County to Launch Major Child Care Effort in Schools

Responding to what activists call a countywide crisis, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday allocated $74 million to create the nation’s largest after-school child care system.

The after-class program will be held at 225 Los Angeles County elementary schools with large numbers of children on public assistance. It will be funded with surplus welfare money, but will be open at no cost to all public school students.

Officials estimate that as many as 16,000 children will enroll in the program, which will begin operating this summer, fully rolling out across campuses through next year. Supervisors hope ultimately to increase the system’s funding to $120 million as well as to expand access to older children, creating what educators call a “revolutionary” child care system focusing on learning.

In fact, some high school students who would otherwise have idle time on their hands may work in the new child care program watching youngsters, educators said.

“It should really make life easier for so many people,” said Lynn Bayer, director of the county’s welfare department. “The reality is that many of these children don’t receive child care and go home to empty houses.”

Called an after-school enrichment program, the system will operate through the Los Angeles Unified School District and 34 other districts across the county.

The program, the details of which now will be sketched in by school districts, follows a year of lobbying by community groups alarmed at a contradiction in welfare reform: Aid recipients have five years to find a job, but Los Angeles lags far behind other urban areas in affordable child care programs where parents can leave their children while working.

Unworkable Situations

The problem is particularly acute in working-class neighborhoods, where more than 42,000 low-income parents are on waiting lists for child care and others, like Paulette Payne, don’t even bother applying.

The 35-year-old mother of seven is in a volunteer program, which she hopes will lead to a job-training slot. However, she must peel off throughout the day to pick up her children from grade school and ferry them to her sister’s. If she enrolled them in existing child care programs, it would sap most of her $829 monthly welfare grant.

“It sets me back on time, and I’m on a time clock,” said Payne, referring to welfare reform’s five-year limit on aid.

Supervisors said expanding child care was key to achieving real welfare reform in the county.

“If welfare reform is to succeed,” Supervisor Don Knabe said, “quality affordable child care must be made available so that parents entering the working world will be comfortable knowing that their children are in safe hands.”

In Sacramento, meanwhile, Gov. Gray Davis is proposing to spend an additional $35 million statewide for after-school programs in elementary and middle schools. The $35 million would be added to the $50 million the state already spends on such programs.

The money, expected to be included as part of the 1999-2000 budget, would be used to open after-school programs at 250 middle schools and 133 elementary schools, an administration official said Tuesday.

Davis, who is in the process of deciding how to spend a state surplus estimated at $4 billion, also is calling for another $23 million for preschool programs for 3- and 4-year-old children of low-income parents. The money would be added to the $181 million already earmarked for preschool programs, and provide space for 17,000 children in the next fiscal year.

Observers say the push for networks of child care with a strong educational component is a new phenomenon.

“Historically, it’s been these archipelagoes of school-based programs,” said Bruce Fuller of Policy Analysis for California Education, based at UC Berkeley and Stanford. Those programs, he said, have usually been in affluent neighborhoods and funded by parents.

The welfare money allocated by the supervisors will pay for non-welfare students only during the first six months of the program.

Afterward, Los Angeles Unified will pay for its non-welfare students. County officials said they hope other school districts in the county will do the same.

“This is one example of how meeting the needs of mothers who have the least also benefits others,” said Margaret Prescod of the Every Mother is a Working Mother Network, which pushed the Los Angeles program.

And although the money approved by supervisors Tuesday would pay for after-school programs for only elementary schoolchildren, county officials are moving toward creating similar programs in junior high schools and high schools.

Quality Time

More significant, the new after-school programs will focus on education rather than solely on recreation, helping with homework and preparation for the standardized Stanford 9 test, as well as providing computers for children who rarely have access to them at home.

Studies have shown that such classes can significantly boost educational achievement, and officials said they hope to see an impact from the after-school program.

“Our superintendent is interested in raising achievement and test scores and this is a huge part of that,” said John Berndt of the Los Angeles County Office of Education. “It’s a different approach to how we look at education so we can get people excited about math, excited about reading.”

L.A. Unified and other districts currently have districtwide after-school programs, but because of low funding they are solely recreational, officials said. Those networks will stay in place but be bolstered by the new program.

“This is a real paradigm shift in terms of after-school programs,” said Phil Kauble, also of the county education office.

The use of welfare money in the schools follows a trend in Los Angeles of traditional social services shifting into the school system, as the educational system takes on more responsibility for children. Already the county is seeking federal health money to pay for health care in school-based clinics and is expanding its mental health services into schools.

“It’s an important step in redefining public education, in redefining what public schools will be about in the future,” said Prescod, the activist with the Every Mother group.

As dramatic and expensive as the county’s action is--in dollars, it amounts to more than federal and state subsidies for local child care combined, officials said--it may only make a dent in Los Angeles County’s problem.

A study by Policy Analysis for California Education found that Los Angeles would need a whopping 1,517 more child care facilities before it would have access comparable to other urban areas. Another study by advocates for the poor found that of 81,000 Los Angeles families that signed up for welfare last year, fewer than 12,000 found child care.

Still, Prescod and a coterie of single mothers and activists gave the Board of Supervisors a standing ovation after they approved funding for the program.

“This is one of the best gifts that mothers throughout the city and the county can get for Mother’s Day,” Prescod said. “It’s more substantial than the flowers we get--though we like those, as well.”

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Times staff writer Dan Morain contributed to this story.

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Program at a Glance

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved funding for a new child-care system at schools, with slots for 16,000 children.

Where: At 225 public elementary schools countywide, still being selected on the basis of number of students on welfare.

Who qualifies: Any student at a school with a program, regardless of welfare status.

When: Schools are just beginning to design programs and hire staff. The first of the programs are not scheduled to open until July, and most would open next year.

For information: Call Bruce Aubry, program director for L.A. Unified School District, at (818) 904-2164, or John Brendt at Los Angeles County Office of Education, which coordinates with other school districts, at (562) 922-6613.