Lab Mixes Care and Learning : OCC Program Puts Children and New Teachers Together

There is a dramatic need for skilled day-care and preschool teachers in California that will grow even greater in coming years, state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) said Tuesday at the dedication of a laboratory teaching child care in Costa Mesa.

“Sixty percent of the new entrants into the work force in the 1990s are going to be women,” Bergeson said told guests at the ceremony for the $800,000 laboratory at Orange Coast College. “Significantly, the fastest-growing segment of the work force is mothers of children under three years (of age). Two-thirds of those mothers are going to be working full time.”

Bergeson said state and local officials, as well as the private sector, must gear up to provide safe, quality child care facilities for families in which both parents work.

‘A Profound Impact’

“It is the responsibility of government, local and state, as well as the private sector and the educators, to have foresight in this area, to realize that decisions made today regarding preschool standards and licensing of day-care staff is indeed going to have a profound impact on our children,” she said.

OCC’s new Early Childhood Lab School, which opened in August, is the first in the state to have a specially constructed building that allows simultaneous teaching of preschool children and college students who aspire to be preschool teachers.

Bergeson played a major role in getting legislation passed last year that enabled state financing of the building. Officials at the community college said they had tried for 18 years to get funds for the special structure. They said Bergeson’s efforts were pivotal in breaking down opposition in Sacramento.

The senator was the featured speaker at outdoor dedication ceremonies, held in front of the new structure off Merrimac Way at the south end of the campus.

‘Shortcut to Disaster’

“We know that as the number of women pursuing careers increases, so does the need for preschool, day-care providers,” Bergeson said. “And I’d like to say also that because of this tremendous need, there is a good deal of discussion, and I consider this misguided discussion, of diluting standards to meet this dramatic need for day-care providers. I think that idea would be a shortcut to disaster.”

Bergeson praised the college for “being in the forefront” of training for preschool educators, and she predicted that the new laboratory and training program would be “a model” to be studied and copied elsewhere in the state.

The lab has space for about 120 children, ranging from five months through five years old, who receive instruction and care while their parents work. Adjacent to the child care rooms are classrooms where college students may observe the children through one-way windows and learn how to care for toddlers. About 50 students are taking credit courses in the lab building, said Katie Elson, the college’s early childhood-education coordinator.

OCC President Donald Bronsard said training skilled workers for childhood care is a major need in Orange County because “two paycheck families are now more the norm than the exception.”