Conejo Panel to Consider Expanding Child Care : Schools: Enrollment boom puts some Thousand Oaks families on waiting list. District will vote on funds for more hourly providers.

Two years after scaling back its child-care programs, the Conejo Valley school district is considering expanding services to meet the needs of more Thousand Oaks families.

Enrollment in child-care programs has boomed this year, forcing some parents onto waiting lists and sending school officials scrambling to fill positions for child-care providers.

As a result, the board of the Conejo Valley Unified School District will decide Monday whether to spend about $17,400 to increase those hourly positions at six elementary schools for the remainder of the school year.

“(Enrollment) has been increasing steadily, but this year is the highest it has ever been,” said Barbara Ryan, director of elementary education.

The boom reflected a districtwide enrollment increase this year, mostly due to new home sales, Ryan said. Enrollment in child-care programs has peaked at 613 students at 11 schools.

In particular, enrollment increased significantly in morning child-care sessions, which were offered free this year to parents whose child was enrolled in an after-school session.

Parents welcomed the extended service, which allowed working mothers and fathers to drop their children off at school as early as 7 a.m. But finding child-care workers to work for just one hour in the morning was difficult and the turnover rate for the part-time position has been high.

At the start of the school year, 11 of the 12 morning positions were vacant, a district report says. Six of those positions are still open. The other six have been filled temporarily by after-school staff doing double duty.

“We took our (employees) who worked later in the day and made them substitutes in the morning,” Ryan said. “We had to, we had no choice.”

The proposal for board consideration Monday would extend and restructure the hourly schedule to provide more stable staffing, school officials said. The $17,400 would come out of the child-care program’s $850,000 operating budget, Ryan said.

In 1992, the school board cut child-care hours and supervisor positions to balance the program’s budget. Since then, however, the number of families seeking services has grown and profits have increased--parents pay anywhere from $60 to $300 for child-care services, depending on the services provided.

At Ladera School, which has the largest child-care program in the district, the demand for services was so high this year that the school opened a second building to house 81 children.

The school has two kindergarten child-care sessions, and Principal Kristine White said the school could easily fill a third session from its waiting list.

“We have a large number of parents who both work so our child-care (program) is always full,” White said.

Parent feedback on the programs has largely been positive, school officials said.

“We hear this is the Club Med of child care,” Ryan said. “Parents feel very confident--their children never have to go to another site and we hire quality personnel.”

Thousand Oaks parent Stuart Medal has two children enrolled in Ladera’s program. As a single working father, he relies on the school to provide a safe environment for his 11-year-old son, Andrew, and his 9-year-old daughter, Aubrey.

“It’s on campus, it’s familiar,” he said. “And they have friends here.”

Parent Elaine Kingsley said the school-run program is reasonably priced and an asset, given her job schedule. She starts work at a medical lab at 7:30 a.m.

“It works really well and the price is good,” she said. Kingsley, who is single, drops off her 5-year-old son, Jonathan, about 7 a.m. every weekday.

Said Kingsley: “I don’t know how else I would do it.”