Daycare is Too Expensive
Daycare is expensive, no news there. When I found myself pregnant with my second baby, I realized that if I continued to work as a middle school Spanish teacher at a school with comparatively good pay and benefits, I would be paying to work if I had two kids enrolled in daycare. What was I going to do?
My uncle’s idea: “Why don’t you open a home daycare?” I looked at him like he had two heads. “Me? With small children all day? I don’t even know what to do with Gabriela (my then 16-month old) on weekends!”
At this point, we lived in Aberdeen, I worked in Middle River, my husband worked in Baltimore and surrounding areas, and Gabriela’s daycare was nowhere en route for either of us: Forest Hill. Why? Because I had raised Gabriela since birth to be bilingual, and there were no Spanish immersion daycares or anything of the sort in our area. I settled for the one daycare that had a native Spanish speaking teacher in the class she would be in: Ms. Liliana, from Colombia.
I loved teaching middle schoolers; giving their sass back to them was almost as fun as teaching college. Plus, teaching sixth grade Spanish meant I was laying the foundation for what could be their love of Spanish and language learning. I loved being their first exposure to my favorite thing.
But open a home daycare? How would I do that? What would happen to my house? And more importantly, what would I do with small children? What could I teach them?!
…Spanish?
Lightbulb!
There are no Spanish immersion daycares. I know Spanish. I teach Spanish. I want my kids to know Spanish. BINGO!
Opening Harford County’s Only Bilingual Home Daycare
So, while five months pregnant and working full time as a teacher and a mom, I began the process to get my home and myself licensed to operate a registered family childcare center. I finished my last class for licensing when my youngest, Sofia, was about two weeks old and got officially licensed soon thereafter.
It’s been a little over two years since I opened, and my littles have learned so much: some children prefer to use some Spanish words in place of English with their English-speaking families. It is so cool!
Since launching the only Spanish dual immersion home daycare, I’ve also been contacted to teach Spanish classes to everyone from babies to adults and have facilitated classes. I did this at We Rock the Spectrum, community organizations, my own home, and other home daycares for a little while. Unfortunately, however, I learned that my bandwidth isn’t large enough to accommodate being a mom, daycare teacher, and private tutor, though I love teaching. I did try, though!
Another inquiry I’ve seen and been asked multiple times was about nontraditional hours and schedules, such as for those working overnight shifts, those working long shifts at the hospital, and those working as EMTs, firefighters, etc. Unfortunately, the earliest opening time for a daycare around here is 5am, and that’s for one (new) home daycare. Centers open at 6am. Most home daycares close at 5pm at the latest, and centers are 6, maaaaybe 6:30 if you’re lucky. Where does that leave nurses who work 7-7 at the hospital? Relying on unlicensed providers or maybe on family and friends. That really sucks!
The Beginning of BELLA
It’s no surprise to anyone who knows me that I want to incorporate Spanish and language learning in anything I do. So, while talking with a handful of other providers across the state and country, as well as local community organizations and government workers in HARCO, I made sure, and confirmed, that there is definitely a need for early language education, in addition to overnight childcare.
Another need that I hadn’t thought about before was that of transportation for families without cars. I learned that many warehouses and overnight employers lack sufficient employees, especially during the second and third shifts, because the limited public transportation offered stops running in the evening. Thanks to advice and encouragement from people at the Judy Centers and local government, transportation to and from the center and evening workplaces became a core part of my business plan and PowerPoint presentation. Many businesses and organizations told me to keep them posted as BELLA developed.
What is BELLA?
BELLA stands for Bilingual Early Language Learning and Acquisition. Second language knowledge, whether naturally acquired in an immersive environment, or learned in a classroom, is so helpful to the executive function of our brains! BELLA is a nonprofit organization, devoted to meeting people where they are and making this prestigious linguistic benefit accessible to all demographics.
Our mission is to nurture compassionate, curious, and connected learners by providing high-quality, bilingual early childhood education and connections to community resources. Our vision is vibrant, inclusive communities where children and families thrive: rooted in empathy, enriched by bilingualism, and empowered to build bridges across cultures, communities, and the world
We aim to offer:
- 24 hour high-quality, licensed care
- High-quality pay for teachers
- In-depth in-house funding to provide a sliding scale for those who need it
- After-school enrichment classes
- Transportation to and from the center and local places of employment
- Spanish classes for all ages in a hands-on setting
- Connections with other helpful organizations
Building the Board
As I spoke with different stakeholders, community members, and parents about my ideas for what would become BELLA, I began searching for people for my board. I knew absolutely nothing about what I was doing besides the advice from others. I knew I needed a president, a secretary, and a treasurer, and I had been advised to start my board small with people who would both support me but not fluff me up—aka, they’d tell me to chill out if needed.
I met with close to 100 individuals before daycare, during nap time, and after daycare, mostly virtually, to tell them about my ideas and see who would be interested in being part of my vision. For my President, I chose a very friendly, hardworking, stubborn (a must!), and well-connected community member who had organized events throughout the county. For my secretary, my wise, practical, loving advisor from grad school (who lives in New York!) volunteered. And, after asking my website-making friend for advice on a website, I flat out asked if he’d be on my board; when I found out he also is a certified accountant, it was a no brainer to ask him to be the treasurer. Fun fact: he currently lives in Mexico. As a miraculous bonus, I also got lucky enough to recruit a woman to be my vice president who not only created marketing materials for me before I even asked her to join my team, but she is so enthusiastic about everything BELLA stands for and is one of the most hardworking, dedicated, personable people I’ve met—and I met her when she and her son attended a Spanish class I taught!
Meetings and the Legal Stuff
Due to everyone’s different locations, we have our monthly meetings via video chat. The first meeting, from the agenda right down to talking points, was informed in large part by ChatGPT because, let’s be real, I didn’t know what we were supposed to do or talk about. I found out that we needed to talk about mission, vision, values, the business plan I came up with, budget, bylaws, and legal stuff such as filing for incorporation, getting a lawyer, and next steps for the business. After we talked about goals, services, and vision, we decided that being a nonprofit would be the best route for what we were aiming for; so, we added “filing for 501c3” to the next steps.
The next several weeks were filled with group chats of ideas being bounced off each other to determine final mission and vision statements and different ideal phases of what BELLA would look like. Then came filing for incorporation, which costs money. Then came finding a lawyer that came highly recommended by the other nonprofit childcare center (in Baltimore). And THEN came finding that that lawyer costs $2,400 for the services we needed, in addition to the $600 IRS filing fee. Insert “deer in the headlights” expression.
My family and I had just started being able to save money for an emergency fund. There was no way we could afford $3,000 for all of this. So, we launched a GoFundMe campaign! Community members, as well as family members and daycare families, all contributed to the fund and helped us reach the required $1,200 to sign on with the lawyer and start the process, leaving the remainder to be paid right before the final filing. I started saving entire paychecks and abstaining from fun things for a few months and just left it to God because, what good would stressing do me?
At the beginning of October 2025, Maryland Nonprofit Network filed our Form 1023 and informed us that the current IRS waiting time for these forms is ten months. Well…that’s just great. If it took that long, we’d reach nonprofit status at the time we needed to start opening for the Fall 2026 school season. Oh well…
My board and I began brainstorming ways to get our name out there and begin with partnerships—many already started to be established with video calls prior—in the meantime. We came up with bilingual Christmas caroling, as my favorite season is the Christmas holiday season, and my daycare kids were already learning “Jingle Bells” in Spanish. With the help of an amazing community liaison, we were put in touch with several organizations who welcomed us to come this holiday season.
The second week of November, we received our 501c3 tax exempt determination letter! It is worth mentioning that the government had been shut down for the entire time our filing was submitted, so this is truly a miracle. Ten months? Nah, five weeks! Absolutely crazy!
Next Steps
What’s next? We get to start applying for grants, connecting with different news outlets, finding donors, and building our vision!
Ideally, we hope to be in a space by February, be licensed by April, and open our 24 hour childcare center by August. We will hopefully also begin our transportation services in one or two areas at that time. In the meantime, though, we are looking for partnerships with overnight employers between Aberdeen and Edgewood, as that’s where we hope to operate—along the 40 corridor.
Down the Road
After our initial childcare program is up and running, we plan on developing and running Spanish classes for people of all ages. These will include night classes for adults, afternoon classes for students, and language immersion day camps for students when school is closed, among other things.
We are also planning on partnering heavily with as many community organizations and services as we can, as we use Maslow’s Hierarchy as the basis of our vision; we want to ensure everyone has access to their basic needs as well as those that improve their quality of life. Examples of these partner services will include: food and clothing pantries, ESL services, community schools, WIC, housing and community services, DSS, and more. While we wait to secure a physical location, these partnerships are a priority to build.
The Bottom Line
We would love to use this time to not only find the money that we need to start this all up, but also to find highly-qualified staff, a building, and building partnerships that will be reciprocally fruitful. If you or someone you know has any information, skill, or interest in being part of BELLA that would add to our wonderful mission and vision, please reach out to Jess at jess@bellaacademy.org!
Learn more at: www.bellaacademy.org
