Making a Difference: With goals met, preschool director is retiring

Every weekday, joyful preschoolers at work and play fill the colorful Early Childhood Center on Calle de las Tiendas.

The center, part of the Sahuarita Unified School District, provides 183 youngsters with a full day of safety, happiness and education, says its director, Carol Webb.

Yet, as she prepares to retire in late June, Webb can’t help but think back to when the district first leased the building, previously the home of a charter high school. It was in December 2005 that she came on board and looked around at the large facility void of any furniture and in need of paint.

The school district receives no funding for preschools, but community donations and volunteers came to the rescue.

Webb said that builder KB Home provided $95,000 to the center for furniture and playground equipment.

“I got to do all that spending. It was really fun,” she says with a smile.

The preschool opened for business in April 2006, offering a service that had been scarce in the community.

“We opened the doors and nobody came,” Webb says. It wasn’t until that summer that families in burgeoning Sahuarita found their way there.

That August, the center also became part of school district’s Project Opportunity that serves special-needs preschoolers.

“It’s most rewarding to see the other children accepting children with disabilities,” she says.

The 31-member staff at the school now includes teachers, aides, custodians, special-needs instructors and occupational and speech therapists. The center is now part of the Child Find program that provides developmental evaluations and screenings for preschoolers, Webb adds.

“It’s turned out to be quite something,” she says.

The center serves potty-trained toddlers ages 2 years and 9 months up to kindergarten age. In the summer, it also offers programs for youngsters up to age 8.

It is tuition-based, except for the special-needs youngsters, follows Arizona preschool standards, and answers to the state Department of Education.

While the local housing boom that spurred the development of the center has slowed, parents still are signing up their toddlers every day, Webb says.

The center has become well known in the community and has good rapport with other local preschools, she says.

Webb is proud of the inclusion program’s success and how all the children grow and get ready to attend kindergarten.

The void that once existed in full-day, educational preschools has been filled, and parents new to town are able to meet other families with children and develop friendships, she points out.

Webb, 67, is wrapping up a 29-year career in early-childhood education that included work with for-profit preschools in Tucson and a music program at the University of Arizona.

She has resided in the Sahuarita area for about 18 years, and her husband Lanny’s family homesteaded here generations ago.

Webb, a mother of three and grandmother of four, is looking forward to working in her yard and around her house at McGee Ranch, attending more of her husband’s musical concerts, and becoming a court-appointed special advocate for children in Southern Arizona.

At the Early Childhood Center, “we have accomplished what we set out to do. I wouldn’t be leaving if we didn’t. The teachers are great and are hard workers. The kids are happy and the parents are happy.”

Succeeding Webb will be the center’s assistant director, Cheryl McGlothlen. “She’s a super person. I feel very safe leaving the school in her hands,” Webb says.

“It’s been a very rewarding three and half years — lots of hard work and a lot of fun, too.”

Making a Difference features folks who help make Sahuarita a great place to live. To recommend someone for this weekly series, call Karen Walenga at 547-9739, e-mail to kwalenga@gvnews.com or FAX to 625-1603.