Schools Cut Rent to Encourage Nonprofit Child-Care Services

Nonprofit child-care providers who wish to rent space at San Diego city schools will be charged 30% less under a fee structure approved Tuesday by trustees as a way to expand the number of programs offered at their 106 elementary sites.

The 5-0 decision establishes a set of charges exclusive to such child-care organizations, and trustees hope that the move will allow these providers either to increase the number of children they serve or lower charges to parents. The average fee now is about $400 a month.

The move represents the first major step to improve child-care offerings in the district after two major board discussions last fall on the lack of programs--district or private--available to parents in the nation’s eighth-largest school system.

Trustees also indicated that they will proceed with a series of related recommendations presented to them Tuesday by administrators.

Among other points, the staff report calls for: easier use of auditoriums and other multipurpose space at schools by child-care providers; easier use of playground and other space for placing privately owned portable buildings for child-care use; use of available federal money to teach low-income students skills in more district-operated preschool programs.

The district operates 27 state-subsidized Child Development Centers for 2,128 low-income students at elementary schools, but it has a waiting list of more than 2,000 students. It also allows nonprofit, before- and after-school child-care programs at 25 schools.

Administrators said Tuesday that space could be made available in multipurpose rooms and auditoriums of 23 uncrowded schools. Programs using portable buildings on playgrounds could also be expanded from the present five sites to as many as 48, they said.

Board members praised staff efforts, but said they want to make sure that low- and middle-income families hard-pressed to afford private child care will benefit from the new efforts.

“We need a better sense of how we can do advocacy and reach out to those who need child care the most,” trustee Susan Davis said.

Colleague Shirley Weber asked that the board try to ensure that the lower fees for nonprofit providers will be passed along, either in lower charges to parents or in expanded programs at schools with many low-income families unable to afford private care.

Sylvia Selverston, who coordinates child care for the private nonprofit Social Advocates for Youth, which operates programs at 12 schools, told the board that the group already plans to expand at Horton and Valencia Park elementaries, both in low-income areas.

She praised the board’s new fee structure, saying it will allow Social Advocates not only to offer more programs but also to lower the student-staff ratios in their centers.

The Childcare Resource Service, a nonprofit San Diego organization, estimates that 80,000 students up to age 14 nationwide have child-care needs, based on a study by a consortium of providers last year. Many smaller county school districts already provide before- and after-school child care on a fee-for-service basis. But they do not have the wide range of socioeconomic levels served by San Diego Unified, where many parents cannot afford to pay more than a token amount.