A Point of Light for Kids : Child Care: Spurred by Sheila Watkins, wife of the secretary, the Energy Department has created a state-of-the-art center for employees’ children.

Some people look at volleyball courts and ask, “Why?” Sheila Watkins looks at volleyball courts and asks, “Why not?”

In 1989, days after President George Bush named her husband, James D. Watkins, secretary of energy, Sheila Watkins was being shown around the Energy Department building on Independence Avenue.

“They showed me the credit union and waste management and the security system, and I said, ‘So where’s the child-care center?’ ”

“ ‘No center,’ they said, ‘but we’ve got a site.’ And they took me down into the building, as far and as dark as you can imagine. ‘It’s cold and it’s damp down here,’ I said, ‘and there’s no daylight.’

“ ‘Well, they’re only children,’ they said. Only children!”

Later in the tour, Watkins spied employee volleyball courts. “I said: Here. Here is where we’ll put the child-care center.”

And they did.

Welcome to the Energy Child Development Center: model of ecological correctness and state-of-the-art child care and testimony to one mother’s invention.

Sheila Watkins has six children, and for most of her 42-year marriage to Watkins, she has been what she calls a typical Navy wife. “That means sink or swim. You’re on your own. Gotta be tough.”

Toughness--and a little help from friends named Bush and Quayle--helped Watkins raise the $250,000 needed to open what has become the most talked-about day-care center in Washington.

The building, one of the few specifically designed for child care, welcomed its first three children last August. Today, it is a home away from home for more than 60 children aged 3 months to 5 years who can spend as many as 12 hours a day here.

The children are the sons and daughters of Energy Department employees who, depending upon the age of their children, pay $80 to $155 a week in tuition. Ten families receive scholarships, thanks to a special fund Watkins is building with contributions from personal friends and corporate America (although she is limited in her solicitations to firms without connections to the Energy Department).

“My big dream is to some day provide this for free,” says Watkins, whose commanding charm and social sensibility can make such things happen. “I think it is absolutely discriminatory not to give every child quality child development.”

This month, the center will open an innovative summer program for older children. Like the younger students--and even the little babies are called students-- the school-age youngsters will enjoy meals, educational play, behavioral guidance and plenty of hugs during their stay.

“You could say it’s a dream come true,” sighs Mary Egger, a staff lawyer and mother of 20-month-old Zachary. “I come to work with my child, breakfast with him at the center, play with him during the day and know he’s in very, very capable hands.”

Before the energy center opened, Egger was on waiting lists for child care at several other federal agencies. “But every one of them was stuck in a basement or some other interior room where the children never saw the light of day,” says Egger. “There really is nothing anywhere like this.”

At the entrance to this center are large photographs of George and Barbara Bush, smiling. They are smiling because what Sheila Watkins has done here has been done with a minimum of federal funds.

“Essentially, we took the talent and the space and, most of all, the enthusiasm that we already had in-house and turned it into something that we are all very, very proud of,” says Watkins, who is quick to credit her husband’s personal commitment to quality child care for making the center possible.

The program might be one of the Bush Administration’s brightest points of light, says Watkins. Although the agency paid start-up costs, the program’s daily operations are funded through a nonprofit corporation established by the Energy Department.

Energy employees supplement the center’s budget by selling popcorn every afternoon, holding plant sales and hawking DOE T-shirts. Tens of thousands of dollars have been raised at lunches honoring Marilyn Quayle and Barbara Bush, a longtime Watkins friend.

“Our hope is to ultimately have an endowment that will generate enough interest to pay these teachers’ salaries,” says Watkins, who says the center pays its staff of 20 well above the going rate.

All members of the staff hold college degrees, which is exceptional in the child-care business, according to director George Farrell, who holds advanced degrees in early childhood education. “Everything here has been done first class to create the best possible program and physical environment for the children.”

But as extraordinary as the program is, the building itself might be the center’s true centerpiece.

Architects from the General Services Administration worked with Department of Energy scientists to design 8,200 square feet of energy-saving space.

“I told them, ‘Why not make this a model of energy efficiency?’ ” says Watkins.

The result was a sturdy but stunning prefab structure, created in a old airport hanger and assembled in a matter of weeks where those volleyball courts once stood.

Inside, there are quieting colors and toddler-height windows. “Learning” toys and soft mats decorate the floors. Tiny cots and cozy cribs line the nap room walls.

All the rooms are warmed by the sun. The indoor climate is maintained by double-door air locks and thermopane windows.

On the roof, three giant solar panels collect and store enough solar power to supply up to 80% of the center’s hot water and 50% of its lighting.

Already, there are copycats.

The Park Service has modified the Energy Child Care Center’s portable building and solar energy systems to create a series of smaller child-care centers for placement in remote park areas.

Other federal agencies, including the Veterans Administration and Department of Treasury, have entered contracts to create similar care centers.

“Of course, we are thrilled,” says Watkins, “that our successes can serve as a model for others, but we’ve still got lots to do. . . .”

Indeed. A twin of the Energy Child Care Center will soon open in Germantown, Md., to serve the children of employees who work in the old Atomic Energy Commission building there.

Watkins got that center started too.

“First,” she says, “I took away their heliport. . . .”