A Message from the Board to Milestones Families

Dear MELC Families,

We hope you are all doing well. Thank you for making Milestones a part of your family and a special part of your children’s lives.

This past year has certainly been challenging. We are hopeful, though, about the progress we are all experiencing as we continue to return to “normal” in our lives and throughout the community.

We are sending this letter to express our gratitude to all of you for staying with the Center and for your flexibility. As you know, MELC is going through a time of change management. Dana David and Becky Thacker have decided to pursue new opportunities and will be leaving Milestones. The full Board of Directors with help from Dana, Becky and the Milestones team are working to minimize any disruption this leadership transition may cause.

We’d like to take this opportunity to communicate some important decisions related to leadership of the organization the board has recently made. We’ve decided to hire three administrators going forward. The Assistant Director of Operations & Childcare and the Director of Childcare will be focused on daily operations and a new Executive Director will be focused on the business aspects of running Milestones, which is a nonprofit business.

To date, we have hired two of our new leaders. Joni Staley will join Milestones as our new Executive Director beginning May 24, 2021. Joni will bring to the Center extensive business, sales, and marketing experience. As the head of the organization, she will provide overall management and lead business development activities to ensure the Center’s financial well-being. She will lead annual planning, budgeting, marketing, communications, fundraising, and board development. She will set the Center’s vision and strategy in partnership with the board and execute against goals and key performance indicators to successfully deliver on the mission of Milestones. Together, Joni and Renee will build a positive culture for our youth, all of you, and our staff so that all stakeholders have a great experience with Milestones.

Renee Lafontaine joined as our Director of Childcare and began this week. She brings decades of early childhood experience and a deep commitment to children and families. In her role, she is responsible for all daily operations, serving as liaison to families to keep you apprised of the activities of your children and their classrooms, ensuring that all regulatory and compliance requirements are successfully met, leading all programming and curriculum development, managing enrollment and staffing, and supporting the Executive Director to achieve the annual goals and needs of the Center.

One of Joni’s and Renee’s immediate priorities will be to actively recruit new teachers to help normalize our staffing levels and meet the needs of our current and future families. Given circumstances related to the pandemic, childcare, like several other industries, is experiencing serious difficulties in finding qualified teachers. If you know of any qualified teachers, please let Joni and Renee know. We welcome your input.

We are actively recruiting for the third position, Manager of Operations. Again, if you may know of any great candidates, please reach out.

Our commitment to Milestones remains stronger than ever before, and we believe our new leadership team will help stabilize and grow the organization so that it can thrive for another 100 years!

We thank both Dana David and Becky Thacker for their tremendous dedication and long-term service to Milestones, and we wish them both future success.

Thank you again for being part of Milestones. We will continue to be transparent with you, and we look forward to having you all meet both Joni and Renee in the near future. Their emails are joni@celebratemilestones.org and renee@celebratemilstones.org.

With appreciation,
Milestones Board of Directors