Children’s Corner faces transition, uncertainty after director resigns in Fergus Falls

Sue TenEyck-Stafki resigned as director of Children’s Corner Learning Center.

The center has been part of the community since 1971, when local residents founded it to meet a need for quality child care. It started in rented space at Faith Lutheran Church, then moved to the Salvation Army building, later to the former convent at Our Lady of Victory Church, and eventually into a West Everett Avenue center completed in 1995. It relocated to Lincoln School in April 2021 and expanded to Perham in June 2010.

Today, it serves children from 6 weeks to age 5 and offers preschool and pre-kindergarten programs from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, at two Otter Tail County locations.

The resignation lands while the school district and Children’s Corner are still working through a lease arrangement that has tied the center to Lincoln School for years. Fergus Falls Public Schools said discussions about using part of Lincoln School began around 2019, and the district entered an 18-year lease with Children’s Corner in April 2021. Superintendent Jeff Drake said on March 2 that the district was willing to enter mediation immediately.

Drake said the district uses the lease payments to service debt on Lincoln School, and that Children’s Corner had asked for a reduction in rent for the remaining 13 years of the lease. He said the rent has not increased since 2021 and will not increase over the lease term, which he said would save Children’s Corner more than $600,000 over the life of the agreement. He also said the district could face a potential loss of $2.6 million in lease payments if the arrangement falls apart.

A proposed amendment to the ISD 544 lease would provide Children’s Corner a three-month rent reprieve.

A 2022 First Children’s Finance assessment put Fergus Falls 506 slots short and Otter Tail County 1,035 slots short, and Fergus Falls' gap was about 400 spots.

Otter Tail County received a $240,000 child care economic development grant in March 2025 for four child care sites in Ottertail, and the county also built a Child Care Locator web app to help families find providers. State labor officials say child care is an important part of Minnesota’s economy and that many providers cannot operate at full capacity because of worker shortages.