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The
Childcare Squeeze
By
Katalin Wolff
Campus childcare, if you're lucky enough to acquire
a spot, is expensive. A recent article in the Wisconsin
State Journal noted that childcare center fees
in the Madison area jumped 7 percent last year, well
ahead of the nationwide average of 5.6 percent, and
about twice the rate of inflation. Families here pay
an average of $5,500 per academic year for a preschooler
and $9,360 for an infant at campus centers. Most of
the expense — about 92 percent — goes to cover personnel
costs. Even so, the average annual salary for a teacher
with a four-year degree is only $24,000.
In
order to keep costs down, the centers look to private
donors for help in paying teacher salaries and funding
such things as playgrounds, equipment, specialized
training for staff, and scholarships for the children
of needy students.
Considering
that the campus did not even have infant care until
1999, Edlefson feels that UW-Madison is slowly making
progress. She hopes that the Infant and Toddler Center
can eventually be expanded. There is also a move afoot
to train and provide incentive grants to students
who live in Eagle Heights to provide home-based care
for other students in need of childcare. And University
Hospital recently announced that it will set up an
infant care center for its employees this fall.
Another
promising initiative involves plans to build a new
Child and Family Studies Center in the School of Human
Ecology, although the project is not scheduled for
completion until 2007 due to the dearth of funding.
The new building will house a state-of-the-art childcare
facility specially designed to facilitate research
and teacher training. Not incidentally, it will also
provide desperately needed childcare slots for the
campus community.
That,
says Rayment, should be good news for everyone. "There's
always going to be stress associated with raising
children. Anything that can be done to lessen that
stress for those who work and study here is bound
to benefit the entire university."
Katalin
Wolff is a Madison freelance writer who covered day
care research in the January/February 1998 issue of
On Wisconsin Magazine.
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