Districts Boost Day Care as Need for After-School Programs Grow : Child Care: Working, middle-class parents have killed society’s myth of a happy housewife waiting for the children to come home.

In Vista, parents on their daily commute to jobs in Orange County or downtown San Diego can drop children at one of 11 child-care centers run by the public school district, instead of facing the prospect of leaving them unattended at 6 a.m. on a playground.

The Poway district runs 13 before- and after-school programs--all with long waiting lists--not only during school sessions but during holiday and summer breaks as well, and principals in almost all cases have worked to make space available despite crowded classrooms at many sites.

In small districts from Solana Beach to Imperial Beach, from Escondido to El Cajon, school trustees and administrators have bitten the bullet on educational child care, realizing that too many children are going without a safe, supervised environment, often with severe consequences for their social and academic futures.

Increasingly, these districts offer widespread, fee-for-service care for the growing legions of middle-class parents whose working lives have put the final nail in the coffin of society’s myth of a happy housewife waiting for the kids to come home.

In stark contrast, the San Diego Unified School District, the nation’s eighth-largest urban system with a growing elementary-age student population, sits almost alone among its smaller neighbors with no comprehensive child-care despite clear evidence that many parents within its boundaries are eager for school-based programs.

For example, the Solana Beach district points with pride to its Child Development Center for children from 6 weeks of age through the sixth grade. The center serves children on a first-come basis, even if they do not live within the Solana Beach school boundaries.

In contrast, private San Diego child-care operators have run into continuing bureaucratic red tape trying to put a couple of bungalows at two of the city’s 107 elementary schools.

At Jerabek Elementary in Scripps Ranch, a proposed program by a private provider has been stalled for almost a year because of conflicts over whether a classroom trailer for the child care, if placed on the playground, will encroach slightly on the foul lines of a softball diamond leased to the city Park and Recreation Department. The conflict also involves differing opinions by members of the neighborhood’s Community Planning Group over additional cars that might use streets because of child care.

“For an urban system, we haven’t been in the forefront of districts trying to facilitate child-care programs,” San Diego city schools trustee Kay Davis conceded. Davis is pushing administrators and fellow trustees to get more involved in the issue. She sponsored a workshop for the board in late September to hear about the district’s few successes and a host of horror stories about unsuccessful efforts.

Davis served on a city committee earlier this year that looked into ways to encourage businesses to work with schools in providing child care.

“A strong policy statement supporting child care” would make it clearer to school administrators that they should encourage activities at their sites, said David Poole, a Pardee Construction Corp. executive whose company has been among five developers trying to set up child-care centers at several Mira Mesa and Scripps Ranch elementary schools. Parents prefer school-based programs, child-care advocates say, in large part for safety reasons, since children do not have to be bused.

Why have other county districts moved so much faster than San Diego Unified in addressing part of the countywide need for child care?--especially with estimates from the nonprofit Childcare Resource Service that as many as 80,000 San Diego children up to age 14 could benefit from some type of adult care?

“Partly it is due to the smaller size of the outlying districts and partly it is due to a greater level of commitment on the part of people,” said Sylvia Selverston, child-care coordinator for the private nonprofit Social Advocates for Youth (SAY), who has persuaded a dozen San Diego principals to rent her space for child care.

Jean Brunkow, director of Childcare Resource Service, said, “Like everything else, you have to have somebody who wants to make it happen, to make a real commitment” to bring parents, teachers and principals together.

Brunkow’s counterpart in North County, Paula Leard, said that “teachers often are territorial, they don’t want to give up their classrooms after school for someone else, since they consider it disruptive . . . the success of a program depends on where a district’s priorities lie.”

Given the large size of the San Diego district and the lack of attention that trustees have paid to child care, decisions whether to offer the service have been left up to individual principals. Their approval is key when they are approached by private providers to consider lending a classroom or authorizing a special trailer. Even when there is agreement at the school, delays can result because of liability or building code questions.

Although not discounting the unmet needs, San Diego administrators say that too many of their schools are crowded and that they cannot afford to give up a classroom or auditorium for child care. Programs at these crowded schools would require portable classrooms--a more expensive proposition--and only if adequate playground space is available. Also, they say that fee-for-service child care would mean that some families unable to afford $35 or so a week would be left out.

(The San Diego system, using state funds, does operate 27 child development centers for 2,128 low-income preschool and school-age children, under a program begun in 1942 by the federal government when World War II forced large numbers of women into the work force. Those centers provide before- and after-school care. It also offers a handful of child-care programs at certain magnet schools as a carrot to white parents who agree to voluntarily bus their children to the predominantly minority magnet schools.)

But Brunkow and several North County child-care providers said that problems of space, janitorial service and parking all can be worked out if those involved recognize research that shows child care can boost a child’s chances for academic and social success.

Susan Van Zant, Poway elementary principal and one of 12 California Educators of the Year for 1990, began her district’s efforts nine years ago at Garden Road School. At that time, many parents would ask about child care each time they visited the school, since there were--and still are--too few private providers in the county to meet demand.

Van Zant found a spare room at the school and piloted the first program.

Now Poway has more than 1,100 children in child care out of about 9,000 eligible from kindergarten through fifth grade. Parents pay all fees, which are $275 a month for the first child and $140 a month for the second.

“We have a time when they do homework, when they play, when they have a snack, in essence doing things that are appropriate for kids, so that’s why we call it extended learning and not just child care, because we are not baby-sitting,” Van Zant said.

Although some Poway schools use multipurpose rooms, at others there are trailers on the playground.

“It’s all paid out of fees,” said Leslie Fausset, the Poway program coordinator. “A portion of the fees offset business costs, pay rent to the district and pay for additional custodial services. We just haven’t had a lot of logistical problems, since I think that our principals, given the (board of education) interest, understand that day care is a critical, critical need.

“The program began as a voluntary program, but when other principals saw it working well at the first schools, they were happy to embrace it. Sure, trailers or use of rooms before or after school cause some negative impacts, but the program is worth such minor negatives.”

In Vista, coordinator Linda Maag said that several principals realized the need after finding students already on the grounds when administrators arrived at 6:30 a.m. to open the buildings. Vista uses existing space at schools, and Maag said that principals must often compromise on providing a spare room, especially since district enrollment has ballooned in recent years.

“But I think we have come a long way in persuading administrators that educating a child before or after school in some cases is a responsibility as well,” Maag said. Although most of the parents who participate are middle- to upper-middle class, as in Poway, Maag does have those who cannot afford the $25- to $40-a-week cost.

“We have been applying for grants, under which I set aside a certain amount for low-income families, since we don’t get any funds from the district itself,” Maag said.

Escondido has expanded its program from one to three schools this fall with encouragement from its school board trustees, but it still cannot meet the demand.

“We ran a little into the bureaucracy at first,” coordinator Gloria Bond said. “But we talked a lot with the principals. They have personal experiences with latchkey kids and realize that they must do something about it.”

All the North County programs are run directly by the school districts, as are those in La Mesa-Spring Valley, Lakeside, Santee and South Bay. Leard said district control can help avoid transportation problems and can allow districts to satisfy building and safety regulations directly through the state education code, without having to wait for often time-consuming municipal regulatory approval.

Those municipal regulations have slowed down Pardee significantly in its effort to provide portables for the several Mira Mesa-area schools in San Diego. Pardee agreed to cover the construction costs for a private social-service operator, Harmonium Inc., in an area where it has built thousands of houses over the years.

Because the San Diego district runs no fee-for-service care of its own, a private group such as SAY or Harmonium must meet additional codes and requirements should it wish to use a trailer at a school. If the district placed the trailer itself and then leased it to a private child-care operator, the red tape would be unnecessary, Selverston of SAY said.

But, beyond codes, the lack of direction from the school board has left proposals by private operators pretty much up to the whim of a principal, both regarding trailers and in trying to use an existing classroom or auditorium before or after school.

“Sure we (as the public) build the schools and we ought to be able to access the rooms, but I have to negotiate with the site administrator at each school” and overcome questions of territory, of parking, “of all these things,” Selverston said.

At Vista Grande Elementary in Tierrasanta, principal Alex Cremidan acknowledged that he and his staff were not too enthusiastic when SAY approached them several years ago with a survey showing the need for child care.

“The area they wanted already was being used for special education resource study and also by our English-as-a-second-language students,” Cremidan said. “So we held several meetings with SAY and with the parents, and came up with a plan to move the resource specialist out of the area, but to have a cooperative use of the area with the language students.” The program is now successfully operating.

“At first, teachers are apprehensive, but once you sit down and adjust to meet the needs of the community--of the kids, really--we can work things out, especially since the parents are really thankful that we are doing this.”

Walker Elementary in Mira Mesa is one of the schools with the new program run by Harmonium using a trailer provided by Pardee.

“There are a million reasons that a principal could come up to say this thing wouldn’t fly, but I decided to help out, I didn’t want to be a detriment,” Principal Gilbert Gutierrez said. “Sure it can be a headache, but there is a need for this. I have young children of my own, so let’s go ahead and try to work it out.” The program, only two weeks old, already has a waiting list.