Long-Term Day-Care Solutions Needed : Scramble in Capistrano School District Is Example of How Things Shouldn’t Work

The aftereffects of the 1980s South County building boom were obvious this month with the opening of five new elementary schools in the Capistrano Unified School District. That was more new schools than any other district in the state opened this year.

In the last four years, the district’s enrollment from kindergarten through high school has increased more than 16%, the most in the county and well above the 6.4% rate statewide. New teachers, administrators and buildings have been pressed into service for a student population that has swelled past 32,000.

Another need has been day-care for elementary students, many of whom come from families where both parents must work to keep up with the cost of living in Orange County. Preschools, latchkey kids and after-school classes all have become parts of our landscape, and the scramble by parents to find substitutes when something goes awry with day care is commonplace.

So it was upsetting for parents in the sprawling Capistrano Unified district, which stretches from Mission Viejo to San Clemente, when the state Department of Social Services and the Orange County YMCA were unable to resolve their differences over the district’s day-care programs.

Fortunately, the state displayed some flexibility. It allowed the YMCA to handle more students at four elementary schools than last year. But that flexibility came only after the state waited too long in telling the YMCA it was rejecting its earlier plans. After all, the YMCA, which has operated day-care programs for the district since the 1970s, applied in March for permission to take care of 200 more students. The state did not turn thumbs down until the end of August, two weeks before the schools opened.

Some of the state’s objections seem bureaucratic, including the requirement for new fire safety certificates for YMCA classrooms used for day-care, this after the classrooms had already been certified by the fire department for regular school classes. Others appeared more substantive, such as missing strict time limits to submit fingerprints of persons working with the children.

YMCA President Art Wannlund was right when he said the district needs to work out long-term solutions with the state. About 200 parents were left scrambling temporarily by the wrangling between the state and the YMCA. Though their problems were solved eventually, they deserve more certainty in making plans to care for their children in a growing district.