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A6 The BulleTin • Sunday, FeBruary 13, 2022 CENTRAL OREGON’S CHILD CARE DESERT OSU-Cascades child care provides respite for students, parents with kids dean Guernsey/The Bulletin Avian Brown, lead teacher, works with children Feb. 10 in the preschool at Oregon State University-Cascades in Bend. BY BRYCE DOLE The Bulletin April Guffey always wanted to get her college degree, and even though she’s on her way, now in her junior year at Oregon State University-Cas- cades, the reality that she may need to drop out looms. The mother of two daughters, aged 3 and 5, has no family living nearby to help care for her kids when she’s at school. Her husband, a 10-year ser- viceman and police officer on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, works far from their home in Bend and sometimes travels. She hasn’t gone into student debt yet, but she’s worried she might. “One more bill could be the one to put you over,” said the 28-year-old, who studies human development and family studies, aspiring to a career helping foster children and adoptees like her. She added: “It’s constantly, month by month, balancing the bud- get, figuring out how close to danger are we? How many months can we survive?” The crux of the problem is one that proves insurmountable for many college students — finding afford- able child care. At OSU-Cascades, roughly half of student parents who responded to a survey last year said they had access to affordable child care. A university professor said these students often struggle to maintain grades or graduate. National data published in the In- stitute for Women’s Policy Research in 2020 show more than half of under- graduate student parents drop out of college without completing their de- gree within six years of enrollment — twice as many as childless students. Striking a balance between family and college life seemed impossible for Guffey until she found a new on-cam- pus program that gave her children a place to go: the Little Beavs child care and early learning program. The pro- gram provided for Guffey an option at a time when finding available child care services can seem impossible. “If it weren’t for Little Beavs, I wouldn’t even be able to be a student right now,” Guffey said. The day care program, hosted in campus classrooms, provides state and federal subsidized child care for infants, toddlers and preschool-aged children of students and staff. The hours for the program are flexible, providing options for students with hectic class schedules and staff who work through the day. And by em- ploying student interns, the program is intended to bolster the regional child care workforce. The options available through Lit- tle Beavs remain expensive, however. Though students with the highest financial needs can seek support from federal grant money and other students can seek a student govern- ment-funded subsidy, costs at the facility are similar to those found in child care facilities throughout the rest of the region. For college faculty, staff and students, enrolling a 3-year- old child full-time would cost nearly $1,000 a month. The younger the child, the higher the cost. “It’s still high,” said Kelly Sparks, the associate vice president of finance and strategic planning for OSU-Cascades. “That’s still hard to pay.” But with the allocation of addi- tional American Rescue Plan Act funding to the program by Deschutes County commissioners last year, lead- ers from OSU-Cascades and Central Oregon Community College have made plans to expand the program beyond OSU’s campus, with loca- tions slated to launch in easily scaled modular buildings at OSU-Cascades, COCC and St. Charles Bend under a new name, Little Kits. Evening option Each structure is estimated to hold roughly 96 children, including rooms for aftercare and outdoor play spaces. The centers are meant to serve as a model for other facilities to replicate, increasing regional child care avail- ability, Sparks said. Identical facilities are planned at sites on the OSU-Cascades campus and St. Charles. The St. Charles fa- cility is intended to serve the evening and weekend workforce, Sparks said. There are no child care services in Central Oregon for employees who work evening or graveyard shifts, so the addition of Little Kits will be a first. Sparks noted that the Little Beavs business model is not ideal and came at a time of high demand due to the pandemic. But with plans for Little Kits underway, she said the college is looking to seek new subsidies to sup- port community members seeking af- fordable child care. The fractured child care indus- try, researchers say, is exacerbat- ing a national workforce shortage and prompting fewer people to seek higher education. Those challenges make the need for new programs even more urgent, Sparks said. The college’s initial program, Little Beavs, started in the fall of 2020 and stemmed from an overwhelming de- mand among local college students and staff who told the college that they couldn’t pursue their coursework without finding their kids a place to go. The program opened along with temporary child care and a remote learning hub. Sparks said the college heard similar concerns from COCC, so the colleges teamed up. The pro- gram filled quickly, she said. Parents Continued from A1 Leaders say the program of- fers a community for parents raising their children and there are plans to expand to other churches in the region. Lamont hasn’t enrolled her children in the program since before the pandemic, but the idea she helped start has car- ried on. Now, 17 families have their 2- to 5-year-olds enrolled at ReVillage, and parents vol- unteer their time in the class- room a few times a month. Erika Spaet, the pastor of the Storyvillage faith community who helped found the program, says the nonprofit has some ad- vantages that make it easier to provide badly needed child care spots than what traditional child care businesses face. The first advantage is space: The nonprofit partners with churches to host care in their unused spaces, like the nurs- ery at First Presbyterian which used to sit empty on weekdays. That’s a big cost savings in a community where rental space is hard to find and always comes at a high price. The second advantage is the parent involvement: Since child care requires high staff- dean Guernsey/The Bulletin Pastella Johnson, 2, shares colored dough that she made at ReVillage Community Co-Op Childcare Center. to-child ratios to keep care safe and high-quality, one or two parents volunteering a day re- duces the burden on the non- profit’s paid staff. “What we’re seeing in Cen- tral Oregon is a lot of non- profits, but also small business providers, trying to just cobble something together for our community,” Spaet said. “And so we all have to get really cre- The demand for these services among students is significant. In a winter 2021 survey at OSU-Cascades, roughly 11% of students reported be- ing parents. But that total is likely an undercount. Many respondents were residential students, but most stu- dent parents commute to the college. Sparks estimates that the college’s total is more likely 20 to 25% of students. Among the parents who responded to this survey, just 47% reported hav- ing access to affordable child care. For Guffey, Little Beavs helped but didn’t solve everything. Amid the pandemic, the program sometimes shuts down briefly because people fall ill. That means Duffey has to keep her kids home and miss classes. So far, Little Beavs has worked around her schedule, but she’s worried that might not always be the case. At the end of the summer, her daughter will be too old for the program, and she’s concerned that she might have to pick up a part-time job to support the family. If she does, she said she’ll likely drop out. “I’m always holding my breath when I see the next semester and the classes that I need to take,” she said. “Will Little Beavs be able to do this every term? I don’t know.” e e The Bulletin reporter Zack Demars contributed to this story. Reporter: 541-660-9844, bdole@bendbulletin.com ative, and this has been our creative approach.” The nonprofit’s advantages combined mean big cost sav- ings it can pass on to parents. Right now, ReVillage charges $350 a month for care — al- most 60% less than what the average family pays for a full- time center-based preschool. Six spots qualify for Baby Promise, a state subsidy pro- gram that guarantees availabil- ity for low-income families. To be sure, the home-grown nature of ReVillage also poses challenges. While Becca Ellis, child and family ministry di- rector at First Presbyterian and a co-founder of the nonprofit, has child care experience, there’s still been a huge learn- ing curve for the parents and volunteers launching the pro- gram, she said. “We’ve learned so much in the past nine months of oper- ating,” Ellis said. “Just the de- mands on being a director, for my own personal experience, the amount of work that takes is more than I expected.” City building code require- ments make permitting com- plicated for the nonprofit, and the licensing process requires background checks, inspec- tions, ongoing training and a host of other requirements. Both are complex hoops for non-experts to jump through, Ellis said. Still, Spaet, who didn’t pre- viously have a background in early care and education but is a new parent herself, said getting involved in develop- ing child care options has im- proved her own parenting ability. “I feel like I’m a better par- ent for having had access to high-quality, loving early child- hood education,” Spaet said. “I’ve been in the classroom as a volunteer a number of times, so I feel like I’ve learned from our teachers about a play- based approach to learning, about how important navigat- ing social situations is for our children, how important their internal motivations are, how important it is to be messy and to sing. ” ReVillage received a portion of the $6.6 million in Ameri- can Rescue Plan Act Deschutes County commissioners have allocated to supporting child care. The nonprofit plans to ex- pand their model to four other churches in and out of Bend over the next several years. e Reporter: 541-617-7814, zdemars@bendbulletin.com
