El Camino Gets Money for Child Development Center : Education: On-campus program will provide day care for children and training for students.

For years, those who study or work at El Camino College have bemoaned the lack of on-campus child care.

Parents drop off their children at off-campus day care centers before rushing to classes or jobs at the college.

At the same time, students in the El Camino childhood education program must leave the campus to get practical training in nursery schools scattered across the South Bay.

Now, after years of planning, the college will be breaking ground for its first Child Development Center, solving two problems at once.

Parents will be able to leave their children at the campus center, and students studying childhood education will learn how to care for them there.

The center will serve 72 children, ages 2 through 5, from the families of students, employees and area residents. Many at El Camino are applauding its arrival.

“It’s going to be a dream come true,” said Nadine Hada, dean of behavioral and social sciences at the 25,000-student college.

“It’s a boon all the way around,” said Lance Widman, a political science professor and president of El Camino Federation of Teachers.

The $775,000 center’s three classrooms will be housed in a new one-story building near the corner of Redondo Beach and Crenshaw boulevards. Groundbreaking on the state-financed project will take place Jan. 13, with completion expected next summer.

Nearby Cal State Dominguez Hills has had an on-site child development center since 1975. It served 65 children last fall, with students’ families getting priority.

“For some student parents, if we weren’t here, they wouldn’t be able to go to school,” said Joanne Sato, director of the center.

But at El Camino, a lack of financing stalled plans for a similar center, despite strong support at the college. For 15 years or more, people have tried to launch some kind of laboratory school.

“When it came down to the wire, there were no funds,” said Antoinette Phillips, associate professor of childhood education.

Meanwhile, students enrolled in a fieldwork training class have been sent to six or seven nursery schools in Torrance, Redondo Beach and other South Bay cities.

Nursery school operators were accommodating, but the system presented logistic problems, Phillips said. For instance, students without cars had to work in a school near a bus line. In addition, Phillips had to travel from school to school to observe the students.

“One day I’m in Manhattan Beach, and the next day I’m in Torrance,” she said.

But El Camino recently got the state money it needed for the Child Development Center.

As a laboratory school, it will serve many of the 200 students in the two-year childhood education program, which offers an associate of arts degree and certificates in areas such as infant and toddler education and school-age child care. Students in other departments will also use the center as part of their studies.

College officials emphasize that rather than simply offering day care, the center will provide an education program focused on such areas as language development and thinking skills. It will have a director and three full-time teachers, plus aides and student interns.

“It’s not baby-sitting,” Phillips said.

El Camino officials, already strapped for funds, hope the center will eventually be self-supporting. The staff hopes that outside fund-raising will supplement the revenue from fees.

Fees have not yet been set but could range from $346 a month for half-day schooling to $550 a month for a 2-year-old to attend five full days per week. The school hopes to offer subsidies for some children.

School officials say they have not begun taking names for the center’s enrollment list.

“We’re not in any position, at this point,” said Linda G. Caplan, dean of student services. “We don’t even have the first shovel of dirt dug yet.”

School officials are not worried about filling the center.

“Knowing the need in this area, and knowing the number of years that people have been waiting for the center to open, I don’t think we’ll have a problem,” she said.