The center was able to provide care with about 40 assistants in the temporary re-location during the two days it had been closed.
According to Colchico, the center was relocated to the Pointe Conference for the two days the Child Development Center was closed. “It had the space that we needed to provide care for the families that we serve, which is close to 100 students.”
Sylvana Cicero, director of the University Student Union, and Sabrina Ware, USU event coordinator were essential in moving the program into the pyramid for the three weeks while the center was under construction.
“They had to get all the programming at The Pointe for the next two to three weeks moved to the student union,” said James Ahumada, senior communications manager of Associated Students Inc.
Only families that were new to the program decided to wait until the center re-opened to begin their children’s care, so that children didn’t have to adjust to two different spaces.
According to Colchico, the families were really supportive of the process.
“It was really an awesome opportunity to see the campus come together and support the IPCDC and ASI,” Colchico said. “It was just professional all the way around, and it really helped us do our job and continue to help these families so they didn’t have much of a disruption.”
