OXNARD : Joint Child-Care Program to Begin

Thirty schoolchildren from Rose Avenue Elementary School will be the first participants this fall in an after-school child-care program run jointly by Oxnard city officials and the elementary school district.

The pilot program, scheduled to begin Oct. 1, will help meet the needs of working parents in the Rose Park area, many of whom have been seeking affordable after-school programs, Rose Avenue Principal Ernest Morrison said.

“The need is universal over the whole district,” said Morrison, who approached Oxnard’s Parks and Recreation Department with the idea last school year.

The program was approved by the Oxnard City Council in June and by the school board this week.

Two recreation leaders from the city’s parks division will oversee the program, said Michele Izay, a management analyst with the city. The cost will be between $13 and $15 a week per child, she said.

That money will pay the staff salaries and the $400 monthly rent for use of the school facilities, half the district’s normal fee, Izay said.

The program will run from 2:52 p.m., when school ends, until 5:30 p.m., Assistant Supt. Bernard Korenstein said. Senior citizens from a city-run program will help students with homework.

Other after-school programs are offered in Oxnard by the parks department, the YMCA, the Boys Club of Oxnard and the Girls Club of Oxnard. However, the Rose Avenue program will be the first school-site program offered by the district since the late 1970s, when funding was lost to Proposition 13 budget cuts, officials said.

The school is on a year-round schedule. As a result, the program may accommodate as many as 40 kindergarten through sixth-grade children and still meet the city’s 15-to-1 ratio of staff members to students, because only one-fourth of the students would be in class at the same time, Morrison said.