Stanford Report, July 12, 2006

New campus child-care center planned

BY RAY DELGADO

A long-sought child-care center will be constructed on Olmsted Road, near the southeast corner of El Camino Real and Serra Street, and will give priority to the children of faculty and graduate students, Provost John Etchemendy announced June 15 at the Faculty Senate meeting.

The center will accommodate as many as 100 children once it is completed in mid-2008, and it should help put a dent in the waiting lists for existing child-care programs on campus, said Teresa Rasco, director of the WorkLife Office.

"We have a very robust child-care system on campus, but it still doesn't meet all the needs we have and we've known this for a while," Rasco said. "There's been a lot of talk about future needs for childcare, and it's just very obvious that we need another center."

The center will accommodate children as old as 5, and officials will try to prioritize as much space available for toddlers and infants as possible, Rasco said. The center will be managed by the Sunnyvale-based Children's Creative Learning Centers, which operates the existing Stanford Arboretum Children's Center on Quarry Road.

Special priority will be given to faculty and graduate students for placement of their children in the new center, Rasco said, a need that emerged as part of a report last year on the status of female faculty. "It was real obvious that work-life issues, particularly childcare, were of great interest to women faculty and affected their ability to do their job and do it well," she said.

Rasco said the new center would not provide enough new spaces to accommodate the approximately 425 staff, faculty and graduate students who are on waiting lists for the existing centers, but it should ease the burden for many, especially if they have flexible needs.

"When you put your child on a waiting list, your child may be 2 years old and you're wanting maybe two or three days per week of care. But when a space opens up, it might not be what you want and you can't accept it," Rasco said. "[Center staff members] do a very good job in letting people know that the more flexible you can be, the better."

The center will be about 8,000 square feet, and planning will begin this summer, said Jack Cleary, director of the Department of Project Management. Construction is scheduled to begin in early 2007 and should be completed late in the summer of 2008, if all goes according to plan, Cleary said.

"It's pretty unprecedented with our peer institutions the magnitude of care that we have," Rasco said. "That's really important, particularly in the community around us where it's very difficult to find childcare."