With new academy, SENT Topeka looks to be an oasis in child care desert
Published 3:28pm CT Dec. 17, 2020
By Rafael Garcia, Topeka Capital Journal
The Kennedy Academy, 206 S.E. Lakewood Court, will be the site of SENT Topeka’s new preschool academy in what organizers call a child care desert in southeast Topeka.
When Fellowship Hi-Crest’s lead pastor Johnathan Sublet founded SENT Topeka in 2018, he had a grand vision for what the nonprofit would be able to do for the Hi-Crest neighborhood, particularly in how the neighborhood could better prepare its young children for future success.
SENT, which stands for Strengthening and Empowering Neighborhoods Together, would be built on three major pillars — education, business development and community health and wellness — and would seek to uplift southeast Topeka’s Hi-Crest neighborhood, taking over the mission of a previous organization called NET Reach.
Part of Sublet’s vision was an eventual preschool academy to serve the neighborhood’s children, in recognition of the fact that early learning and development play a crucial part in a child’s future success, and affordable and accessible child care options are sparse in that part of Topeka.