Model Warner Center Project : Schools, Businesses Form Day-Care Team

The Los Angeles school board on Monday unanimously approved a joint venture day-care center to be financed by Warner Center Assn. in a project officials said may provide a model for other cooperative efforts by the public and private sectors.

The day-care center is scheduled to open in September at West Valley Regional Occupational Center in Woodland Hills, which is run by the Los Angeles Unified School District, and will be staffed by students and professors from California State University, Northridge. The project will cost the Warner Center business group $100,000 to start, officials said.

The center will be available for children of workers in the nearby Warner Center complex. In the late afternoons, evenings and on Saturdays, it will provide supervision for children of students at the occupational center.

First Such Project

“This is the first time the school district has undertaken a project like this,” said Camilla Kocol, an administrative consultant for the district division that oversees regional occupational centers. “We understand that the provision of quality child care is very important and that everybody needs to get involved in setting up day-care facilities. We like working with the community and hope that this will be the first of many such projects.”

Norman Emerson, a spokesman for the Warner association, said: “We believe this center will be a major improvement in meeting family needs of Warner Center employees.”

Plans approved by the school board call for conversion of a 3,500-square-foot building, once used as a furniture upholstery training facility, into a care center that can accommodate about 80 children.

Emerson said some Warner Center firms may subsidize the fee, which he estimated would be $75 to $80 a week, for children of employees.

Details on who may participate in the program are being worked out, he said.

The teaching staff will be drawn from graduate students at CSUN, whose faculty has helped design the day-care curriculum. Occupational center students studying child care will be among center staff members.

Expansion Possible

If the center proves successful, the facilities may be expanded and enrollment doubled, said James R. Wall, principal of West Valley Occupational Center.

Kocol said there are no plans for more joint venture day-care facilities, but school officials hope to use the West Valley center as a model to be copied.

Warner Center Assn., which consists of 13 companies that employ nearly half of the 35,000 workers in the Woodland Hills business district, was created 2 1/2 years ago. One of the group’s primary goals is to provide day care for children of employees in the area, Emerson said.

About 70% of Warner Center’s workers are women, he said.