NORTH HILLS : High School May Be Site of Child Care Center

A North Hills high school and a local YMCA are working together to create the first on-campus child care center to accommodate children of students and teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

About $90,000 is needed to fund the proposed day-care and preschool center at James Monroe High School. Officials at the school and the North Valley Family YMCA in Mission Hills hope that donations and grants will fund the center in time for the fall semester this August.

“We’ve got students who aren’t coming to school because they can’t take care of their kids,” said Joan Elam, principal at Monroe. “We’ve got teachers who have to call in absent because their baby-sitter doesn’t show up.”

The center would serve up to 45 children between the ages of 6 weeks to 5 years in a bungalow provided by the YMCA, which would staff the center.

Students who leave their children at the center will be required to spend an hour a day with their child learning parenting skills. The center would also be used to train students at the school’s child care academy.

Andrea Vergara, director of instruction for the child development division of the district, said the Monroe project would be the first of its kind. She said the district operates four infantcare centers for students with children and 92 children’s centers for working parents, some of whom are teachers.

“There is no one center where children of teachers and students are all in one building,” Vergara said.

YMCA officials said the proposed center also marks the first time that a YMCA-sponsored center would provide day care on campus for the offspring of both teachers and students.

“It’s very exciting,” said Jane Stanton, executive director of the North Valley Family YMCA. “We just feel very strongly that we would like to help students stay in school.”