By Danny Vasquez Contributing Writer
On-campus child care centers with an age requirement are an inconvenience for students whose children are under the set age and are more harmful than beneficial.
For students who are parents, the child development center on campus can be pretty beneficial for they allow the student to attend their classes full time without the need to worry about the well-being of their child while class is in session. However, an age requirement does more harm than good, due to the fact that students whose children happen to be under the age are put in a multiple situations. They either have to become part-time students to take care of their child, find a child care center off-campus, which is often a difficult choice to make, or leave the child with a relative willing to take care of it.
In the child development center the age requirement for the children is suppose to be between the ages of three to five years old. Children younger than the age requirement are not allowed any service at the center. The reason why the child development center can’t accept children under their required age limit is because they are licensed to take care of children that are of the ages of three years and up.
But it doesn’t mean the Child development center can disregard a child because of its age. There are several ways to fix this. For example to get a license to take care of children that are under the age, like a nursery for infants.
Most high schools provide nursery care for their students, who in which don’t pay the fees college students pay for their child care. How come the child development center can’t provide service for student parents at East Los Angeles College?
If students are given services for child care, then they should at least have it be beneficial to the student parents that also have younger children. There should be some efforts made to help these families. Yes, there is lack of funding from the state of California for childcare as well as severe budget cuts for community college.
There must be some alternative to help these families who are struggling to find care for their children free to low-cost. If these parents cease to find some funding for the care of the children, East Los Angeles Child Development Center should try to obtain license to service under age children and try to make efforts to retrieve a grant or other funding from foundation to help service some of the families.