Irvine Chooses to Join the Child-Care Solution

In late 1986, the Irvine City Council made a commitment to its residents to provide “safe, affordable, quality child-care facilities and service” to everyone who lives and works in the city and needs those services. It even set a target date of Dec. 31, 1991. The city is taking bold and unique steps to keep its word.

On Tuesday the Irvine council, in what is believed to be the first municipal action of its kind in the nation, voted to set up a $1.3-million child-care center in the new civic center complex under construction. The nonprofit center, which will provide child care for about 100 youngsters, will be operated by a public-benefit corporation that will be started with a $182,000 interest-bearing loan from the city. That enables the city to get the center off the ground without being involved in its financial or daily operation.

Irvine also has a full-time child-care coordinator, a council-appointed Child Care Committee and a portable facilities program in which the city, business firms and the local school district work together with private nonprofit groups that lease and operate child-care centers on school sites.

That is creative child care that other communities would do well to emulate.

The need for child-care facilities is not limited to Irvine. There is a critical shortage of child-care centers throughout Orange County, which has the second-largest child population in the state. Child-care specialists at the Children’s Home Society say there are nearly four children ages 3 to 5 in the county for every available licensed child-care space. The problem is much more acute for parents with younger children. There are about 22 youngsters under the age of 2 for every child-care slot. The problem is equally bad for children ages 6 to 14, and it keeps growing. In all, there are about 465,000 children under age 14 in the county; for about 70% of them, both parents work or their single mother works.

So the child-care problem is plainly not just one for Irvine to tackle. The real problem is that, unlike Irvine’s commitment, most communities still haven’t become part of the solution.