(Jan. 25, 2016) — The US Bankruptcy Court accepted the bid by Winston Prouty Center for Child Development to purchase The Austine School for the Deaf campus in Brattleboro.
The Austine School, which was part of the Vermont Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (VCDHH), closed at the end of the 2014 school year. VCDHH, which included a number of support and educational programs, closed in September and the organization declared bankruptcy.
Rather than pursue a long-planned $2.4 million expansion of its facility, including an early education center and community-based services, which is located across from Living Memorial Park, Winston Prouty decided to use its financial resources to purchase the Austine campus. “It would be great to have space where we could not only meet our needs but also collaborate with other nonprofits that might need space,” Chloe Learey, Winston Prouty executive director, said, “This will create an exciting opportunity to work together in new ways.” Winston Prouty’s winning bid was $2.75M. It is anticipating a loan of about $500K, depending on the sale of the current building and capital campaign.
Brattleboro Music Center has signed apurchase and sale agreement for Winston Prouty’s existing facility.The Winston Prouty Center for Child Development provides inclusive education and family support to promote the success of children and families.
It is comprised of the Early Learning Center and Community Based Services, which includes Children’s Integrated Services, the stateof Vermont’s program for providing support to young children (infant to 6) and their families; the Early Education Initiative collaboration with Windham Southeast Supervisory Union; and Family Supportive Housing, a program to help families with young children who are homeless find and maintain housing.
The Early Learning Center offers early care and education for children age 14 months through five years. Children’s Integrated Services includes early intervention, family support, early childhood family mental health, nursing, and specialized child care. Currently Prouty serves about 50 families in its facility on Guilford Street.
Moving to the Austine campus would allow it to add 15 or 20 more families. In its community-based programs, Prouty serves another 150 families on any given day. Moving to Austine will allow Winston Prouty to add infant care to the Early Learning Center and allow some of Prouty’s partner agencies to work together under the same roof. “That will be more efficient and make collaboration better,” said Learey.
Prouty’s vision for the former Austine campus is to create partnerships with other organizations that buy into the campus and would be similar to a condo association. Currently, High Five Adventure Learning, INSPIRE School for Autism, Garland School, UVM Extension and NewEngland Center for Circus Arts are among the organizations renting space on the Austine campus.
Chloe Learey, Winston Prouty executive director can be reached at 802-257-7852
Nice work
What a great outcome. This seems like it should be a smart plan – grouping a bunch of semi-similar services for helping kids and families into a campus setting. The devil is always in the details, but at first glance, this looks like a plan that could very well succeed and boost all involved.
hope you are right
I admire your optimism and I really hope you are correct. From my perspective all I see is a potential nightmare. This is a VERY old campus with a guarantee that the previous owners did a lot of deferred maintenance due to a lack of resources, which means trouble with roofs and furnaces and driveways, etc. Yikes. And these buildings are not energy efficient. I’ve seen the financial statements of a number of the potential non-profit tenants and I just don’t see where the extra money will be to keep up with the new expenses. Plus, it is not in Winston Prouty’s mission to be a landlord overseeing a condo association. It could be seen as a classic example of “mission drift.”
costs
I think you’ve nailed the biggest worry – maintenance costs. Buildings cost a lot of money.
I think the grouping is key to it working – no one entity will be responsible for the building’s costs, and it can be spread out a bit. One hopes… : )
Plus, I’d imagine but don’t know for sure, that there are some grants and state, federal funds for buildings that will be used for children and education. (In my perfect world, there would be lots of money for that sort of thing.)
Hopefully some volunteers can step up to help with the old building. Actually, that would be a good local organization for builders to form – a group to help non-profits fix up buildings so they’d save money.