The child care situation, in three scenes
Parents push Purdue as a provider pulls out of a campus center. West Lafayette looks to dial in on an early childhood education project. Right Steps’ $10M plans advance at old Hanna Center site.
The child care situation, played out this week in three scenes …
WEST LAFAYETTE LOOKS TO ENGINEERING DESIGN STUDY TO DIAL IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION CENTER DETAILS
West Lafayette on Wednesday continued to work toward an early childhood education center, agreeing to pay $244,000 to StudioAXIS, an Indianapolis-based firm picked in December to design a potential project along Kalberer Road.
The city has been looking to put an early childhood education center that could accommodate between up to 125 slots in a roughly 10,000-square-foot facility, just east of Fire Station No. 3 and across from the John Dennis Wellness Center. That followed an agreement, approved in May 2025, that saw Purdue Research Foundation donating the three acres along Kalberer Road to the city.
West Lafayette officials had been signaling that the spot along the northern edge of the city would be right since August 2024, when it finished a joint study on early child education options with the West Lafayette and Tippecanoe school corporations.
That study – which focused on areas primarily served by West Lafayette, Klondike, Burnett Creek and Battle Ground elementaries – used parent surveys to show there was a shortage of between 75 and 125 early childhood education slots in that area in the city and north and west of West Lafayette. Even then, city officials said they believed that estimate was low and were ready to invest in a center built by the city and run by a third party as a way to address a shortage of child care slots.
During a city-organized forum in spring 2024, David Purpura – a Purdue professor and director of the university’s Center for Early Learning, and now at West Lafayette school board member – said that of the 13,000 children ages 0-5 in Tippecanoe County, 9,000 need child care. He said there were 6,000 slots available in existing regulated centers in Tippecanoe County. That left a gap of 3,000. Part of the problem, Purpura said at the time, was space. Another was high turnover – roughly 50% annually – of child care lead and assistant teachers, who have jobs that pay $10 to $17 an hour, he said.
Part of StudioAXIS’ work will look at what sort of business models in a city-built facility can help put a dent in available affordable child care.
“One of the real factors, in my mind, is the affordability issue,” Larry Oates, president of the West Lafayette Redevelopment Commission, said before a vote on the design contract with StudioAXIS. “It’s going to be tough. We have to figure out the business model. There’s a lot of very smart people out there that are operating today trying to figure it out, too.”
