Child Care Development Center officials told parents of Westmoreland Child Care Center students Wednesday that they’ll have to follow the standard enrollment process, which would not guarantee spots for their displaced children, if the complex is sold.
The total number of slots available will also decrease, and numerous student staff jobs at the center will be cut, they said.
“Westmoreland is one program, or two classrooms, of the whole CCDC,” Work and Family Services Administrator Karen Logvin told a small group gathered at the Moss Street Child Care Center on Wednesday night.
The center at the Westmoreland apartment complex, which the University administration is seeking to sell, currently serves 44 families with 28 full-time slots, Logvin said.
“There was a total of 225 families that were surveyed, and of those, based on what people projected they would need for fall, it looks like there may be a shortage of about 18 (slots) that we can’t serve,” CCDC Assistant Coordinator Cheryl Jordan said.
The CCDC survey of Westmoreland parents had approximately 80 percent response.
Logvin said enrollment guidelines, which are governed by Oregon Administrative Rules, would change very little, but there would be fewer slots available next fall, even though the CCDC is planning to open an additional classroom and add extra spaces to established classes at the Moss Street center.
“(Westmoreland center) enrollment isn’t separate than what happens at Moss Street,” she said. “It all goes in based on the needs, the age of the child, the needs of the family. Those 44 families will go in the mix, as they have every term.”
All students at CCDC must be re-enrolled each term, although currently enrolled families have priority for the same slots they already occupy, and all applications from currently enrolled students are pooled.
Oregon Administrative Rules also guarantee admission for up to 20 percent of non-student returning families, about 14 slots given to “most senior non-student families,” Jordan said.
“We take all of them together as a whole, and take a look at all of the requests that come in. We take a look at how many total spots we’ll have and with the Westmoreland closure it will be about 75 child care spots,” Jordan told the parents.
Westmoreland resident and parent Maureen Warman said the parents aren’t just concerned about securing child care.
“It’s not just about, ‘Is there going to be an available slot available for my child?’ It’s about the program. It’s about the teachers – everything that makes it a community there,” she said. “I know some people are hoping they could find another spot to kind of keep the program intact and keep the kids together.”
Jordan said that if the Westmoreland complex is sold, it would also mean the loss of “numerous student staff” members.
“There is not enough space to accommodate all the student staff that work out there as well as the classified staff,” Jordan said.
Warman also said many parents who live at the complex and use he child care center located on the property are concerned with transporting their children to the alternative centers.
“A lot of people who live there walk their children three blocks to take them to child care,” she said. “(The Moss Street) center is pretty far from the U of O buses over on Kincaid.”
Logvin and Jordan said that transportation concerns were already on the University’s Westmoreland Transition Team agenda but had few concrete solutions to offer parents and employees.
“We’re still all approaching it from a hypothetical way. It’s all not all done until it gets the State Board of Higher Education approval,” Logvin said. “We’re proceeding as if it’s a done deal even though it’s not a done deal.”
Jordan said she did not know how many parents at Westmoreland were on the waiting list to receive child care.
“I wish you could say with a guarantee, ‘child care for everybody who’s at Westmoreland,’ next year,” graduate teaching fellow and parent Suzanne Tilleman said.
“We wish we could too,” Jordan responded.