Children will have two new places to learn and play, as UCSF plans to open child care facilities at Mission Bay this spring and break ground for another center on the Parnassus campus.
When these two new child care centers open, UCSF will have expanded its child care slots to about 300 -- tripling the existing number of openings available to the children of faculty, staff, students and community members, said Senior Vice Chancellor Steve Barclay.
"But that's still not enough," Barclay acknowledged to a crowd gathered at the Jan. 18 groundbreaking for the Kirkham Street child care center. "The questions are, first, where can we provide more child care, and second, how do we make it more affordable?"
Recognizing that affordability is a critical issue for access to high-quality child care, UCSF Chancellor Mike Bishop helps to defray the expenses by funding the capital costs and facilities expenses of child care centers at UCSF. Together, the funding represents about 20 percent of the overall costs of operating the child care centers. Without this funding support, direct parent fees would need to be increased by about $2,200 per year. In addition, the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Child Care is reviewing other options to make UCSF child care more affordable.
Specifically, UCSF's child care plans include:
- Opening the Mission Bay Child Care Center, which will serve 75 children when
it opens in April 2006;
- Constructing a new child care center on Kirkham Street to serve 75 children
when it opens in spring 2007;
- Renovating the Marilyn Reed Lucia Child Care Study Center on Parnassus Avenue
to serve only infants, ages 2 months to 2 years, when it re-opens in 2007;
- Continuing to offer child care at University Child Care Center at the UCSF
Laurel Heights site.
An architectural rendering of the UCSF child care center on Kirkham Street.
Kirkham Groundbreaking
Designed by architects Pfau & Associates, the 4,000-square-foot Kirkham child care center will feature five classrooms and a large playground area, says Robert Frank, director of UCSF Child Care Services.
Frank, who celebrates in February his first anniversary serving at the helm of UCSF's child care centers, credits the rapid growth of child care services to the vision of campus officials, including the leadership of Diane Wara, MD, who chairs the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Child Care.
"This was a dream five years ago, and now it's becoming a reality," Wara said at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Kirkham center. "This is a terrific reflection of UCSF's caring about the people who work here at UCSF and the community in which we live."
To get community support, campus officials, including Wara, and representatives from UCSF Community & Governmental Relations (C&GR), met with neighbors and presented the plans for the Kirkham child care center. The neighbors' chief concerns were about parking, circulation and traffic, according to Barbara Bagot-Lopez of C&GR. UCSF offered neighbors several parking and circulation options, and agreed to implement the one they preferred, she said.
UCSF representatives also joined the neighbors in meeting with San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic staff about the neighbors' general concerns about traffic/circulation in the area, Bagot-Lopez said. After that set of negotiations was over, campus planners and C&GR's Orlando Elizondo worked with neighbors to come to an agreement on the building design.
Growing Demand
With waiting lists for its two existing child care centers at Parnassus and Laurel Heights topping 400 combined, UCSF has been looking at how to meet the growing demand for child care. In the past year, UCSF has seen a significant increase in demand for its two current child care centers, which are constantly full and where it can take as long as a year to enroll a child.
Wara attributes the high demand for child care, in part, to the "paucity of services in San Francisco, as well as increased numbers of women faculty, staff and students having children at a younger age and, perhaps, more children per family."
Last year, UCSF representatives approached neighboring child care centers for additional slots for UCSF parents, but this effort did not gain any new slots, Wara says. These centers, too, have waiting lists for enrollment and struggle to meet the high demand for child care in San Francisco.
Striving to boost its child care slots is important to recruiting and retaining the best and the brightest faculty and staff to carry out the University's missions of patient care, research, education and public service, Wara says.
From an employer standpoint, studies show that offering on-site child care boosts productivity, as employees can be assured that their children are close by, well cared for and are getting a good start to lifelong learning.
Jacque Duncan, MD, assistant adjunct professor of ophthalmology, echoed that sentiment at the groundbreaking ceremony. "As a junior faculty member, I can tell you how wonderful it is to have a safe, reliable and reasonably affordable child care center within walking distance from where I work."
Duncan also says she appreciates the fact that UCSF child care centers "reflect the diversity -- what makes UCSF a special place to be."
Expanding Child Care
This week, UCSF is getting the first of 10 portable buildings to house six classrooms for the Mission Bay Child Care Center located at 1555 6th Street. Like University Child Care Center at Laurel Heights, the Mission Bay Child Center will be operated by
Marin Day Schools, an organization that will run 12 centers when the new center opens. Priority for enrollment for this center will go to those living and/or working at UCSF Mission Bay.
In 2004, UCSF expanded University Child Care Center at Laurel Heights by 3,000 square feet to allow for an additional 27 children. In addition, UCSF increased available slots for children of UCSF parents through attrition of some slots previously assigned to members of the community.
With the expanded capacity at Laurel Heights and the new facilities at Mission Bay and Parnassus, these efforts will have increased the overall UCSF child care capacity from 90 slots in 2003 to 300 slots in 2007, an increase of more than 300 percent.
The Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Child Care continues to develop recommendations that will further support the expansion of child care services to meet current and future demands, including an affordability program for UCSF families.
Currently, tuition for child care at University Child Care Center, for example, is $1,125 a month for a preschool child who attends the program full-time five days a week. The tuition for infants and toddlers is even higher - $1,490 a month. Applications with rate information and policies may be downloaded
here.
UCSF also offers an option to families who are seeking alternative child care through its Child Care Resource and Referral Service. That service provides referrals to more than 400 UCSF families annually and manages a database of child care programs, including family day homes and fee-based centers. For more information about non-UCSF child care centers, call the referral service at 415/476-2692.
For more information about UCSF child care programs, please contact Director
Robert Frank at 415/476-1469. Information about Marin Day Schools may be directed to
Jill Cohn, business director, at 415/775-2111. Those who wish to know more about the work of the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Child Care can contact Tracey Gearlds at 415/476-4438.
