The James City County Recreation Center is no longer offering evening child care after nearly a year of low usage.
As of July 1, the Recreation Center on Longhill Road has suspended its evening child care. Care is now offered 9 a.m. to noon Mondays through Saturdays.
When Centers Administrator Carla Brittle started working at the center two years ago, there was no evening child care. She implemented care until 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, but found about 11 families used it.
Monthly data gathered from March 2013 until the beginning of the year showed an average of 2.4 kids per week were left in child care during the evenings, but the center would go several days with no children in evening care.
During August 2013, the center had 181 kids in morning child care, and 62 in the evenings.
Brittle said two staff members are required for child care, and she found she was often paying two employees to sit at work while nobody needed their services.
Though Brittle is empathetic toward families who use the evening child care, she said it was not fiscally responsible to pay staff members when their services were not required. She has allowed members to cancel their memberships and receive refunds if the lack of child care means the gym does not meet their needs. Three members have canceled.
While child care services were cut, other parts of the gym have been expanding and updating. The gym has several pieces of new equipment — two recumbent and two upright bikes and a new treadmill — which have replaced older equipment. One older recumbent bike has been maintained to increase the number of bikes available in the gym. Two new spin bikes have been added to the classroom, increasing the spin class size capacity to 11.
