Friday, Nov. 21, 1997 | 10:47 a.m.
The 10,000 employees who work at McCarran International Airport can now park their kids at an on-site day care center.
The $3 million McCarran Child Development Center has been operating for three weeks with about 60 children ranging in age from infants to toddlers whose parents are willing to pay $105 or more each week for up to 50 hours a week of care.
At that price, it's more than what most child care facilities in Clark County charge. But parents say it's worth the price for the convenience and security they're getting for themselves and their children.
"I'm two minutes away if anything happens," said Bryce Nuttall, a Southwest Airlines employee, while dropping off his 16-month-old son Jacob Thursday morning.
It's also worth it to see his son happy, Nuttall said, recalling the horrors of an unnamed pre-school where Jacob had last been incarcerated.
"It was a nightmare," Nuttall said. "I would drop him off and wonder all day what's going on. Now I don't have to wonder what he's doing all day. At the other place he'd start crying when we pulled into parking lot. Now he's laughing and giggling."
That could be because the company that runs the place has a lot of experience in child care. Bright Horizons, the national child-care chain that contracted to run the 20,000-square-foot facility, has on-site day care centers at 150 businesses around the country, including Universal and Paramount studios.
The only other airport to contract with Bright Horizons to date is John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. The facility there opened three years ago and the company is in preliminary talks with the Reno airport.
The McCarran center is licensed to hold 225 children but is expected to top out at 205, said center director Richard Garceau.
"That's to keep smaller group sizes in these classes," Garceau said.
Next year, Garceau said, the center hopes to have a licensed kindergarten and eventually expand to take children up to 12 years old.
Assistant Director Nikki Carolin, who worked at Nellis Air Force Base for several years and is a certified pre-school teacher, said all the staff have some prior experience with children and teachers have at least an associate's degree.
Kelly May, who supervises a group of one to two year olds who are just beginning to test their walking and talking skills, described the "child centered curriculum for their unique development."
That means table manners at lunch, learning to say good-bye and having strangers change their diapers.
"We let them work out their own problems," May said. "We're there for them, but we don't do it for them."
The children in May's class were lively, pushing scooters and running up a carpeted ramp.
In another room for three and four year olds, a girl sat at a table drawing and singing. Christine Villagran watched her son playing with another child while she cut into some brown construction paper at a table downsized for munchkins.
"My son was at home before the center opened," said Villagran, whose husband works for Avis. "Now he's not shy anymore and helps at home."
Tonya Willis, whose husband works for America West Airlines, said she wasn't happy with the last day care center her daughter attended. It wasn't clean, it didn't seem very secure, and it seemed like they didn't have enough to keep her daughter busy.
"There, she'd come home grumpy and cranky," Willis said. "Now she doesn't want to come home."
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