Campus Child Care and Community Colleges

When considering how best to provide successful Education for All, a key constituent group is student parents. According to the American Association of Community Colleges, nearly half (47%) of postsecondary students age 18 to 24 with children attend community college, roughly three times the percent of parent students who attend public four-year colleges (15%) and private for-profit institutions (16%).

Nationwide, more than 2 million community college students are parents of children under 18. Seventy percent of these parents are mothers, and many of these mothers are ethnically diverse. The economic well-being of those families is highly dependent on successful completion of degrees and certificates leading to high wages.

The American Association of Community College Trustees, in a recent brief, outlined several challenges facing student parents, often making it difficult for them to graduate: They face numerous demands on their time, which include caring for children and often, holding a job, in addition to attending classes and completing coursework. Two-thirds of student parents in community college work, which can disrupt degree completion. Caregiving takes up substantial time as well, with roughly a quarter of women in community college reporting that they spend 30 hours or more each week providing care to dependents, and more than four in ten who live with dependents saying that their care obligations are likely to cause them to drop out of school. Affordable, reliable child care is essential to helping student parents balance these time demands, but quality care can be expensive and the number of community colleges with on-campus child care has declined as the number of student parents in community college has increased.

To address these concerns, ACCT recommends a series of best practices to helpstudent parents succeed.

  1. Establish campus programs and collaborate with community service providers to give student parents access to resources they need to stay in school.
  2. Partner with the local early care and education community to help student parents find child care that meets their needs.
  3. Collect data on students' parent status to better understand parents’ college needs and outcomes.
  4. Promote federal, state, and local strategies to improve the availability of affordable child care.

At LBCC, our efforts are well-aligned with those recommendations. LBCC has provided a child care referral service for many years, consistent with recommendation #3 from the ACCT report. Through our Parenting Success Network, families can find referrals to high-quality child care providers in Linn and Benton (and Lincoln) counties.

Related to recommendation #1, we have made great strides recently, and I am happy to announce that LBCC’s Periwinkle Child Development Center will open to children on February 5, 2024. The Grand Opening Event will be held Tuesday, February 13 from 4:00-5:30. Board members are warmly welcome to attend this celebratory event and to share the invitation with interested colleagues and constituents. We’ll send more details soon.

The Center will begin with a "soft" opening in Winter term, offering one Preschool classroom. We hope to open a second Preschool classroom Spring term. When fully operational (target: Fall term 2024), we will offer 3 Preschool classrooms and 1 Toddler classroom, serving a total of 75 children. Kendra Votava is the director and teachers, for the initial classroom, have been hired. Currently, 24 families have applied, 16 of whom are LBCC student parents.

Affordability is a central tenet of the approach. We are offering a discounted tuition for winter and spring term for students of $250 for full-day care. The rate for staff, faculty, or community members is $900 for full-day care. Students will be eligible for Oregon’s Employment Related Day Care funds as more funds become available in July 2024. We are prioritizing students, then staff and faculty, then, as space allows, community members.

To keep the program affordable and high-quality, LBCC staff are seeking external support. Pending Grant applications are outlined below:

  1. LBCC Foundation Peace Grant- requested $2910 to support Second Step social emotional curriculum sets and Ages and Stages Social Emotional sets in English and Spanish.
  2. New America Grant- requested $30,000 to support student parents with child care costs through monthly scholarships ($22,500), two staff to support Admissions with creating a data collection/infrastructure plan ($5,000), and a student parent support club ($2,500). In alignment with recommendation 3 above, we are learning that we need better data collection on the numbers of student parents and the ages of their children, so the data collection plan is a high priority. Intake information on our application will soon have questions about parenting, in keeping with a new HECC requirement.
  3. When eligible, LBCC will apply for federal funding under CCAMPIS (Child Care Access Means Parents in School), the only federal assistance available to support child care in postsecondary education (this fits with recommendation #4).

The 2022 bond measure was critical to the remodel and start-up of the Center. Thank you to LBCC Board members and community members who supported the effort to expand high-quality child care for student parents and community members. Thanks also to Dr. Meg Roland for her assistance in compiling this report.