CDC Buys DuBois Business College Building in Venango County

VENANGO CO., Pa. (EYT) – Child Development Centers has purchased the former DuBois Business College building in Oil City, and the organization soon will open the facility that has space for six Head Start and Head Start Supplemental Assistance Program (HSSAP) classrooms.

The structure at East Third and Grant Streets in the city’s East End housed Grant Street Elementary School before DuBois Business College occupied the building for many years.
CDC bought the facility, which it is naming Grant Street Child Development Center, to make room for as many as 120 Head Start and HSSAP students for which it has openings.

Enrollment of these three-, four–, and five-year-old children will be funded with CDC’s five-year, $19 million federal Head Start grant and its one-year state HSSAP grant.
In addition to these 120 openings, CDC still has room for about 100 more Head Start and HSSAP enrollments in Venango and Crawford Counties, according to Chief Executive Officer Rina Irwin.

DuBois Business College permanently closed all four of its campuses last year, and it offered the Oil City building to CDC after becoming aware that the non-profit child care and early childhood learning organization was in the market for more classroom space, Irwin said.

CDC currently has only two Head Start classrooms in Oil City – one each at its Oil City center at 210 East Bissell Avenue and its Hasson Heights facility at 255 Park Avenue – so the Grant Street structure “will allow us to greatly extend our reach into Oil City and to make Head Start available to more children in that area,” Irwin said.

CDC also has five Pennsylvania Pre-K Counts and Preschool classrooms at the Oil City and Hasson Heights centers, where infants and toddlers (Oil City) and elementary school-age children (Hasson Heights) also are enrolled.

CDC has named Saddie Turner as director of Grant Street CDC, and the organization is proceeding with cleaning, painting, plumbing and electrical work, installation of carpeting, and setting up classrooms in preparation for opening the facility later this winter.

Turner holds a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education from Slippery Rock University and has almost five years of service with CDC, mostly at its Franklin School-Age center, where she was a summer employee and assistant teacher. She also was a lead teacher at CDC’s Seventh Street Head Start Center in Franklin.

The Grant Street building is one of two new sites that CDC will occupy this year in Oil City. The organization also will move administrative functions soon from Franklin to the former BHS Seneca Medical Center of Oil City facility at 155 East Bissell Avenue. Dr. Kip Beals, Dr. Bradley Fell and Butler Health System donated that building late last year to CDC after they brought together Seneca Medical Center’s Oil City, Franklin, and Seneca offices in Seneca.

In addition to the Grant Street structure, CDC owns five centers in Oil City, Franklin, and Cranberry. The organization also leases classroom space at one site in Franklin, one in Clintonville, three in Meadville, and one in Saegertown, all for Head Start.

CDC’s enrollment is at an all-time high of 965, and it will continue to grow as it fills Head Start openings in Venango and Crawford Counties, Irwin said.