PLACENTIA : Parents Seek to Retain Child Care

Parents and local leaders are seeking a way to save the Placentia Unified School District’s infant and toddler day-care program, which will close in June after years in the red.

The program, which provides day care for 27 children ages 6 weeks to 3 years, will shut down June 30 because of high losses for several years. The center is in a small building next to Tuffree Junior High school on North Kraemer Boulevard in Placentia.

Last year the program lost about $96,000, said Mim Dutcher, director of child-care programs for the district.

But parents say the area has a shortage of such programs and a high demand.

“There’s such an incredible need,” said Debra Goodman, a Yorba Linda resident. “To abolish the best program around is downright unconscionable.”

As of last week, 15 parents were on the waiting list, said Linda Johnson, the director of the program. Of those, seven people have signed up for children not yet born, she said.

“We get three or four calls a day (inquiring about the program),” Johnson said. “ . . . If the program were to continue, we could fill slots though May, 1992.”

The program draws high praise from parents because of its connection to the school district and access to educational services.

“They offer what an in-home day-care provider can’t,” said Joan Wiener, who has one child in the program and another who attended two years ago. “She’s getting something out of her day.”

The program started almost six years ago as part of the old Yorba Linda Elementary School District and enrolled 45 children at one time. When the district merged with the Placentia Unified School District in 1989, the costs of running the program rose because the new district’s union required benefits and higher pay for day-care employees.

Since the merger, fees have increased from $390 a month to $575 a month, Dutcher said.

“It’s just too labor-intensive,” she said. “It’s never been self-supportive.”

State guidelines require that every four infants or toddlers be watched by at least one employee, whereas only one adult is required for every 12 older children. The Placentia district has more stringent requirements. Under its policy, one employee is provided for every three infants.

James Fleming, superintendent of the school district, said fees have had to be raised at all levels of day care, including preschool and extended-school programs, to make up for losses in the infant and toddler program.

“We just don’t think that we should be financing this program out of the cost of regular day care,” Fleming said. “It isn’t right.

“We’re in the business of K-12 education,” he said. “The only reason we have day-care programs (is) because it’s a service to parents that pays for itself.” Infant care, Fleming said, “is a community problem and needs a community solution. We’ll be a part of it, but we don’t want to be the only part.”

But some parents argue that the district’s day-care programs better prepare children for school, and elementary and secondary education costs can be reduced because problems are spotted earlier and corrected more quickly.

“If they start to work with kids at an early age, they can reduce the cost of education in the long run,” said Jeff Goodman, whose children went through the day-care program.

Vacancies for infants and toddlers also are limited at private facilities, according to a study done by Connie Haddad of the League of Women Voters of Southern California. Day-care programs usually accept only two or three infants, if any, because of the high costs.

Haddad and Wiener are on a task force of parents and civic leaders that is asking the cities of Yorba Linda and Placentia to fund a study of child-care needs. The request is expected to come before the two councils by the end of the year.