San Fernando Valley : High School to Open Child Care Center
Hoping to stem the number of teen-agers who drop out of school to raise their children, the Los Angeles Unified School District will open the San Fernando Valley’s second child care center for high school students in North Hills early next year.
Scheduled to open Jan. 2, the facility at James Monroe High School will become one of only a handful on a district high school campus.
On Tuesday, more than two dozen volunteers from Home Depot in Van Nuys swarmed through the once-dilapidated structure clutching hammers, saws, drills and paintbrushes as Principal Joan Elam watched their labor transform her 3-year-old dream into reality.
“To have Home Depot come through . . . it’s great,” she said.
Geoff Parr, who supervised the volunteers’ work, estimated that Home Depot donated between $5,000 and $8,000 in materials to refurbish the building, purchased for $1 from a Long Beach school district and moved to the campus.
The center will serve as many as 60 children, from 6-week-old infants to 5-year-olds, Elam said. Services will be offered on a sliding-scale basis and administrators hope to attract many of the 150 Monroe students who are already parents.
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