Not everyone gets child care the UCLA way



February 20, 1996

Not everyone gets child care the UCLA wayFaculty and students
get priority over staff at campus centers

By Lu Huang

When I read Viewpoint’s story about UCLA child care ("Child
care, the UCLA way," Feb. 9), I felt it did not address some of the
important issues about child care for the UCLA community.

I am a UCLA staff employee and have a 2 1Ž2-year-old
daughter. I registered her with the UCLA Bellagio Child Care Center
about a year and a half ago, and have since been waiting for
admission. Besides the quality of the center, it would be
convenient for me to deliver and to pick up my daughter at
UCLA.

About a year ago, I started calling the Bellagio center every
two months to check on my daughter’s admission status, and
sometimes I drove up and asked in person. Every time I called or
visited, the staff responsible for the waiting list was not on
site, so I never got an informative, conversational answer from the
center regarding how long the wait is.

A couple of months ago, I visited again and – you guessed it –
the same thing happened. This time, however, the message on my
answering machine from the center told me that our daughter was No.
58 on the waiting list. I was really surprised – and disgusted –
because about four months ago, I was told she was No. 40 on the
waiting list.

As far as I can tell, the conditions that decide my daughter’s
position on the waiting list were not any different two months ago
from what they were four months ago (my daughter is 2 1Ž2
years old and has been waiting for the 1 1Ž2- to 3-year-old
group for more than one year). I cannot speculate what
happened.

At this point, we have completely given up hope to have our
daughter admitted to the UCLA Child Care Center, and have since
found another community child care center and enrolled her there.
Fortunately, our daughter’s current preschool has been great.

It seems staff members get "special" treatment here at UCLA. A
part of the UCLA Child Care Center is reserved for UCLA faculty
members, while UCLA students can receive state tuition assistance
and maybe priority for enrolling in the center. For UCLA staff
members, we only get the long waiting list and, in my case, the
mysterious reverse in our daughter’s waiting position.

Yet, we may not earn as much as the faculty members and may not
have the earning potential that some UCLA students have. To me, all
this seems quite depressing, and Viewpoint’s wonderful story about
child care at UCLA could not cheer me up.

Since the report painted such a rosy picture about the child
care for UCLA faculty, staff and students, I would challenge you to
look at the other side of the situation, to investigate any
problems that the UCLA faculty, staff and students may have
experienced with child care, and to find any problems that the UCLA
Child Care Center might have.

Ask yourself some questions:

Do UCLA faculty, staff and students have adequate access to
child care on campus?

Why do members of the UCLA community have to stay for a long
time to get in the center?

Is the center’s admission policy fair to everyone at UCLA?

Is the child care expense at UCLA too high for many staff
members?

When you find some answers to these and other questions, you
will start to understand the frustration and pressure that I
experienced here at UCLA. Then, you will see "Child care, the UCLA
way" a little differently, and hopefully, you will write an article
titled "Child care, the other UCLA way."

Comments, feedback, problems?

© 1996 ASUCLA Communications Board

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