ANAHEIM : Child Care Center Closes After 11 Years

After 11 years of finger-painting, building sandcastles and constructing towers with blocks, the staff and students at Orchard Child Care Center bade farewell Friday to the place many called a second home.

Orchard, which was run by the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District, closed Friday to make room for more classrooms at Esperanza High School.

The center had been using four classrooms on the high school’s west campus. However, as enrollment climbed at Esperanza, the district decided to transfer Orchard’s 100 students to other district centers.

When it opened in June, 1982, Orchard was one of two centers formed to offer day care for elementary students during the summer and before and after school. The center also offered day care for preschool children all year round.

Robin Kopchynski enrolled her then-3-year-old-daughter, Katie, at the center that first summer, and has been with the school ever since. When she found out the director was looking for more teachers, she interviewed for the job and was hired on the spot.

Kopchynski, now on maternity leave after the birth of her second daughter, Molly, in March, said the closing of Orchard is both exciting and sad.

“I’m looking forward to a change, to see if we can re-create what we had here,� said Kopchynski, who will transfer to the Wagner Child Care Center. “But this place has been like home.�

Director Karen Robinson, who came to Orchard in November, 1982, said most of the 50 preschool students will transfer to child care centers at Linda Vista and Wagner elementary schools. To accommodate school-age students, all of whom attend Glenview Elementary School, that school will form a before- and after-school program.

To prepare students for the center’s closing, Robinson and the teachers made a chain of 18 paper links. Every day since June 1, the children have torn off one link, then talked about what would happen when they got to the last link.

“We’ve been telling them we’re all moving on to new adventures and new schools,� said teacher Tiffany Hessel.