College Day-Care Center Beyond Students’ Budgets

A long-awaited, $1.2-million day-care center designed to train Glendale Community College students to become preschool teachers is scheduled to open Tuesday, but few student parents will be able to afford it.

The Child Development Center, on Mountain Street west of the Glendale Freeway, is not subsidized. So its fees, ranging from $211 to $598 per child per month, generally put the day-care services out of the reach of the estimated 1,800 students with children, college officials said.

Directors of the center, however, insist that it was not meant to provide low-cost, drop-in day care. It was designed, they said, to offer hands-on education for more than 225 students studying to be preschool teachers.

“A longtime need has been to have a good laboratory setting for our students to go into,” said Lani DeVincentis, dean of non-credit education, which provides parent education classes that will be linked to the center. “We want to show them the optimum care situation for children so hopefully they can emulate that.”

The facility can serve up to 60 children between 18 months and 5 years old.

Center officials conceded that because of their prices, they have not had much luck attracting student parents, despite preferential enrollment for students and faculty. About five of the 50 children enrolled so far belong to students; the remainder are mostly children of nearby residents, said Jill Larson, the center’s director.

About 13% of the college’s 14,000 students need child care, according to a 1986 campus survey, the latest undertaken. Some 5,500 children in Glendale need daytime care, according to an August, 1989, study by the Greater Glendale Child Care Council.

The latter study found that although local prices--ranging from $250 to $638 a month per child--are similar to rates in Los Angeles, they exceed what most parents can afford.

For full-time care, the college center charges $598 per month for a child between 18 and 25 months old and $479 for a 3- or 4-year-old. Half-time care (mornings or afternoons) ranges from $264 to $329 per child. Two- and three-day care is also available, with prices ranging from $211 to $263 a month.

Those rates have prompted concern among some students, Larson said. And they have aroused some criticism.

“If it’s a tax-supported institution, how in the world can they charge such an outrageous fee?” said Nobi Kaneko, pastor of Foothill Christian Church in La Crescenta and the parent of two young children who need care. “They’re going to have a lot of elite families enrolling their children, not students. There’s no way they or residents can afford those prices.”

Center officials said they are studying ways to develop grants to help student parents pay for day care at the center; about five students are already on a waiting list for aid.

But they insisted that critics have misunderstood the center’s purpose.

“The primary function of the center is a laboratory school, not a child-care facility,” DeVincentis said.

Inside the center--a new, one-story brick structure--four classrooms are filled with toys, books and other materials. Brightly painted playground equipment sits in back.

Instruction for the children will be “progressive and innovative,” said Melita Baumann, coordinator of the college’s early childhood development programs. “Even discipline is going to be positive--an actual teaching of how to solve a problem.”

A larger, central room contains several rows of desks, which will seat more than nine classes of preschool teacher-training students. All will observe the children through the windows and doors of the classrooms, and some students will assist with the children, Baumann said.

Until now, students gained work experience by volunteering or finding part-time work at local day-care centers. Some students earned extra credit by bringing in children for their classmates to observe, she said.

Although the building was constructed with state funds as part of a five-year development plan for the campus, the day-care program itself is not subsidized, officials said. Fees are expected to pay the salaries of 12 teachers, assistants and aides, and for equipment and supplies.

College officials said the rates are reasonable and represent the program’s high quality. At full enrollment, the center will provide one adult for every five children. Its teachers are experienced and well-educated, with at least a bachelor’s degree, and will be paid benefits and comparatively high salaries, Larson said. She would not specify the salary range.

“The kind of child care students are looking for, on an hourly basis, that’s not preschool,” Larson said. “It’s baby-sitting.”

Added Baumann: “This is as cheap as quality is going to get.”

The center will be dedicated at 10 a.m. Sept. 7.