CAMARILLO : Preschool Slots Hard to Come By

At 9 a.m. Friday, Renee Staben ended a 16-hour camp-out.

She had waited overnight, with other Camarillo residents trickling into the line behind her, bringing their portable lawn chairs and blankets.

It was not a welfare line or a line for concert tickets or even a line to buy a new home. Yet Staben and many of the 20 or more parents felt they had to line up the morning before the United Methodist Church Nursery School in Camarillo opened enrollment for summer or fall programs.

“It’s really terrible,” said Staben, who was trying to enroll her 1-year-old son and her young daughter. “Camarillo does not have enough preschools. Every school I went to told me they were filled.”

“I do this just for my kids,” said Ron Mulhern, an airline pilot, who got in line at 8 p.m. Thursday to sign up his 3-year-old daughter. “There’s nothing else in the world worth this.”

Ida Ambrose, director of the nursery school, said lines are not uncommon outside the church school. Church members have priority for school openings. Thirty-one children were enrolled Friday.

“It’s hard,” said Ambrose, who has changed the registration times in the past to try to accommodate parents’ work schedules. “We don’t have the space to put in more programs.”

To many of the parents, the issue is quality, not work schedules or space.

“I’ve been told it’s a good program,” Staben said. “I don’t want a day-care situation.”

“I’m a repeat customer,” said Tom York, who arrived about midnight. York said that his 5-year-old daughter’s experiences in the church’s preschool have allowed her to succeed in kindergarten and that he hopes his 2-year-old son will do the same.

The 29-year-old Camarillo preschool and a day-care center in Oxnard are the only preschools in Ventura County accredited by the National Academy of Early Childhood Programs.