HERMISTON — A child care option for Hermiston families won’t be open during at least the first week of the school year.

Hermiston School District and the city of Hermiston have partnered with the national day care provider Champions to create a child care facility at the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center. The facility was still waiting on its licensing from the state as of the morning of Friday, Sept. 4, however.

Champions has run after-school and before-school child care programs in Hermiston schools in the past, but Hermiston Champions site coordinator Serena Gillson said moving to a new site at EOTEC means getting licensed from the state for that location. The process includes various health and safety inspections that take time to complete.

“Of course they want it to be safe, and I appreciate that,” Gillson said.

The process usually takes about three months, but Gillson said the school district didn’t decide EOTEC would be the location until a little less than a month before the school year started.

The good news, she said, is that everyone from her liaisons with the state to the fire marshal and building inspector locally have been doing what they can to speed up the process.

“Everyone I’ve been working with has been just wonderful,” she said.

When the licensing still hadn’t been approved by Thursday, Sept. 3, however, she decided to let families know then that Champions wouldn’t be opening on the first day of school on Sept. 8, and would likely be delayed until Sept. 14 or Sept. 21.

“I didn’t feel good about calling people on Friday night,” she said.

Gillson said the way EOTEC is set up, with various meeting rooms and a large ballroom that can be broken up into different pods, it could accommodate more than 100 students, but as of now they are opening up 60 slots since there are still a lot of uncertainties about Umatilla County moving through the phases of reopening.

EOTEC’s internet system is built to supply free Wi-Fi to hundreds of devices during the Umatilla County Fair, so Gillson said they should not have any problems supporting all students’ Chromebooks while helping them with distance learning.