Trinity Child Care opens its doors in Athens
By Casey Krautkramer
Trinity Child Care held its much-anticipated open house and ribbon cutting on Sunday in the former Athens Municipal Building, which once housed the village clerk’s office and board room, police department and library. Trinity Child Care signed a three-year lease with the village to use the building that is conveniently located next to Trinity Lutheran School.
Randalyn Ellenbecker has served as director of Trinity Child Care since 2018. She used a large scissors to cut a blue ribbon outside the front door of the new facility with Trinity Child Care siblings Dawson and Ila Klinski next to her. Ellenbecker told the crowd of people who gathered to watch the ribbon cutting to keep Trinity Child Care in their prayers. Pastor Mark Schwarz of Trinity Lutheran Church led the crowd in prayer to bless the new child care facility.
Trinity Child Care is open from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and provides part-time and full-time care for children ages two to 12 years old. The facility cares for children before, after and during school days and in the summer.
Parents of children attending Trinity Child Care will use the Procare Software child management system on a computer in the former police department office to check children in and out. Ellenbecker’s office is where Athens Police Chief Aaron Stencil’s former office was located.
Trinity Child Care used to operate in one classroom inside Trinity Lutheran School before moving into the renovated building. Trinity Child Care’s new expanded space allows it to care for toddlers in the room that used to be the village clerk’s office and closet. The former village room is now a cafeteria where children eat their lunch and snacks. The former library space in the back of the building has been renovated into two rooms.
Dean Frick, principal of Trinity Child Care and Trinity Lutheran School, said the new facility has the capacity to care for 28 to 30 children, compared to only 12 to 14 children in the school classroom.
“We had such a long waiting list of young children needing child care that when it was finally their turn to get in, they were already in school,” he said. “We are just excited that we are to this point today and we are glad that we have the community support for this and they have a new facility.”
Jessica Frahm, president of the newly-created Athens Area Chamber of Commerce, spoke to the crowd that gathered for the ribbon cutting about the great experience her teenage sons, ages 15 and 17, had in the initial group of children who attended daycare at Trinity Lutheran School.
“Looking back to the time my boys spent in the care of Miss Debbie (Debbie Balz) and the childcare team that stepped in as substitute parents, my boys had a great experience, which made leaving them every day a little less traumatic experience for my husband Ryan and I,” she said. “Ryan and I will always be grateful to the teachers at Trinity Child Care, and we all know what they do is done for the love of the kids. Showing them love and teaching them about Jesus, respect, teamwork, how to listen and social skills are the core building blocks of an extension to what we teach them at home.”
The Trinity School Board helped make the expansion of Trinity Child Care a reality. The board consists of chairman Tom Schaer and members Niki Punke, Dustin Gross, Shauna Christopherson and Patti Riske.
Progress Athens Foundation was started in 2021 by Tom and Lorene Mueller, Tracy Westfall and Jessica Frahm. It became a 501 (c) 3 non-profit public charity organization in 2022 for the initial purpose of raising funds to purchase the former U.S. Bank in Athens and remodeling it to relocate the municipal offices and Marathon County Public Library into this much larger space.
Progress Athens also raised funds to help Trinity Child Care renovate the former municipal offices and library into its new expanded facility so it can care for more children.
The group also collected money to renovate Athens Community Hall. Sherri Nehrbass, secretary of Progress Athens, gave people who attended the Trinity Child Care open house on Sunday a tour of Athens Community Hall. The hall renovation project consisted of the installation of a handicap accessible ramp from Trinity Child Care into the gym. Part of the former library space in the municipal hall was renovated into new areas attached to hall, including a kitchen with movable tables, men’s and women’s handicap accessible bathrooms and a closet area to store metal chairs so people no longer need to carry them down from the stage. Steps northwest of the stage going downstairs to a former were filled in with cement and it is now a storage area. Steps southwest of the stage going to a downstairs bathroom were left alone so maintenance can access the boiler, but the public is no longer allowed to use these steps. New locker rooms for home and away basketball teams were created behind the stage.
RIBBON CUTTING FOR TRINITY CHILD CARE- Randalyn Ellenbecker, director of Trinity Child Care, cuts the ribbon on Sunday to open Trinity Child Care with the help of childcare kids Dawson Kilinski, left, and his sister, Ila.
STAFF PHOTO/CASEY KRAUTKRAMER
