Come Together

With the year rapidly coming to an end, planning for the upcoming year has been on the forefront of my mind. Specifically, planning for moving Terra Luz offsite.

We searched on and off for the last year, taking a break for the last few months since coming to the decision to use our residence to accomodate our growing program for this year. With the year almost halfway over, time is ticking, and I need to have property secured and the program moved offsite by summer of 2010. This deadline is a firm one, and it's only 7 months away. And I will be completely transparent in telling you all, that the process of property search, can be overwhelming.

Families, this is a call for assistance from my community who are able to help me search. The area we're searching is anywhere in the NW Austin/South Cedar Park/West Round Rock area. My [idealistic] goal has been to find a house that is commercially zoned to help keep that cohesive feeling that we have in our current program. Ideally, it would be a house that has already been converted for childcare use. And ideally, it would not have a septic system--which has been the dealbreaker for 2 of the 3 properties we were working on last year (and is now the very first question I ask). However, this has proved to be hard to come by.

My husband and I are open to considering other types of properties because what I realized  this past year, and what several of my mamas have reiterated, it's not necessarily about the property. Sure, that's an important factor, but more importantly--the teachers, the staff, the visitors who come in to work with our children, the culture built around a program--that is what makes a program truly successful. And I hope that you all have been able see a glimpse of this with what we've done this fall.

Since our business is still very small, we prefer to lease, but if the price and location is right, we may consider buying. The beauty of what I have spent the last 3 years building with my program is, that we have a strong foundation for our escuelita. We just need property.