The Goddard School for Early Childhood Development, a national childhood education franchise, continues to expand its presence in Northeast Ohio. The franchise hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for its newest location at 54 North Chillicothe Road last Wednesday afternoon in Aurora.
“I am ecstatic. I am over the moon,” co-owner Kim DiMuzio told The Weekly Villager. “I live two miles away and my grandson is going to be attending here. It is the first one around here that we are building from the ground up. It is nice to see the process because the other ones were out-of-state.”
The franchise will begin digging the foundation this week and plans to have the new building open its doors between the Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. DiMuzio and her business partners have contracted Adkins Building Company, a construction company based in Akron, to build the new school.
It will be the third Goddard School located in the Northeast Ohio area, with Schools already existing in Hudson and Chagrin Falls but it is the first on-site location in the area that DiMuzio and her business partners will have built from the ground up.
Once the new Goddard School’s doors open, classes will begin immediately and they are already accepting applications for students who attend pre-school in neighboring communities.
“Most of the children are already going to a pre-school and are probably not happy there so they will transition over to this school,” DiMuzio noted. “I do have current families in my own location that wants to come over here because they live in Aurora and because there are not many places for them to go here.”
DiMuzio said once the School opens, she will transfer some of her staff from the Chagrin Falls location to teach at Aurora but will look for external candidates as well to complete the staff.
Monica Duda, the assistant director of the Chagrin Falls location, will be one of the staff members moving to the Aurora location and will assume the responsibilities of school center director.
Once classes begin, the Goddard School will follow a schedule similar to the ones that other local preschools follow but will continue classes in the summer.
“We never close,” DiMuzio added. “Goddard has a regular school year and then in 10 weeks, usually the beginning of June until the middle of August, we usually have summer camp but we are still doing all of the curriculum of the summer and we just have a lot of school majors that come during the summer.”
Also in attendance for the groundbreaking ceremony were members of the Aurora City Council, Aurora Chamber of Commerce members, the Goddard Systems LLC executive committee, the Adkins Building Company team and Aurora Mayor Ann Womer Benjamin.
Womer Benjamin offered a few words to Aurora Goddard School owners.
“We have a lot of young and new families joining and now you are moving in,” she told the owners.
Jacqueline Burls, the Senior Vice President of Goddard Schools, also had a few words of encouragement to share.
“We believe in you and we are so thrilled you are supporting this community,” she said.
DiMuzio, a member of West Geauga’s graduating class of 1990, has been involved with childhood education for a long time.
Before becoming a Goddard School owner, she served as a teacher at the Pioneer Preschool in Solon, then started her own interior design business and eventually joined the Goddard franchise with her husband, Scott.
“Childhood education is important because children are our future,” she said. “What is a better answer than that? We want to set them up socially and emotionally and we want them to be confident young people going into kindergarten.”
DiMuzio and her husband opened their first Goddard School six years ago in Chagrin Falls and opened four others in Hudson, downtown Pittsburgh, Springfield and King of Prussia, PA.
Of the five already existing Goddard Schools hat the DiMuzios own, only two were built from scratch as they purchased the buildings in Chagrin Falls, Hudson and King of Prussia. DiMizio said she and her husband were always interested in building an Aurora location because of the promising business opportunities in the City.
“I think Aurora has been lacking a premiere preschool quite frankly and we see everything that is coming around us,” she noted. “We see everything they are building right now in Geauga Lake and these parents need somewhere to set these kids up for success before they go to kindergarten.”
