Brenda Wade Schmidt
Enterprise

A tribal day care that opened at the beginning of the year to address a childcare shortage has grown and plans to expand as need increases.
Little Miracles, located in the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe community center building, serves 28 children and is expecting two more infants soon, said Trish Kills-A-Hundred, the center’s director. That is up from about 15 when the center opened in January.
In the process of opening a group facility after the only other group day care in Flandreau, Happy Face Place, closed at the end of last year, the tribal center tried to keep children and caregivers together.
“We need these kids to have the same people every day,” Kills-A-Hundred said. It provides a place of security, love and hugs, she said. Staff from Happy Face moved to the new day care.

Happy Face, a long-standing day care located in a home on First Avenue, closed when owner Stephanie Jungwirth moved to Minnesota with her family for new jobs. It was the only licensed group facility in Flandreau and couldn’t be sold to continue as a center because of new state requirements that the day care could not meet.
Little Miracles, a name chosen by its staff, recently added outdoor playground equipment and held a beach bash to celebrate the transition and growth. Families and community members were invited Tuesday to a hot dog meal that included demonstrations of vehicles from first responders, including law enforcement.
Kills-A-Hundred said at the new location, the day care center has tried to add more educational opportunities and experiences for the children. It also has more space. Before the beach bash, the children painted seashells into the likeness of crabs and egg carton sections into turtles for table decorations. The older children, ages 3 to 5, have been practicing dot-to-dots, working with colors and learning a letter each week. Staff teaches basic sign language to all of the children, who eat breakfast, a hot lunch catered by the casino and snacks at the center.
While the center came together quickly with the help of the tribal council president Tony Reider, the progress is now more intentional because the providers want to make sure they are ready for each step of the growth, they said. That includes finishing the application for a state license and expanding to serve more families and possibly additional hours. The center is open 7:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. Monday through Friday, including tribal holidays.
“It’s got to be running efficiently before we expand,” Kills-A-Hundred said. That includes staff training in advance of receiving more children.
Jess Morson, Family Services coordinator with the tribe, said there could be more than one way to expand, and the center hasn’t decided whether it will be with additional hours or more spots with the same times. The center, which has the use of a full gym in the four-year-old building, is community based and is open to children no matter if their family is part of the tribe or not.
“People are just wanting to come here,” she said. “It’s very diverse as far as the clientele that do bring their children here.”
Morson sees improvements that are benefiting kids and building on the 32-year tradition provided at Happy Face.
“I get a sense that all of these adults are working for these children,” she said. “They’ve definitely shined it up.”
The center also has become more of a way to bond the community together, too, Morson said.
“Maybe what this community needs, is a bonding agent. I don’t think you can bond over anything more than children,” she said.
Even when working with the children, Kills-A-Hundred makes sure to focus on similarities instead of differences.
“We talk about day care families,” she said, explaining that the children may or may not be related to each other. “We’ll sit down a lot of times and say we’re all families in this room.
Everybody needs that.”