Maria Pina, a former Mesa College student, received an additional $6 in a single paycheck that caused her to lose her on-campus childcare.
“They (Child Development Center) told me they weren’t going to provide me any more childcare,” Pina said. “It was stressful. The childcare center was our plan.”
The San Diego Community College District has childcare services in place for students and faculty through Child Development Centers in San Diego City, Mesa and Miramar colleges.
Child Development Centers on the City College campus are run in collaboration with the Neighborhood House Association, which pays colleges a usage fee on top of covering childcare fees within the centers.
Applications are prioritized based on NHA affiliate Head Start’s lowest to highest-income policy. Meaning, if a student’s income is higher than that of a non-student applicant, then the spot meant for that student will be given up to the third-party applicant.
Pina was deemed ineligible for childcare because of the $6 raise in pay she received.
“It’s not worth it to have a professional career because of how expensive it is and the money you’re earning isn’t enough,” Pina said.
On March 13, the City College Academic Senate blocked a proposal to introduce a review of the current district-wide childcare policies and practices to develop a mixed funding model for childcare services in order to increase the availability of on-campus childcare that gives priority to low-income SDCCD students, with 15 of the 35 present senators voting against it.
“One of my jobs is, when there are issues that faculty care about, for me to find a way to impact policy to improve those issues,” Academic Senate President Mona Alsoraimi-Espiritu, who presented this resolution to the Senate, said. “That’s what I did, that’s part of my job, and the faculty rejected it. At this point, I’m not doing anything else with the resolution.”
Senators present for the meeting discussed childcare as a basic need and unanimously agreed that it was of great importance. The opposition to this resolution came largely from the Child Development Department.
“We all want to increase childcare access but we also don’t want to have these conversations about our lab and our funding without us,”Early Childhood Education Department Senator Denise Blaha said. “To me, and to us (Child Development Department), it’s two separate things. That’s why we wanted to amend the resolution and take our lab out of it.”
The differing views and feelings toward the childcare resolution led to much disagreement within the Academic Senate.
“The one thing we can give to students, which is time and convenience, we’re taking that away,” Alsoraimi-Espiritu said. “We lost sight of students in that discussion and instead were coming to the aid of a department that was struggling with this decision.”
The results of the vote caused mixed emotions amongst students and faculty across varying departments.
“It was difficult. Classes (were) starting, and I was waiting to graduate,” said Pina, who had previously enrolled her son into one of these centers. “I took my son to classes I was waitlisted for, I was going to lose my spot if I didn’t come (to class).”
In spite of the current chaos students who need childcare are experiencing, one senator is still supportive of the resolution, though she has taken a step back from it.
“I put something out there that I thought was representing faculty voice and faculty voted no,” Alsoraimi-Espiritu said. “So now I think the only way forward is if students are interested in pushing something forward.”
