Thursday, November 12, 1998
High demand cripples campus child care
SERVICE: Programs often expensive, unavailable to parents
working at UCLA
By Hannah Miller
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Although its child care is rated one of the top 10 programs in
the nation, UCLA stills fails to provide care for thousands of
staff, faculty and student parents with widely varying schedules
who need inexpensive child care.
In a nationwide survey conducted this year by the High Scope
Educational Research Foundation, UCLA’s Child Care Center ranked on
a par with far better-funded corporate child care, but that care is
spread thin. Excellent child care is offered on-campus and near
university housing  which puts UCLA way ahead of most other
colleges  but at rates which limit child care to a select
few.
"This is essentially a program for the higher-paid staff," said
Gay McDonald, the director of UCLA Child Care Services. "There’s a
need for assistance for some staff and faculty."
There are exactly 253 spots at the Bellagio, University Village,
Colina Glen and Fernauld child care centers combined, and those are
for people who can afford the payments, which can be as much as
$835 per month for infant care or $765 per month for toddlers.
"That’s a mortgage payment. That’s half my salary," said Kathy
Forero, an operations manager in Humanities computing who opts to
place her 5-month-old Corey in home-care in Agoura Hills.
"Right now I can’t afford it. I just signed up on the waiting
list, and I hope by the time I get in we’ll be able to cover the
cost."
The limited number of spaces creates a waiting list, which
currently hovers at around 400. Depending on the age of the child
and whether parents are staff, faculty or students, it takes about
one-and-a-half years to nab a spot.
That waiting list was as high as 800 just a few years ago,
before Child Care Services expanded its facilities by using space
in already-existing buildings.
The waiting list has also been shortened by a massive outreach
effort that connects UCLA parents with 300 home-care providers and
120 day-care centers. UCLA Child Care Services provides technical
support for many of the providers, which are scattered throughout
Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley and offer a variety of care
and pricing.
As recently as 1970, however, there was nary a nanny to be found
for campus parents.
UCLA Child Care didn’t exist until a small group of graduate
students in the 1970s demanded some babysitting, then-unheard-of.
Chancellor Charles Young gave them the old horticultural building,
which used to sit where the 100 Medical Plaza building is now
located.
Their successes had to be defended from attacks in the late
1970s from Young, who saw child care as nonessential in an academic
institution. To save their facility, the advisory committee had to
make the center financially self-supporting. This arrangement has
left the center’s champions in a state of perpetual fund-raising,
but at least they aren’t facing a world of criticism.
"The way people perceive child care has really evolved," said
Suzy Klemer, who has served on the child care advisory committee
for 20 years. "It’s gone from an attitude of ‘Why don’t those
mothers just stay home?’ to recognizing the crushing need."
Administrators aren’t blind to the fact that UCLA’s benefits are
judged alongside private-sector employers, including private
colleges with huge endowments, and the burgeoning private research
industry in biotechnology.
"It is extremely important in assisting, recruiting, and
retaining the very best faculty," said associate vice chancellor
Sam Morabito, "and in helping student families who are trying to
complete their degree work."
But an overwhelming need still goes unanswered, due to factors
as random as welfare reform and the booming Westside real estate
market.
None of this seems to matter to the yelping, exploring masses at
the Bellagio Child Care Center one weekday afternoon during
"clean-up time."
Two girls, ignoring the teachers, shoot miniature hoops, missing
all eight attempted baskets. A boy feeds sand to a shrub shaped
like a dinosaur. A filthy girl in purple throws her jacket on the
ground and waits to see if it moves.
The staff picking up plastic balls and stacking nap cots is
largely composed of students. Some "graduates" of UCLA Child Care
have returned to work as caregivers, McDonald said.
The Child Care Center takes advantage of the local student
population to keep the crucial staff-to-child ratio high. But
finding full-time qualified staff is increasingly problematic for
the center, which is force to pay wages that are less competitive
every year.
"Retention is becoming a problem all over the country," said
Klemer. "And staff continuity is an important part of quality
care."
Caregivers find that the low wages are often not enough to save
for their own children’s education.
In addition, governmental changes have dried up the pool of
available caregivers. With class-size reduction, many child care
workers obtained emergency teaching credentials and began teaching;
welfare reform forced many single mothers into the work force,
increasing the demand for child-care.
There’s been a growing shortage of child care in the Westwood
and West Los Angeles areas. The housing boom jacked up Westside
rents so much during the last decade that many small day care
centers were forced to go out of business.
So parents are left with the wait list, which has been hovering
at the same level for the last five years. Morabito doesn’t predict
any expansion of facilities anytime soon.
At Bellagio, though, tucked away in the most hilly, farthest
reach of campus, the staff and toddlers benefit from the small
class size and low teacher-to-child ratios. They are the lucky
few.
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