Enrollment Is the Prize in Preschool Waiting Game

It’s spring, and many Orange County parents’ thoughts turn to camping. Overnight. On the sidewalk. In front of some of the most coveted preschools in the county.

This is registration time for the schools, and parents are willing to go to extremes to assure that their youngsters take the proper first step toward a quality education.

“If you do it for a house, you should do it for your kid as well,” said Bob Ludovise, a businessman from Laguna Niguel who spent an evening in a sleeping bag outside the shared campus of Children’s Choice preschool and McDowell Elementary School in Laguna Niguel to assure getting his child enrolled.

Much of the problem stems from an extreme shortage of child care in South Orange County, where the population of young families has mushroomed in recent years. The Children’s Home Society of California reported 4,218 requests for child care from South County in 1989--and 1,000 to 1,500 openings.

But lines outside preschools crop up throughout the county.

“It’s really a nightmare,” said Vickie Vega, who finally registered her child at Children’s Choice preschool this year after paying fees at two other preschools just in case. “There are a lot of dual-income families down here. The need is such, families are doing whatever they have to to be sure their children are enrolled in schools.”

Each spring, Children’s Choice director Sandra Senn issues numbers to waiting parents and keeps bathrooms open all night.

After working late one night before registration, she said, she tried to open the door to leave, but found it blocked at 8 p.m. by a sleeping parent.

Last year, she said, some parents replaced her procedure sign with one of their own and issued new numbers. A brawl broke out between two fathers when they found that they both had No. 1, she said. So Senn decided to hire security guards to keep the peace during the overnight vigil.

Donna Woods of Laguna Hills said she was in the hospital having her second child March 8 while her husband, Gary, stood in line at Children’s Choice to register their kindergartner.

“This year, (the director) told everyone not to come before 7. I thought everyone would think they’d be there by 6,” she said.

Arriving at 5:30 a.m., her husband was first in line to register their 5-year-old for three mornings a week, two hours each.

At the Fullerton United Methodist Preschool, where families have camped out for the past 10 years, director Barbara Beasley said it is sometimes hard to tell the parents from the homeless who also sleep on the sidewalk.

“Last year, I saw a vagrant on the stoop and said, ‘You’ll have to move on.’ It was Mr. Knudsen, one of the church leaders, trying to get his child in.”

Her registration will be held this year in April.

But particularly among schools in the fast-growing South County, camp-outs for school registration have become as commonplace as they are for opening days for selling new tract homes.

One father installed himself in the sanctuary of Church of the Master in Mission Viejo at 4:30 p.m. last year to be the first in line for the next morning’s preschool registration. “The mom said he had a better night’s sleep then she did,” director Marsha Cowper said. “She worried about it all night.

“They bring their TVs, their record players, they ordered pizza that year. They all seem very happy. It’s very strange.”

Parents will sometimes take turns in line. “One mom came and brought her son when the dad left to go to work,” she said. “The dad said, ‘Boy, I hope you understand what I gave up for you.’ ”

Like other directors, Cowper has seen the camp-outs begin earlier and earlier as word spreads among parents.

Senn of Children’s Choice called it “psychological group hysteria.”

Parents, she said, “spread the word: You’d better get there early.”

Recognizing that development was exacerbating the day-care problem in South County, the Orange County Board of Supervisors has stipulated that South County builders either contribute to a day-care fund or provide child care in their projects. This year, $60,000 from the fund was distributed among seven agencies.

But so far, the money has apparently done little to alleviate the crunch. To the day-care directors, it looks like more of the same.

From the Church of the Master Preschool, Cowper can see more houses sprouting on the rolling hillsides like wildflowers.

“There will be no place for these families,” she said. “There are not enough preschools to accommodate the people who will live in these houses.”

Other high-demand schools that do not have camp-outs say the first-come, first-serve situation can be avoided.

“I call from the waiting list, and people come in,” said Gretchen Schoren, director of St. John’s Preschool in Rancho Santa Margarita. “I don’t have them all come and register in one day. I think it’s dramatics.”

Having parents camp out at your school “gets to be kind of a status symbol,” she said.

Senn of Children’s Choice said she had considered using a lottery system but rejected it as unfair: “I don’t like to give a number to a human being. Maybe if it’s an object, like a house. But I don’t think a human being should be treated randomly like a number.

“Every year, we try to rack our brains for a better system. I just shake my head.”