City daycare takes the name of longtime supporters
Benoit, Brown honored at ceremony
WOONSOCKET — If you drive by the Highland Park Children’s Center at 2390 Mendon Road in the near future, you will see the Woonsocket Head Start Children’s Development Association daycare has a new name.
The center has just renamed itself the Benoit-Brown Children’s Center in honor of two of its longtime supporters – former state Rep. Nancy L. Benoit and Douglas T. Brown, a former member of the Woonsocket School Committee and longtime member of the Woonsocket Redevelopment Agency.
The change was noted during a gathering at Highland Park Children’s Center on Monday night that drew Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, City Council President Daniel Gendron, Councilman Christopher Beauchamp, state Treasurer Seth Magaziner and a
long list of Woonsocket Head Start supporters, staff members and partners.
Maganizer noted the importance of Woonsocket Head Start’s work while speaking to the gathering: “Long before I was a state treasurer I was an elementary school teacher.”
Teaching in the third and fourth grades, Magaziner said he could “tell you firsthand how important early childhood education is.
“There was a real difference when my third-graders came in at the beginning of the year and you could tell which students had benefited from Head Start, had early childhood, pre-K, and had formal education early in life and those that didn’t,” he said.
Although the students who didn’t participate in a pre-school program could still catch up, Magaziner said there was a “real tangible difference,” at first.
“So I want to come here today to support everybody in this facility, the administration the staff, everybody who makes this work possible because, of course, you are building the next generation here and it is so important to start early in a nurturing and formal way, and thank you for that work,” Magaziner said.
As for the honorees, Magaziner said he had gotten to know Benoit over the past few years and described her as one of the few elected officials to leave a “legacy” when they leave office. Benoit’s record for attention to issues affecting children was a legacy deserving of her honor.
“There are very few people who are out of office for 16 years who are still remembered and talked about the way Nancy is and that is a real testament,” Magaziner said.
Although he didn’t know Brown as well, Magaziner said he did know him to be “involved in everything.”
The list of Brown’s public service involvement “goes off the page,” he said while noting the number of committees, non-profit boards and organizations Brown serves on.
“So it really does seem to a be a fitting honor that these two would have the facility named for them,” Magaziner said.
And while offering he doesn’t expect anything to be named for him in that way, Magaziner noted that if it were to happen, “I would want it to be a place like this.
“I would want it to be place for young people where the next generation is learning to love learning and to grow and to build relationships for the first time,” he said.
Benoit described the tribute as a “really great honor,” and added that she felt it was “wonderful” to share it with Brown.
“We both have been involved in this community the same number of years. I think I’m older but not by much,” Benoit said while drawing applause from the gathering.
Benoit described Woonsocket Head Start as starting out with just a couple of classrooms in the early 1960s and 1970s, and noted that it eventually grew into a program that today operates not only Highland, but also early Head Start extended programs and after-school programs and additional centers at Cass Park in the former Navy Reserve Base buildings, the Jimmy Ray Center on Bourdon Boulevard and the new Karen Bouchard Center, named for a late Head Start executive director, on Warwick Street.
The Highland Children’s Center was actually founded with the help of a General Assembly contribution of $100,000 in startup funding in the mid-1980s with a goal of serving the families of employees in the newly established Highland Industrial Park, also home to the growing locally-based pharmacy chain, CVS.
The center was actually owned by the Woonsocket Industrial Development Corp. (WIDC) and always operated by Woonsocket Head Start until a couple of years ago, when WIDC sold the center to Woonsocket Head Start so the organization could continue to operate it on Mendon Road, she noted.
“This place is the perfect place for lots of families,” Benoit said.
“And so for something this important to folks, for the development of young children and for the peace of mind of young families and the work that it does here, it is a won- derful thing to have my name associated with it,” Benoit said while thanking the group for her honor.
Brown told how he had attended the groundbreaking for the center back in the 1980s and said “it wasn’t so much a groundbreaking as it was a mud-kicking. It was pouring rain. We had to put down plywood sheets so people could walk on them and not sink,” he said.
“And I can remember talking to some people and the concept was this would provide child care for the few businesses that were already there at the top of the hill,” he said while noting a company called Consumer Value Stores (CVS) was among them.
“So we would provide child care for them and hopefully attract other businesses in the future,” he said. Over time that theory proved to be a valid one, Brown noted.
“I chair the Woonsocket Redevelopment Agency, which is responsible for the Woonsocket side of this corporate park, and I am happy to say the Woonsocket side is full,” Brown said. He added that “we can trace the success of that park right here,” to the center.
“What a great success, it actually did make a difference in the early years that the businesses had a place for their employees to have their kids taken care of,” Brown said.
While it had not been decided early on who would run the Highland Center, Brown said “we were fortunate that they didn’t want a profit-making organization and Woonsocket Head Start was just a natural as a non-profit,” he said.
Brown said he learned the importance of the Head Start program himself one day when visiting the Jimmy Ray Center on Bourdon Boulevard and learning about different methods used to enhance a child’s early experiences in learning.
“And it struck me, it hit me, that Head Start wasn’t so much about giving kids an advantage, a head start, so much as it was about giving them a level playing field, maybe even and equal starting line,” Brown said.