ALSAM Foundation grant allows expansion of Nano Nagle Children's Center at St. Vincent de Paul School

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SALT LAKE CITY — Saint Vincent de Paul School’s Nano Nagle Children’s Center has received a grant from The ALSAM Foundation that will be used to help renovate and expand the center.

The facility provides developmentally appropriate learning experiences to children from infant to 3 years old.

The renovation and expansion will accommodate the many families on Nano Nagle’s wait list and to reduce class sizes. This project will also allow the program for 3 year olds to return to the main Nano Nagle building; for six years it has been across the school campus in Holy Family Hall.

In addition, the expansion will help sustain Saint Vincent de Paul School by providing a consistent number of students for the pre-kindergarten classroom.

“We are so grateful and blessed to receive this grant from The ALSAM Foundation. Nano Nagle Children’s Center is focused on ‘early learning,’ not just the supervisory tasks of a regular day care,” said Jeramie Green, director of Nano Nagle. “All of our staff acknowledges that birth to age 3 is the most critical stage of brain development, and we provide activities to foster appropriate development. Lifelong skills, such as emotional regulation, intellectual curiosity, and social competence, have their most dramatic growth while children are at Nano Nagle.”

 In February of 2009, Saint Vincent de Paul School converted the old convent on campus into the Nano Nagle Children’s Center to provide a secure, child-centered environment rooted in Catholic values for the parish, school and local communities. The Center opened with eight children enrolled, but after the first year served 46 children. A second phase renovation to upgrade the facility and improve the building to become a state-of-the art environment was completed in June of 2011 due to a grant from The ALSAM Foundation.

Now, the center has 74 children. Of the 125 children who have “graduated” from Nano Nagle, 96 are enrolled in Saint Vincent de Paul School.

“I compliment Mark Longe for taking the risk of opening Nano Nagle Children’s Center,” said Gary Green, principal of St. Vincent de Paul School. “I believe that the center has benefited the school more than any other administrative action in the school’s history.”  

Longe was principal of the school for 19 years until 2015, when he left to become superintendent of Utah Catholic Schools, the position he continues to hold.

Courtesy of St. Vincent de Paul School