Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/stepping-stone-schools-model-service-for-all/5023391/
Rhonda Paver intended to work as a teacher when she and her family moved to Austin, Texas, in 1979. Right off, she needed to find child care for her three children. Unsatisfied with the many large and small operations she looked into, Rhonda visited one final small house. The child care provider, looking exhausted, said she simply couldn’t go on in her business. Right then and there, drawing on her Alaskan family history of pioneering entrepreneurship, Rhonda decided she was going to build what she could not find. She and her family moved into that very building. The family lived on one side. On the other, Rhonda started an early care and education business with her three children, her nephew, and a neighbor’s child. Thirty-seven years, 20 schools, tens of thousands of families, and over 75,000 well-educated children later, Rhonda is not slowing down one bit.
What is Rhonda’s secret? Her goal in 1979 was to provide the best possible care for her own and her neighbors’ children. A continuing passion for providing high-quality care and education for children, with excellent customer service to their families, animates Rhonda. She notes, “The Stepping Stone School program focuses on the experience of the whole ...