Faith-Based Preschool, a Quality Choice

Sixteen years ago, Barbara Solis received a phone call from the pastor at the Peoples Church asking if she would help open a preschool. Ms. Solis, who had two children of her own, understood families’ need for an enriching and safe place for their children during the day, and was excited to open a preschool in a community with such great need for a high-quality program.

With her long-time colleague, Monica Bryant, she opened the doors of the Peoples Child Care Center preschool in 1995, and less than a year later expanded the program to include infant care. The Peoples Child Care Center now serves over 80 3-and 4-year-old preschoolers and 16 infants from around the Fresno community. “My passion is to provide the best care to the community and help parents,” Ms. Solis says. “My door is always open, it’s never closed.”

Being connected with the church allows Ms. Solis to offer counsel to the children and families at the Center. It also allows her and her staff to connect families with community-based services such as Exceptional Parents Unlimited, which has assisted in providing services to children with early signs of autism and other special needs.

In preschool classrooms with children’s names hanging on stars from the ceilings and the alphabet, days of the week and seasons decorating the walls, teachers use the faith-based A Beka curriculum. In one classroom, a credentialed kindergarten teacher plays in an indoor sandbox with 4 year olds, teaching them about texture, while down the hall, two 3 year-old girls thumb through books in a reading corner, pretending to read to one another as they have seen the teacher do.

Parents and children alike feel at home in the warm, colorful classrooms decorated with large 3-dimensional murals, indoor play structures and tables filled with puzzles and Legos. One parent, Sabrina Gutierrez, who has been bringing her 3 year-old son, Maddox, here since he was 5 months old, talks about how comfortable she is with the staff. “I love these women,” Gutierrez says, tears welling up in her eyes. “Trusting the people you leave your kids with is so important.”