To the casual observer peeking inside Destrehan High School’s (DHS) Morning Care program on any given school weekday, the operation may look and feel like just a school-run daycare, but behind the curtains, it’s much more.
The vocational-focused daycare program, the only of its kind within the St. Charles Parish Public School System, pairs up the young children of Destrehan High employees in need of morning daycare services with responsible students in Destrehan High’s Special Education Department, helping train them on new job skills and a potential vocation beyond high school.
Other morning day care programs exist in other lower-level St. Charles Parish Public schools for parents of younger children, but this program is the only one designed to benefit both onsite school employee parents as well as high school students who can become part of the program by taking a class.
“It provides affordable, before school childcare for our teachers and staff, which is not always easy to find,” Chris Mire, Special Education teacher and current Special Education Department chair, said. “It also provides our students, who might be interested in careers involving childcare and primary education, an opportunity to begin working on the vocational skills necessary for those fields.”
The teacher-supervised program has run at DHS for around eight years, allowing students hands-on learning and skills building as they care for the 20-plus children of faculty and staff enrolled in the program each morning. The daycare program has been a hit for faculty and staff that work at DHS, Mire said, and the program continues to grow each year.
“It’s definitely a weight off your shoulders when you don’t have to go to a different location to drop off your kids or wait for a daycare to open and then rush to school,” Mire mentioned. “I was one of those teachers early on who, before I was actually teaching the class, my own children would come to Morning Care.”
Morning Care implements various educational activities for children enrolled in the program, including puzzles, games and arts and crafts, altering the activity for the individual needs of each child.
The program takes advantage of Destrehan High’s somewhat central location on the East Bank of St. Charles Parish. Once East Bank area elementary and middle school start times draws near, St. Charles Parish School buses arrive at DHS to pick up and deliver the children to their various lower-level East Bank St. Charles Parish schools like Harry Hurst, which is a relatively short distance away.
DHS Special Education students that take the Morning Care class have in some cases been able to transition from the Morning Care program into other schools in the area that may need classroom aides.
“There are [also] a few daycares in the area that will call us for references or ask us If we have any candidates,” Mire said. “I really do feel like our Special Education students need more opportunities that are available to them when they transition out of high school – whether it’s this program or another –more opportunities [that] we have within our community to have a career and a future after high school is what we’re here for.”
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