Orlando preschool looks to set new standard for childcare

ORLANDO, Fla. — Like many parents, Imani Brooks struggled to find affordable childcare after the birth of her son, with her search made more complicated because he has cerebral palsy.

When she finally found a place that could provide her baby the extra help he needed, she learned it was a 30-minute drive from her home near Orlando’s Camping World Stadium and so expensive she debated whether she’d be better off quitting her job.

Then a doorhanger was placed on homes in her neighborhood advertising a preschool opening nearby, one that promised top-notch care and therapy, with tuition subsidies for families who needed them.

“Half the people here didn’t believe it,” Brooks said.

But AdventHealth’s West Lakes Early Learning Center, which opened in 2020 with the aim of bringing quality early learning to the low-income community, met its promise, said Brooks, whose son Xavier was in its inaugural class.

The center, funded by grants and AdventHealth, is in the Washington Shores neighborhood, where it provides childcare, preschool, health and wellness care and social services to families like Xavier’s.

Now the West Lakes center is joining an initiative called WeVision EarlyEd Solutions Lab that will bolster its mission. WeVision is providing money to 22 childcare providers across the country — West Lakes is the only one in Florida — to help them improve their programs, make it easier for families to access their services and showcase ideal childcare practices.

The new initiative, like the preschool itself, is paid for by the Bainum Family Foundation, a Maryland nonprofit that made a $100-million, five-year commitment to early childhood issues in 2024. Bainum believes it can establish model preschools through WeVision that will help its effort to lobby for more public money for childcare.

AdventHealth built West Lakes with a $12.75 million grant from Bainum. It declined to say how much was devoted to the WeVision inititiatve.

Across Florida, and the nation, parents struggle to find affordable childcare. In Florida, the average annual cost is more than $12,600 for an infant and more than $9,000 for a four-year-old, according to Child Care Aware of America. They also sometimes struggle to find quality programs, even as experts say early learning is key to children’s success once they start kindergarten.

Financial aid to help parents in need is limited, and to date there seem to be few prospects for government or businesses to provide more. Childcare centers struggle, too, eager not to price out parents but facing rising costs for rent, insurance and worker pay.

“This is one of those crises, kind of like the housing crisis, where most families are asking for childcare support,” said Marica Cox Mitchell, chief program officer at the Bainum Family Foundation.

“We’re shifting the conversation from how broken the childcare system is to demonstrating that the ideal childcare system is possible,” Mitchell said.

West Lakes offers babies and young children the kind of activities experts say promote early learning and help children prepare for formal schooling. The state-of-the-art,1,600-square-foot facility has the capacity to serve 150 children, ages 6 months to 5 years old.

“The first 2,000 days of a child’s life matter the most. It’s when their brains are developing the fastest,” said Alfred Clark, the center’s director.

The new money will allow West Lakes to continue key services that families have come to rely on, Clark said, like providing free baby wipes and diapers and waiving tuition in November and December.

“Because we know that’s a high stress time for families,” he said. “What WeVision allows us to do is to be creative and to remove barriers for families.”

When Xavier was six months old, Brooks needed childcare so she could return to work. But the nearby programs were mostly small daycares run from neighbors’ homes.

“It was a concern of, would he be able to get the extra help to hopefully meet those milestones, or would he have a regression due to the lack of resources in the neighborhood,” Brooks said.

She found a preschool in Windermere that seemed ideal, but it cost $1,300 a month, a stretch for the single mother who works for a nonprofit.

“At the time, I was trying to weigh out, was it more affordable for me to not work and stay home to take care of Xavier? Or is it better for me to work and just try and figure out the financial piece?” Brooks said.

At West Lakes, tuition is based on a family’s income, so Brooks had to pay just $30 a month for Xavier’s care.

Because it is part of AdventHealth, therapists from the hospital came to the school to work with Xavier at no additional cost.

Xavier graduated from the preschool in 2024. He is now in kindergarten and doing well thanks, in part, to the support he got at West Lakes, Brooks said. Therapists at the center taught Xavier to hold a pencil and move on the playground, things that took extra effort due to his disability, Brooks said.

“They were able to work with him in real time and meet him where he was so that he could perform in his classroom safely,” Brooks said.

It is success stories like Xavier’s that Bainum hopes will lead to change.

“Too often, when we talk about the childcare solution, we point to Finland and Germany,” viewed as models for publicly supported early childhood education. “So WeVision EarlyEd is saying it can also happen here,” Mitchell said.

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