Retired Chehalis and Toledo science teacher Marilynn Chintella was recently appointed as the new director of the pilot Discover! Children’s Museum, located in the Twin City Town Center in Chehalis.
The facility is currently scheduled to be open through July to gather the community’s input for a possible full-scale museum.
Chintella, an active volunteer at the pilot museum, will replace former director Jim Valley, who resigned and plans to relocate back to the Seattle area on May 26. He previously worked in Seattle and he and his wife, Kari, own a home there.
Valley said his wife, a travel agent, is returning to work full-time in Bellevue after working from home the past few years to help Valley, who had a series of medical emergencies last year that were brought on by a rare autoimmune disease called Wegener’s vasculitis.
“Her employers have really stood by through all of our struggles,” Valley said. “She’s been working from home for the past four years and working one week a month up in Bellevue. It made more financial sense (to move).”
Valley, the former Centralia/Chehalis Chamber of Commerce director, said he is also planning to move north after his landlord gave him a 20-day notice to vacate his apartment. Valley said his apartment is clean and paid for, and that the decision was up to his landlord.
With no place to live and no guarantee yet that the children’s museum will stay open past July, Valley said, he decided to move for financial reasons and to support his wife.
“At this time we don’t know what the future will hold (at the museum),” Valley said. “It’s possible this thing could close down in July and it doesn’t make sense to be here with no job.”
Despite his personal reasons for resigning, Valley said he is proud of the work being done with the children’s museum.
The six-month pilot children’s museum has seen about 7,500 guests in the first three months, which is triple the expected attendance. The museum, which is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., sees about 120 people per day.
“All signs point to a very positive direction,” Valley said.
Chintella, the founding president of the Chehalis PTA, most recently worked for the Toledo School District as a seventh and eighth grade science teacher for the past 25 years.
Chintella said for the final three months of the pilot project, she plans to focus on early learning and invite more parents to get involved with the museum.
“Rather than just having the parents stand to the side, we are going to have the parents engage in the museum with their children,” Chintella said.
The future of the children’s museum is still undecided and depends on collecting more data and more funding for a permanent location. However, Chintella said, the museum is on pace to stay open in the long-term.
“The support and the interest in the community has been terrific,” Chintella said. “We are headed in the right direction and we are going to keep doing what we are doing now.”
