Little Scholars Early Learning Center opens new campus in Madison Village

Mar. 20—After marking its 30th anniversary in 2023, Little Scholars Early Learning Center didn't take long in 2024 to achieve another milestone in its history.

In fact, the company opened a new Madison Village campus on Jan. 2.

"So far, it's been wonderful being in the Madison community," said Ian Lewis, owner of Little Scholars Early Learning Center.

Little Scholars provides care and educational programs for children from ages 6 weeks to 13 years old.

The company's Madison campus is located at 150 Water Tower Drive, in a building previously occupied by Choice Child Care and Preschool.

"I actually had my eyes on this building for years," Lewis said. "And it just happened that it came up for being available because the previous owners were getting ready to retire."

For Little Scholars, the new Madison Village site has become its ninth campus in Lake County. The company also has three locations in Mentor, two each in Willoughby and Painesville, and one in Eastlake.

Opening a Madison campus made sense geographically for Little Scholars, Lewis said.

"Heading east (in Lake County) was something we wanted to do for a while," he said. "We've been heavy into Mentor and Willoughby, so Madison and Painesville have been over the last two years, what we really kind of focused on in expanding our services."

Another new Little Scholars campus, located at 1865 North Ridge Road in Painesville Township, became licensed in February, according to the company's Facebook page. Some children already have pre-registered, as the campus prepares to begin fully operating, Lewis said on March 13.

Overall, Little Scholars enrolls more than 500 children at its Lake County campuses, which are staffed by a total about 80 employees.

Lewis said Little Scholars provides learning programs and care for toddlers, and children at the preschool, pre-kindergarten and school-age levels.

"We start at 6 weeks, and go all the way up to 13 years old," he said. "And we use a nationally certified curriculum, that actually starts at 6 weeks, where we are looking for developmental milestones, and we are trained to understand what to look for to move on to the next step."

Making sure that younger children are ready for kindergarten is a high priority at Little Scholars, Lewis said.

"We do lots of continuing education ourselves, to make sure that we understand things to look for, milestones to hit, that are going to make that child successful once they hit kindergarten," he said. "And it's not necessarily knowing how to write their name, or any other metric like that. But it's, 'Can you work in a small group?' 'Can you work by yourself?' 'Can you listen to another adult and comprehend the skills and the lessons they are trying to teach?' "

Little Scholars considers it very important to help children "build good habits of being able to become a lifelong learner," Lewis said.

In addition, Lewis said Little Scholars was an early adopter of Ohio's Step up to Quality initiative. This endeavor is a quality rating and improvement system for early learning and development programs.

"All of our campuses are 5-Star rated, which means we do the top line of quality metrics that the state of Ohio talks about," he said.

Little Scholars also provides latchkey services for school-age children who need care before or after their regular academic day.

"So we try to provide the wraparound care to make sure kids are, No. 1, safe, but also have transportation to and from their school, and have a space where they can interact with other kids, get some homework done, and do some activities," Lewis said.

Operating hours at all the campuses are 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, he said.

Along with its services for children, Little Scholars also devotes attention to career development for people who want to work in early learning centers.

For example, Little Schools Early Learning Centers offers an in-house program in which employees can earn a Child Development Associate credential. CDA programs aim to supply early childhood education workers with the knowledge and skills they need to provide excellent care to young children.

"By starting a CDA program, we are able to provide education for someone who goes, 'I really love children' and teach them how to properly educate themselves," said Mandi Wells, executive director of the Little Scholars Early Learning Center company.

Within the past year, Little Scholars also started a Leadership Training Program. The company hires people who aspire to become directors of early learning centers.

"We let them go to all of our different campuses," Wells said. "And they learn from the other directors who already are running our centers. Learning their strengths, learn what they'd like to improve upon and then gain the confidence to be able to go in and run one of their own centers."

Lewis said Little Scholars was established in 1993 by his mother, Michelle Lewis.

"She was an accountant by trade, and what she decided at some point, is once she had two children, the cost of child care and the care that she was able to get was not up to her standard," Lewis said. " And so she said, 'Let me see if I can do this better.' "

Michelle Lewis initially started an in-home childcare business in Mentor-on-the-Lake.

"About two years after that, she was able to find a building in downtown Willoughby, which is still operational today, and she started there with her first center," said Lewis, who joined the family business in 2011.

Lewis said he and his mother worked hard to build Little Scholars into a business that has grown and will continue to grow.

"We've taken so many different turns throughout the years, based on what we see and what we know and where we want the business to go," he said.