Reporter
Childcare will soon be free or reduced-price for a wider range of CSU Bakersfield students due to a new government grant.
The CSUB Children’s Center has received a grant for $560,000 to be distributed over four years, according to Gladys Garcia, the center’s director. The grant comes from the U.S. government’s Child Care Access Means Parents In School Program. It has been awarded to other childcare centers in the CSU system in past years, but this is the first year that CSUB has received it.
Garcia heard in the week of Oct. 8 that CSUB would be receiving the grant and plans to start advertising the new financial aid options soon. The grant is already in effect.
Currently, a family of two people that makes $5,067 a month is eligible for a reduced childcare fee of $251 a month for part-time care under the California Department of Education. The Children’s Center has worked with individual student parents over the years to adjust costs to meet their needs, but Garcia says this was not possible in every case. Some students, she says, would seek childcare in the community or wait until their children were older to get their degrees instead.
The grant will make it so that students making more than $5,067 a month may be eligible for reduced costs. Those making this value or lower a month will not have to pay any child care costs at all, with students proving the lowest income receiving the benefit first.
“My goal is for them to not have to pay anything. For them to go to class not worrying about how they’re going to pay their tuition,” Garcia says.
Maria Villegas, lead teacher in the center’s class for three-year-olds, says that financial aid for childcare would have made a positive impact on her life when she attended college.
“At the time I didn’t use [on-campus daycare] because I didn’t know financial aid options applied for me. I only got in-home daycare for four hours. It’s hard to do homework and take care of a kid,” she says.
Former CSUB student Marcus Boriago-Hackler, who graduated this past spring with a master’s degree in history, says that going to school and working while raising his baby Colton was “fairly difficult.” He agrees with Villegas that the grant will have a positive impact on student parents, and says it reflects positively on CSUB that the university prioritizes the needs of its students.
“I believe it’s not a school’s responsibility to provide care for the children of the students who attend the school,” Boriago-Hackler says. “The fact, though, that CSUB is going to apply a grant to help its students who are parents shows to me a concern for the wellbeing of student parents that surpasses the expectation of what a school should do or provide.”
Of the approximately $140,000 that the center will receive each year (the amount increases by three percent every year), Garcia says that $86,000 will go directly towards childcare tuition for CSUB parents. The rest will go towards administrative costs, such as faculty and supplies.
For patrons of the Children’s Center who are already paying full price, Garcia says that they will continue to do so. They can, however, see if they qualify for free care under the new standards. Though students and faculty are offered spots for their children first, the center also offers childcare to members of the community.
Applying for reduced or waived tuition is not a lengthy process, and the grant will not change this. Interested CSUB parents are required to fill out an application and provide proof of income. Whether a student is qualified will be based on Pell Grant eligibility, family income, academic standing, and child care need. To prove child care need, students can bring in proof of enrollment and a current class schedule.
