Name: Staci Sundberg.

Address: Arlington.

Age: 33.

Family: Husband John; children Clay, 9, Ian, 4, Tate, 2.

Occupation: Director of Child Development Center at Easter Seals of La Salle and Bureau Counties.

Q. Can you describe your job?

A. It is licensed through the Department of Child and Family Services to serve children 6 weeks to 12 years old. I have a staff of 16. We take care of children with or without special needs. It's my job to make sure things are running smoothly.

Q. How long have you been doing this?

A. 10 1/2 years. Eleven in March.



Q. What is the best part of your job?

A. Working with the families and their children that we serve. And my staff. I have a great staff.

Q. What is the toughest part of your job?

A. I'm one of those people who wants to make sure the services we provide are the best, so making sure we're meeting the needs of every family. We have 105 children enrolled in our program, making sure you're keeping every one of those families happy is challenging — just making sure we're satisfying the parents and meeting their needs. We want them to feel (their children are) safe here, they're welcome here, they're getting a good education here.

It's not a bad thing — it's just a challenging thing that keeps me going every day. It's more of a personal challenge.

Q. What surprised you about this job when you started?

A. I also am on the management team and probably what surprised me the most is how involved I would get every year when we went through a budgeting process, that was probably what surprised me the most. I did not know how involved I would get into the financial end and the overall management of the agency itself.

Q. Can you describe your personal "mission statement" for your job?

A. It kind of goes hand-in-hand with what our center statement mission is and that is to provide a loving environment to all children that is conducive to good development, exploration, imagination and cooperation.

Q. Looking back, what are you most proud of?

A. We have expanded this child care center. When I originally started there were only four classrooms, and now there are seven. We have become very involved with National Easter Seals Child Development Center Network. We provide high-quality care here and we have a great staff. We're always working in the best interest of the kids.



Q. What does the public not understand about your job?

A. Our center is education based. They assume we're a babysitter and we're much more than that. That's probably one of the hardest things for me. We are an educational facility.






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