HomeMy WebLinkAboutWomens Commission - Minutes - 11/15/1999Commission on the Status of Women
Minutes
November 15,1999
Present: Rita Anastasio, Haemi Cha, Bobbie Gonzales, Lisa Gorham, Annmarie
Evans(Chair 223-7957), Debbie Tamlin, Tam Frager
Liaisons: Laurie Fonken-Joseph, City Staff (221-6871)
Diane Gregg, Crossroads
Karen Weitkunat, City Council
Guests: Chuck Wanner, City Council
Mike Byrne, City Council
Excused Absences: Joann Ginal, Lena Sunthankar
I. Call to order: Meeting was called to order 6:00.
II. Minutes: Approved as written.
III. Announcements:
a. December meeting will be on the 13a' of December
b. Soroptimist meeting November 16, 1999 Annmarie and Laurie Fonken-
Joseph will be attending.
IV. Business Items:
• December Retreat: Will be at Rita's House from 6:00-9:00 on December 13, 1999.
This will not be a formal meeting. A map will be sent out with the minutes. Sign up
sheet for food was sent around. Jody Donovan will be facilitating some activities
with the group.
• Marketing Committee: Is working on the letter to go out with the report. Need to put
together a list of people to mail the report to. We do have money in the budget for
mailing out many of the reports. A plan for distribution will be necessary.
• Child Care: John Fishbach has asked Joe Frank to work with the Commission on the
Status of Women on the child care issue. Rita Anastasio and Lisa Gorham will
contact Joe to set up an initial fact finding meeting.
V. Panel of Child Care Providers:
Louanne Johnson: Childrens House Montessori
Cherie Trine: In Home Day Care Provider
Cheryl Pemberton: Little Peoples Landing
Larry Neal: Seven Oaks
Kathy Bettes: Larimer County Early Childhood Development Council.
Annmarie welcomed everyone to the meeting. She gave some background history of the
report and the presentation to city council in August. Shared that much of the interest at
the time of the presentation was in the area of child care. The Commission on the Status
of Women has since chosen the issues of child care as one of their major focuses for the
year. The purpose of this evening is to provide a fact finding session to assess areas of
need and current issues child care providers face. Each guest presented a brief
introduction to their facilitate and what needs they may have.
Louaane Johnson: Montesorri school serve 65 children. 19 kindergartners 5 days a week
3 hours a day (can attend all day if they would like). 45 preschool age children 2,3,5 days
a week 3 hours a day with options to stay all day. Hours are from 8:30-3:30 supervised
lunch with kids bringing own lunch. Parents supervise lunch at $5.00 per hour. They
have had a waiting list for many years. Many students are siblings or referred. 10 to One
teacher to student ratio. Preschool has 20 kids two teachers and kindergarten is 10
children to One teacher. Preschool is 3-5 year olds. Age span is important as they can
learn from and help one another. Employees stay 5-15 years. All these providers
currently make about $1,500.00 per month take home pay and are second wage earners in
their family. It is hard to make a living wage. No provision for sick kids and don't
provide any transportation for kids to and from school. Most of the students are
neighborhood children. Many parents spend time at the school. "Bigger is seldom better
for children of any age."
Cherie Trine: Is an in home child care provider with 8 years experience. Licensed to
have 6 children + 2 school age children. She currently has 1-5 year olds. She shared the
advantages of home day care for her is that she could be with her children which was a
priority for her. Feels as though child care providers have a great impact on children,
social skills, getting along, preparing for things that will help them in school. Believes
that child care providers are an untapped resource in the community for parents, schools,
doctors. Many go unrecognized. Hours are 7:30-5:30 with no breaks. She works a
minimum of 55 hours per week. She feels the shortage of people who can take care of
infants is because they take more special attention, which takes a great deal of time.
Shared that there are 497 child care programs in Latimer county, 368 are in day care
homes. Of the 10137 slots available 27% are in homes. Greatest number of slots are in
homes but greatest number of kids are in centers. She makes an average of $11,000.00 a
year. The hours are long and the work can be exhausting both emotionally and
physically. She is supporting herself and two children on her income. City can help with
lack of recognition for providers. If providers are disrespected and reviled for what they
do it is hard to stay committed. May want to consider spotlighting providers in City
billing to bring a face to the issue and make them more human. We keep hearing there is
a shortage of child care providers and yet the group who are out there go unrecognized. It
is difficult to begin a child care service and to maintain children at first. Once established
there are often times waiting lists.
Cheryl Pemberton: Little Peoples Landing. Provides affordable child care. There rates
are lower than others in the area. Facilities have been designed for children, with a focus
on stimulating the development of the child. Their hours are extended. Educational
programs for children 12 months -age 12. Before and after school programs are provided.
Many of their services are provided for parents. Parents night out, haircutting, special
holidays. They have problems hiring and keeping quality staff which is directly related to
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the amount of pay. Recently have raised pay rate and started offering employees free
child care. Paying for staff educational training and CPR. Taking care of staff has made
a big difference.
Larry Neal: Seven Oaks has 150 children in each of two facilities, 300 total in Fort
Collins. Recently opened a facility in Loveland. In total in Fort Collins serve 225
children per facility because of part time kids. Hours are 6:30am-6:30pm. Ages of
students are 30 months- age 13. Students need to be potty trained. Special needs kids are
also served. They have a long waiting list. Provide an educationally enriched
environment, dance studio, wellness education, music education, gymnastics center, and
computer lab. Staff is made up of specialty teachers with degrees in early childhood and
specialize in areas. 9 kids to 1 teacher. Head teachers are there long term and assistants
are a year or so. Some are students from Colorado State University. Average pay is
$9.00 an hour. Range is $8.00-$13.00. They provide staff a Child care subsidy and
health insurance and education subsidy, as well as vacation and holiday pay. Staff are not
as well compensated as we would like but try to be a leader as far as taking care of
teachers and staff. Do not take sick children. Do have before and after school programs.
Any care out of the home must be in an educationally enriched, stimulating environment.
Do some partnering with the school district and other agencies in the community.
Development fees are high in Fort Collins making it difficult to afford to build another
center here.
Kathy Bettes: Larimer County early Childhood Development Council. Goal is to unite
agencies in the county involved with child care issues. RAFT, Bright beginnings, Even
Start, Women's Center, In home providers, United Day Care Center, Seven Oaks, etc.
Help providers deal with state requirements, training and adult to child ratios. Can help
with what is best for students of different ages regarding programming. Infant/toddler
child care group is a current need. Recently received an early head start grant to work
with mother prenatal through toddler age. Work with family center to reach the low
income populations with the goal of making sure there is opportunity for all children to
receive quality day care. The requirements placed on day care providers and the limited
amount of money being paid to providers has created a crisis. Funding for programs and
is a big issue and one place the City can help.
Linda Fellion of the Women's Center shared that to open a new day care facility takes
about 2 years. In home you have to have training and it takes about 6 weeks minimum
from a time a provider expresses interest. Don't plan to have an income as it could take
6-12 months to fill the slots they have for day care. Has to be a good match between the
provider and the parent, it is a very intimate decision. The decision of choosing a day care
provider is about more than cost, availability, logistics and location. Many women going
from welfare to work are not choosing to go to work so they are forced to put their kids in
child care, anything they can get. In home is hard because you are making a family and
with people being so mobile these days it is hard to keep a consistent group of kids.
Many in home providers loose their kids to preschools.
W
Large gap for children with special needs. Public assistance applies to those below 185%
of poverty. Don't have kids in low income range in Montessori because of the cost.
Scholarship will be started. Day care assistance is $16.50 a day for infants and $18.50 a
day for older children. Centers get more funding than in home. The balance of the daily
fee comes out of the providers pocket.
United day care center takes all ranges of kids and gets some funding from CDBG as do
Sunshine School and Base Camp. Enroll full pay individuals and are more available to
take sliding scale kids. Goal is not to see all low income kids only with low income kids.
Children who receive federal funds must have access to programs full paying kids have.
45% of in home providers were not taking kids on assistance in 1998. Almost half the
care is not available to low income assisted kids. If you take $5.00 a day off the income
of a provider and multiply that times 5 days a week for 52 weeks a year it becomes a good
amount of a persons income.
Women's Center does a supply and demand study every year which will be great
information for the commission.
Infant care and the toddler is the highest waiting list. Only 6 centers who accept children
under one. Infant center room is very costly. The younger ages are subsidized by the
older child programs. Infant toddler piece needs to be subsidized and there is a need to
subsidize to build new centers or open new programs. Many women need to work soon
after their children are born so this is a big issue for many women. Welfare reform is
impacting the child care situation. Mixed messages of forcing these women to work yet
saying that moms should be home with their kids. We will see a number of problems as a
result of this reform.
Fee for child care Little Peoples Landing is $98.00 per week. Average rate is $125-138
per week.
Mike B: Typical cost for a facility is $900,000.00 and $100,000.00 of that is in
development fees, utility hook ups and stormwater and street oversizing fees etc. Many
issues council deals with are parking or traffic. Development fees are set in municipal
code that are blind to the fact that you are a bar or a day care center and are based on
traffic generated. Fort Collins compared to Loveland was $30,000 more. The City is
mainly in the utilities business, streets, parks and Police. Joe Frank in advanced planning
has been assigned to work with the Commission. The City could possibly help with the
facilities portion of the issue. Similar to what is being done for affordable housing.
Chuck: City money has been set aside for affordable housing proposals. Giving a
subsidy though CDBG to help with building. Can't waive or reduce development fees by
law. If you choose to rebate or give back money to a certain class of person you can do
that but you have to collect the fees first.
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What is the need for child care in the county? Infants: 1998 total demand 1825 families
who called 2668 kids looking for care for. This may be 20% of the people who are really
looking for child care. These are the stats from the women's center. Deficit of 2000 slots
in the county assuming that there is one child per slot. 185% of poverty for family of 4 is
about $30,000.00.
Early childhood research shows there used to be 2 year gap between functioning of
kindergartners, now there is a five year gap. Some kids are reading and writing, some are
not speaking well.
Karen: What are the relationships and communication between different for profit, not
for profit, afterschool programs, school district programs? Do they know what each other
is doing? What work is being done in collaboration? How is the private sector working
together and what is being done and where if at all does the City fit in? These are issues
the early childhood council is dealing with. Child care is a service people buy. 30
entities come together for four hours a month to discuss needs etc. One dilemma is it is
hard to get in home day care providers to attend meetings of the early childhood council
because they are providing services at that time. It would be helpful to have City
representatives at these meetings to join in this collaboration. Where does the school
district fit in? Headstart, Early headstart (0-3 years old funding for 48 families)
programs, base camp as wrap around care are involved. Most of these are half day
programs. Early childhood council is fairly new 2 years old. Fort Collins is a good
community for rates of child care and the public and private sector have good
relationships.
Mike Byrne: We are a wealthy area in a wealthy country and we have fundamental
serious problems. How well we do at raising the next generation is a fundamental
question to gage a societies health. We have resource to deal with it and yet our priorities
get in the way. Our society undervalues the care of our kids, the more we educate people
about these issues will raise the awareness of the value of these services.
What about the City looking at day care for the 1400 employees we have? Looked at it
for the new office building, and professional staff found regulatory requirements were
prohibitive. Symbios," Celestica and HP did quite a bit of planning on a near site plan
they were going to collaborate on. Check in with them. Research shows there is a low
number of people who actually choose to use on site centers.
How do you see City Council being able to participate in this solution? Mike: it would
help if the homework is done well and there is a proposal of some of the feasible things
council can consider is done. Look at cost benefit as a bottom line. There is a new land
banking program we're developing and this may be an opportunity to provide or prime
the pump on the facility for child care. Plan does encourage provision of child care when
people are doing new developments. Neighborhoods are primarily concerned with traffic
and noise and more children when this was brought up and they are resistance.
Would recommend that the Commission on the Status of Women send a representative to
Early Childhood Council.
Council encouraged the Commission on the Status of Women to get something to them
in the next 3-5 months. Pick something that is doable, and have it be very clear with the
background research done.
VI. Adjourn:8:30