PIERCE COLLEGE : Child-Care Funding Is Slashed

Cuts in child-care funding at Pierce College and the other eight Los Angeles Community College District campuses are limiting the schools’ ability to serve student parents, college officials said.

Kathy Ryder, Child Development Center director at the Woodland Hills school, said the cost of this year’s program at Pierce, if run at its present capacity, will be $312,835. However, she said she has only about $290,000.

Pierce’s center has a capacity of 60 children. Because of state regulations regarding teacher-child ratios, six full-time teachers are needed to operate the center at that capacity from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., Ryder said.

However, the center currently has only four full-time teachers and one part-time teacher. In addition, one of the full-time teachers, Norma Silverman, plans to take maternity leave in the next couple of weeks and the Pierce administration has thus far refused to hire a substitute.

“Unless we close a class, we will be illegal in some way,” Ryder said.

Speakers from throughout the community college district attended a district Board of Trustees meeting Oct. 3 at Pierce to voice their concerns about budget cuts for the child-care centers.

Michael Simone of East Los Angeles College said the district allotment of $2.3 million is about $572,000 less than last year’s expenditure. “The colleges have been left holding the bag,” he said. “This bag is empty.”

“I would not have the opportunity to be a full-time student if it were not for child care,” said Barbara Kime, a 28-year-old single parent attending Pierce.

The speakers asked the board to adopt a set of guidelines that would, among other things, assure that child-care centers with two classrooms have four teachers and those with four classrooms have six.

Pierce, along with four other district schools, has a four-classroom center. The other four schools have two-classroom centers.