Many County School Child-Care Programs Generate Waiting Lists : Education: Demand for latchkey programs, funded by the state, exceeds available room in some districts. Others may be canceled for lack of use.

Hundreds of children are on waiting lists for after-school day care in some Ventura County school districts, while programs in other districts may be canceled for lack of students.

And at other schools, parents and school officials are struggling to get on-campus day-care programs started.

For some parents, particularly those who receive free or reduced-fee day care, the programs are invaluable.

“If I didn’t have this care, I couldn’t work,” said Maria, a single mother who asked that her last name not be used.

Maria, who earns $1,200 a month working at an Oxnard nursery, does not have to pay for the care of her two daughters at Ventura’s Sheridan Way Elementary. She leaves them at the school at 6:30 a.m., arrives at her job by 7 a.m., and picks her children up about 5 every evening.

Before she enrolled her daughters at Sheridan Way, Maria said, she paid about $160 a week to an unreliable baby-sitter to care for them and her 2-year-old.

“I was late for work three times in one week, and I got a warning that if I couldn’t find someone reliable, I might lose my job,” Maria said. “It was very vital for me to get reliable care.”

Last summer, her daughters were enrolled in the latchkey program, and Maria now pays $60 a week for her toddler’s care. “I’m very fortunate,” she said.

Many parents and child-care providers prefer school-based care because it allows children to remain on campus under supervision that is regulated by state or school district officials.

Some after-school programs are provided by organizations such as the YMCA or Camp Fire, which lease space from school districts but provide their own instructors. Others are run by the school districts.

Latchkey programs are funded by the state through school districts to keep children from having to go home to empty houses. Pay is on a sliding scale, based on family income. Ventura County schools will receive $369,730 in latchkey funds this year, from statewide funding of $16.8 million, state education officials said.

In most programs, care is provided before- and after-hours in classrooms, school cafeterias or gymnasiums, or in portable classrooms, sometimes purchased by the provider and placed on school grounds.

“School-based child care has so many benefits--to the school, to the community, to the child and to the parents,” said Sharon Rich of the Camarillo YMCA, which runs programs for about 170 students at six schools in the Pleasant Valley Elementary School District.

Demand for the programs is affected by price, family income, convenience and the availability of free care from extended family members.

At year-round Sheridan Way Elementary, a 26-student latchkey program was full by the end of last school year, day-care Director Janiece Varela said. By the start of the new school year in July, the names of 23 students were on a waiting list, Varela said.

And an after-school program at Ventura’s Serra Elementary School has more than 100 students waiting to get in, said Serra day-care Director Karen Whitmore.

“We’ve just been adding on to the list for two years,” Whitmore said. “Most of the kids have returned that started originally, and every year we have only a few spots that open up.”

A high number of working families in the neighborhood surrounding Serra has contributed to the length of the list, Whitmore said. Also, with about 780 students, the school is larger than most other Ventura elementary schools, but is licensed for only 25 students in day care, she said.

In Ventura’s public schools, about 350 children are enrolled in day-care and latchkey programs, said Arlene Miro, director of administrative services.

In Thousand Oaks’ Conejo Valley Unified School District, about 650 students are enrolled in a before- and after-school program started by the district four years ago, child-care coordinator Sue Baker said. Seventeen of the district’s 18 elementary schools offer the program, and care is provided by full-time district employees.

“We’re one of the few districts with district-supported child care in the state,” Baker said. There are waiting lists at some of the schools, she said.

But because of rising costs, Conejo Valley officials have increased fees by about 25% this year, discontinued morning programs with low enrollment and canceled a summer program.

While students are plentiful in some after-school programs, a program called Kids’ Club in the Santa Paula Elementary School District is struggling for survival this year because of declining enrollment.

Kids’ Club is offered at three Santa Paula schools, said Patty Z. Ramirez, supervisor of child-care services. Last year, however, an average of only seven children a day participated in the program at McKevett Elementary, and 12 to 14 children a day attended the Glen City and Bedell school programs.

Because of low attendance, Kids’ Club was not self-supporting last year, and the district paid about $16,000 to balance the program budget, Ramirez said.

“If we were in Ventura I think we’d be really full,” Ramirez said. “But Santa Paula is not Ventura, and there are many families that might not be able to afford it.”

Rates range from $1.50 a day for the before-school program, from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m., to $4.50 to $6.50 a day for after-school care.

“There’s also a lot of extended families in this town so, in many instances, kids go after school to stay with an aunt or grandmother or other relative,” Ramirez said. “But there’s still a need for the program. I’ve got parents who tell me they’d be lost without it.”

School starts in Santa Paula today, and district officials will monitor Kids’ Club attendance for about a month before deciding whether to curtail or discontinue it, Assistant Supt. Bonnie Bruington said.

In Ojai, the only on-campus care is provided by the nonprofit Help of Ojai community group at Meiners Oaks Elementary School, officials said.

However, Meiners Oaks teachers Dana Huffman and Carolyn Gourley have started a nonprofit group called Smart Start Development Center, with the hope of bringing on-campus care to more Ojai schools in 1992.

“At the moment, we don’t have a well-developed after-school program in the Ojai Valley,” Huffman said.