PHILLIPSBURG, Kansas ? The opening of a child care center attracts little notice in a city or suburb.
In rural Kansas, it?s cause for celebration.
The focus on young families, and the hope that represents, is remarkably rare in small towns fighting for survival against forces largely beyond their control.
No matter how scarce, said Iowa State University social scientist Dave Peters, it?s an essential ingredient in what he and his research team refer to as a ?shrink smart? town. A place residents remain committed to improving even as it gets smaller.
?Shrink smart communities are those that saw faster than average declines in population but also had above-average gains in quality of life,? Peters said.
Small, rural communities can do little to reverse decades-long population trends, Peters said. But they can improve the quality of life for the people who stay. To start, they need a core group of people determined to confront challenges rather than letting nature take its course.
?That?s really what it takes,? Peters said. ?You need a lot of people to step up and take a leadership role. It?s not going to happen otherwise.?
The research from Peters and his team confirms that shrink-smart towns are rare. Only seven of the 99 Iowa communities studied have earned the distinction. Far more common, Peters said, are places where people have all but given up. He said they tend to leave the heavy lifting to small groups of elected officials, whom they?re quick to blame when new problems develop.
?In these declining ? or withering ? towns, as we like to call them, once there?s a failed project, the community turns nasty,? Peters said. ?Then, of course, nobody wants to take the risk of trying to do anything.?
Peters and his team haven?t studied any communities outside of Iowa. So, there are no verifiable ?shrink smart? towns in Kansas. Still, some we visited while producing the ?My Fellow Kansans? podcast appear to have at least some of the qualifying characteristics.
Phillipsburg, for example. It?s a town of about 2,400 in northwest Kansas where a couple of quality-of-life projects appear to be paying dividends.
One initiative addresses an urgent need for quality child care, said Nick Poels, the head of Phillips County?s economic development organization. The community made it a priority at the urging of business leaders, who, Poels said, kept getting the same question when interviewing job candidates: What?s the availability of day care in your community?
Tired of not having a good answer, the community went to work. A cross-section of residents pitched in to transform an old convenience store into a child care center built to the state?s exacting licensure standards. To help with the costs, they hustled up a grant from the Dane G. Hansen Foundation, which exists solely to help pay for community improvement projects in 26 northwest Kansas counties.
?It was a no-brainer, we had to do a project like this,? Poels said.
The shortage of available child care is a common problem in rural Kansas. So, it wasn?t surprising when more than a dozen communities dispatched envoys to Phillipsburg in August to inspect the new center and get advice from Poels about how they might build their own.
