William Chapman, 2, is all smiles with his camera after nap time Wednesday in Room 0.1 at the early childhood center. File
Parents can pay rates monthly or weekly.
By Andrea Moreno
sac-ranger@alamo.edu
Students, faculty and staff and community parents can register their children for child care at the early childhood center for the fall semester, center Coordinator Claudia Gonzalez said in an interview April 6.
There are two different child care options connected with the early childhood center.
The main center is the early childhood center that is sponsored by the early childhood studies program, which will require parents to pay weekly rates.
The second child care is the Center for New Communities (C4NC), the Early Head Start program, which works with this college to offer free child care to students of this college only under certain requirements.
Students may be eligible for a grant, the CCAMPUS, Child Care Access Means Parents in School, to help pay part of the rates for the early childhood center.
Grant students must be under a degree plan and have the student’s adviser sign the plan, turn in their financial aid award history to check if eligible, submit their most recent household income, have a grade-point average of 2.0 and be taking at least nine credit hours per semester, Gonzalez said.
Once students are eligible, they must attend three parent workshop meetings where presenters teach strategies to take care of children, and they must put in four volunteer hours in the semester.
Parents who are not students are not required to attend to the meetings or do volunteer hours.
When parents qualify to use the center, there is a registration fee of $40 at the beginning of the semester.
There is a different rate for students and nonstudents to use the center.
Students under the CCAMPUS grant and who receive financial aid pay $15 or $20 per week, she said.
Students who do not receive financial aid pay either $157 or $167, and faculty and community pay $179 or $191 per week, Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez also added that parents may either pay their rates monthly or weekly.
The center is open 7:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday-Friday for student parents.
For nonstudents, the center is open 7:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Monday-Friday.
Applications for child care at this center will be accepted until mid-July; afterward, individuals will be placed in a waiting list.
The nonprofit grant-funded program, Center for New Communities (C4NC), Early Head Start, has different requirements.
C4NC began in 2005 “with an explicit goal of providing comprehensive, holistic services to vulnerable children and families,” said JoAnn Herring, site manager of the Early Head Start program.
The C4NC accepts children 12-36 months old.
Parents who apply for services at C4NC must be a student of this college and their income level below the poverty level set by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Herring said.
Student parents are encouraged to volunteer with the program, but it is not required.
“However, Early Head Start highly encourages volunteering because the program is based on the belief that parent-family participation and involvement is essential to the success of the early Head start program,” Herring said.
There is no application fee or cost for Early Head Start because it is a federally funded program “to help break the cycle of poverty,” Herring said.
Early Head Start center is open 7:30 a.m.-2:15 p.m. Monday-Friday, and the program is available in August-July year-around.
The program has an open enrollment, but parents will be selected based on community needs, family income, homelessness or foster care, special education or early intervention needed and family or child risk factors.
There are different number of slots depending on the age range of the child for the two centers.
The early childhood center has 32 slots for preschool and 21 slots for toddlers, and the Early Head Start program has eight slots for infants and 24 slots for 12 months to 3-year-olds, Gonzalez said.
For questions about the early childhood care center, call Gonzalez at 210-486-0502.
For questions about the Early Head Start program of this college, call Herring at 210-314-3272.
