Schoolgirls Get Day Care on Campus

Miesha Finks is a mother with great expectations for the future. She plans to get a college degree, develop a career in computers and make a good living for her daughter, Melissa, now 17 months old.

But first, 16-year-old Miesha wants to graduate from high school.

For that reason, each morning she and Melissa take a 40-minute bus ride from her Panorama City home to Mission Continuation High School in San Fernando.

Situated on a corner of the campus that houses San Fernando High and Mission and McAlister continuation schools is a student day-care center run by the YWCA of Los Angeles. Specifically for high school students with children, it is the only one of its kind in the Los Angeles Unified School District and the only campus-situated program run by the YWCA anywhere in the country.

To use the center, student parents must attend one of the three schools on campus. Generally speaking, the service is free to students. There is a sliding scale based on income, but because the students don’t work, they don’t pay fees for the center, which is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

“There isn’t one girl using our center who can afford a dime for child care,” said Margaret Galloway, the center director. “Without this center, these girls would have dropped out of school a long time ago.”

The center has a waiting list of more than 100 children. It currently has 16 children enrolled but beginning Nov. 1 will be able to accept 24 children thanks to a three-year, $55,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. At the same time, the LAUSD will begin giving the center $27,000 annually for each of the three years the grant is in effect.

“It’s wonderful to be getting some financial assistance,” said Galloway, 33, who has a bachelor’s degree in sociology and an associate arts degree in child development and has been working for the YWCA for nine years. The LAUSD allows the center, which opened in 1975, to operate on campus rent-free, which cuts expenses, Galloway said. However, there is still the cost of her salary and the salaries of other workers at the center as well as expenses for toys, bedding and diapers.

“It’s very costly to run this center,” she said, noting that it takes approximately $110 per child per week. With the 16 children currently at the center, it costs roughly $7,000 per month to keep it open.

“Although we need a center like this at every high school, it’s just too costly,” Galloway said.

District officials are pleased with the success of the YWCA’s on-campus, day-care center and say there is a growing need for more such facilities throughout the Valley.

Although there are no other privately run high school day-care centers in the district, there are state-funded centers at Roosevelt and Monroe high schools in downtown Los Angeles. Those centers are funded by the School-Age Parent-Infant Development (SAPID) program. There are no plans for such a center to be opened in the Valley.

“There’s not a whole lot of social services for Valley students,” said Los Angeles school board member Roberta Weintraub. “There was a time when the Valley was considered this lily-white, middle-class community that didn’t need any social services. My, how that’s changed. These days there is a crying need for more of this kind of program.”

Weintraub added that it is too costly to develop more day-care centers at high schools in the district.

“Funding is always the key problem when we look at these kinds of services. . . . We would love to do more but we just can’t afford it right now,” she said.

“The public is going to have to come up with the funding,” Galloway said. “Otherwise we will all witness more and more students dropping out of school without a high school education.”

Miesha knows about the waiting list and she considers herself among the very fortunate.

“I want to give Melissa a better life than I’ve had,” said Miesha, who lives with her grandmother because her mother is dead and she has never known her father. “If I want to do that, if I want to make a future for us both, I have to finish high school first.”

When Miesha wants to visit her daughter, she needs only to wait for a break between classes and walk 50 yards to the day-carebungalow. Inside, the onetimeclassroom is decorated with “Sesame Street” paintings, colorful murals and a variety of stuffed animals and toys. A poster on the wall shows a newborn baby with the words, “Don’t you wish they came with instructions.”

During a recent visit, Miesha stuck her head in the door and waited for Melissa to notice her. When she did, the child ran over and climbed into Miesha’s arms.

“How’s my little girl doing?” Miesha asked, slipping her Walkman headphones off her ears and down around her neck. At continuation school, headphones are permitted while students are doing class work.

Melissa slid down to the floor and pulled her mother by the hand toward a pile of building blocks. “Look what I built,” she said.

By now, Melissa has come to expect frequent visits from her mother, who was 14 when the child was born.

“There wasn’t anywhere else where I could be so young and nurse my baby while I was finishing high school,” Miesha said. “This program has been the best thing for both of us.”

Besides affordability, there are other benefits to having the day-care center on a high school campus, said Jessica Paxton, 17, whose 4-month-old son, Christopher Rodriguez, is enrolled at the center.

“I get to breast-feed my baby and see him on breaks between classes,” Jessica said. “I’m really bonding to my baby. If I had to leave him at a baby-sitter’s house, I wouldn’t see him until after school got out at 3 o’clock.”

Jessica said that if it weren’t for the center she would have dropped out of Kennedy High School in Granada Hills during her sophomore year, when she first found out she was pregnant. Instead, a counselor told her about the day-care center at San Fernando High and she enrolled at McAlister, San Fernando’s continuation school for students who, among other things, are parents or pregnant.

Some students travel great distances to take advantage of the program. Elvia Reyes, 18, takes a 90-minute bus ride from downtown Los Angeles to attend McAlister so her 4-month-old baby, Rudy, can receive day care. Galloway said that Elvia is in class every day and is more serious about graduating from high school than some students who live just three blocks away.

“When my mom found out I was pregnant she told me I would never finish high school,” Elvia said. “Nobody in my family has ever graduated from high school so if I don’t do it nobody will. I need this program.”

The support the mothers receive from one another is another benefit for those whose children are enrolled at the center, Galloway said.

“Suddenly they are no longer alone with this problem of trying to plan the prom and buy diapers all at the same time in their lives,” she said. “They can come here on their lunch breaks, nurse their babies and socialize just like their peers do at lunch.”

Sometimes, Galloway organizes a formal mandatory meeting at lunch to teach the student mothers some aspect of child care such as choking prevention, medical information, proper diapering techniques or how to handle crying infants. Each girl must also spend one hour every school day at the center.

“That way these teen-age mothers get a chance to be around other babies and spend some time during the day with their own child,” Galloway said. “It helps them to learn mothering skills and bond with their baby.”

Galloway said that YWCA surveys have determined that nationwide one in eight high school girls has a baby before graduating. She also said that the problem has spread into the junior high schools.

“Ten years ago we decided to target the senior high schools and counsel girls about the risks of having sex at such a young age,” said Galloway, who has directed the center for seven years. “Now we’ve seen that problem curtailed a bit but there’s a dramatic increase in the number of 14-year-olds entering high school already pregnant or with children.”

At McAlister, Jessica said that there are more 14-year-olds who are pregnant than there are 17-year-olds. Because of the large number of teen-agers getting pregnant, Jessica said, there is another advantage to having the day-care center on campus.

“Students see this center here and they realize it isn’t all fun and games when you have sex,” Jessica said. “Having a baby is a full-time job and it takes a lot of work and dedication.”

Elvia nodded in agreement.

“I think we are all a constant reminder to the others that it is a very good idea to wait,” she said. “We love our children very much and they aren’t taking anything away from our teen-age years. But it’s still better to wait.”