PLACENTIA : District Turns Down Infant Care Program

Despite emotional appeals from parents, the Placentia Unified School District has refused to continue an infant day-care program that has been operating at a deficit.

The board voted Tuesday, 4 to 2, to discontinue the program June 30. Parents say the loss of the program means they will have a tough time finding quality infant care, because the high costs of running such programs have driven many private providers out of business.

“This is such an important thing, and the people who don’t look don’t know how bad it is out there,” said Jennifer Murphy, who cried as she told the board about her search at 12 other day-care programs. “. . . We have babies and don’t know where to put them.”

District officials said they cannot continue the program because it has been operating at the expense of other programs for preschool and elementary school children.

“I do feel it is wrong to balance the budget on the backs of children in the extended-care programs,” district board member Connie Underhill said. “We have an obligation to keep our costs as low as possible.”

Costs of infant care are high because state guidelines require one care worker for every four children younger than 2, and the district’s union requires higher pay and benefits for many day-care workers.

“Infant care is not a moneymaker,” Connie Haddad, chairwoman of a child care panel in Placentia and Yorba Linda, told the board. “I feel it’s not fiscal, it’s philosophical. If you want to do it, you can do it.”

Sharon McHolland, the district’s assistant superintendent for educational services, said the program is running about $90,000 in the red. To erase the deficit, the district is charging $6.19 a month as a surcharge on all day-care students.

The program, housed in a small building next to Tuffree Junior High School in Placentia, provides care for 25 infants and toddlers ages 3 months to almost 3 years. When it is discontinued, 18 toddlers will be phased in to preschool programs.

Parents of seven infants, all under age 2, will have to find care elsewhere. The dozen employees at the center will be transferred to preschool or other day-care programs, school officials said.

Supporters have called for the child-care facility to be partly financed through private contributions. Haddad’s child-care group is trying to line up money for a study to be used to show companies and businesses the need for child-care services.

“We provide something that is a rare bird in this community and probably countywide,” school board trustee Karen M. Freeman said. “. . . It is going to (need) the very hardest of sells to get the private sector to support a program that is already dead.”