By Daily Press staff
Santa Monica College has embarked on a partnership with the local school district and a nonprofit child care provider to offer child care services for about 125 children.
The college, in partnership with Easter Seals Southern California and the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, is forming the Santa Monica Preschool Collaborative, which will provide child care and development services to children from 2 to 5 years old, including those with special needs. Of the 125 to be served by the collaborative, an estimated 24 will be children of SMC students.
“This is an innovative solution to a growing problem of providing adequate child care services in an era of budget cuts and increased costs,” said SMC President Dr. Piedad F. Robertson. “By pooling our resources, the three organizations can provide the best care to the most children, including children with special needs.”
Beginning this fall, the new collaborative will provide child care at three sites — John Adams and Lincoln Child Care Centers in Santa Monica and the new SMC Child Care Center on 15th Street, just north of Broadway, about a mile from the main campus. The SMC site, which is leased from the Assistance League, will open for the first time this fall.
Easter Seals will be the operational agent, responsible for staffing, management, oversight, and contract compliance with the State Department of Education.
SMC will contribute a maximum of $100,000 a year toward expenses and will provide the services of pre-school teachers currently employed by the college. SMC recently hired Jenny Trickey to be the director of SMC child care services, and she will focus her work on the collaborative.
The new SMC Child Care Center is a 1,500-square-foot brick building with two classrooms, activity room, and new playground. Desks and supplies from SMC’s former Child Care Center — closed several years ago — will be used.
All the sites in the collaborative will be open from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on school days, and they also will be used as labs for SMC child development students who are required to serve a certain number of hours in such centers.
Currently, the college provides vouchers to qualified SMC students who need child care. The college also assists students in finding appropriate child care services.
Under the collaborative arrangement, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District will provide funding for the care and education of up to 24 special education children.
Easter Seals, the nation’s largest nonprofit provider of inclusive child care (programs for children with special needs as well as “typically developing” youngsters), receives state funding to provide care for 80 children in the Santa Monica collaborative.
Andrea King, California director of the Easter Seals Child Development Center Network, said the collaborative is Easter Seals’ first venture into inclusive preschool education in Los Angeles County.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 5, 2002. Read the original PDF.