KUNA — After lacking a permanent home for 18 years, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Ada County hosted the grand opening of its new Kuna facility on Friday.
The building was hailed as a tremendous community effort and a physical symbol of how much the city of Kuna has grown over the years. The city has seen exponential growth in recent decades, embodied in an opening that was attended by dozens of interested community members, with cars spilling out of the parking lot and into the nearby neighborhood.
Parents, grandparents and staff all expressed excitement about what the club, which officially opened Monday, would mean for the community and how big of an upgrade it was from the club’s previous housing.
Kuna’s previous Boys & Girls Club, which has operated out of various school facilities since 2008, could accommodate a total of 80 kids. The new facility, located in downtown Kuna at 470 W Mendi Place, is expected to reach as many as 1,200 individual kids annually. The Giraffe Laugh Early Learning Center, opening Aug. 22, will host a maximum of 66 kids aged infant to 5 years old, according to Colleen Braga, executive director of Boys & Girls Clubs of Ada County.
The building can host as many as 500 people on any given day, Ada County Boys & Girls Club staff said. This number includes teenagers, a new demographic for the Kuna club, who will be able to use the facility free of charge.
“The demand of the Kuna area has grown tremendously,” Cori Norton, director of the Kuna Boys & Girls Club, said. “We’ve got so many homes coming in and child care is hard to come by here.”
At the time of the 2000 Census, Kuna’s population was 5,382. In 2024 that number has been estimated to balloon to 31,490, a 485.1% increase. This dwarfs Boise’s estimated percent increase of 34.6% in the same time frame, according to population numbers published by Ada County .
“The population is exploding, so you have to have something like this,” grandparent David Butterfield said.
The facility will be offering before-and-after-school memberships at $35 per week, or after-school memberships at $25 per week, as previously reported by the Idaho Press .
Parents who can’t afford the price of care will have scholarships available, Braga said.
One parent who attended the opening wasn’t sure if the scholarships would be enough to meet the level of demand from the community.
“That’s definitely going to help the community,” Jessika Gutierrez said, of the income-based scholarships. “Though there’s going to be more of a need than they realize.”
Parents and grandparents spoke of the limited daycare and after-school programming available due to Kuna’s rapid growth, as well as the high prices of alternative services in the area.
Kelly Hardy, a parent who attended the opening, said that her coworkers talk of day care being $2,000 a month. At Kuna’s Boys & Girls Club, Hardy said she pays $100 a month for after-school care for her young daughter.
“I’m one of the luckier ones in that I have my own parents who would help watch her, but they’re pretty advanced in age,” Hardy said.
Though Hardy said she could rely on her parents to help take care of her daughter, the breadth of activities provided at the club, and the ability for her daughter to interact with peers, would be lacking. Hardy said that her daughter has been able to partake in field trips, art, music and social interaction that wouldn’t have otherwise happened in the bounds of a school day.
“This is such an opportunity for enrichment for her because there’s no way on my income, which is actually pretty good income, to have her in any kind of day care,” Hardy said. “She would be basically with 70-year-olds at their home watching television.”
Hardy said that the club expanding its umbrella to take in teenagers would be significant for her growing daughter.
“When my kid becomes older and she can just walk here, engage with their peers in a safe place for free, that is a huge resource,” Hardy said.
Kuna’s Boys & Girls Club has also been turned to by parents returning to the workforce.
“I know for my grandkids, there hadn’t been very much opportunity at all within the community,” grandparent Valerie Franklin said. “When my daughter was getting ready to go back to work, the only place that we could find that would house the kids at a reasonable rate with great programming was the Kuna Boys & Girls Club.”
The need for both affordability and a larger care facility for all ages is particularly pronounced in Kuna, where a significant percentage of the population is relying on before- and after-school programs to care for their kids while away for work.
“In a city like Kuna, where 95% of people work outside of Kuna, where are their kids going while they’re at work?” Braga asked.
Now possessing a dramatically expanded capacity, the Kuna Boys & Girls Club is hoping to be the answer to this question, and an answer to current and prospective Kuna residents who may have been unsure if the city had the necessary resources for their child to receive proper care.
“When you’re looking at attracting people to live in Kuna, you have to have certain amenities,” Braga said. “And if there’s no place for kids to go after school, that would be a reason not to live in Kuna.”
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