Child Care at Harvard: Whose Responsibility?

For years Harvard has recognized a responsibility to provide for the physical well-being of its undergraduates. The decision to admit an extra student depends less on the capacity of lecture halls and more on the ability of the University to provide housing, health care and an array of other services.

Harvard's responsibilities towards graduate students are a lot less defined, especially in regard to bread-and-butter issues. Events in past years have made the University increasingly aware that when it admits a graduate student, it admits someone who is financially independent of his or her parents. At issue behind day care at Harvard is the fact that when Harvard admits a graduate student, it very often is "admitting" a family.

When you have a child under age five and you work or attend school, you have three alternatives concerning care for the child. You can hire a full-time babysitter, leave the child home alone or find a day care center. Most Harvard graduate students and faculty--the bulk of day care "consumers"--find the last solution the most economically and morally feasible. It is the question of economic and moral responsibility for child care which is currently plaguing Harvard and those concerned with daily child care.

The entire question of day care is not really new. For years, it was scoffed at. Women were expected to stay home with their children, even when the children were in school. Women who wanted higher education were expected to still be model wives and mothers. The point here is not so much that women are mistreated as that planning is needed to provide for people whose lifestyles differ from the traditional American family way of life. Single parent families, families in which one parent is a student and the other must work to provide support, and those in which both parents need or wish to work cannot operate feasibly without the benefit of child care.

Over 250 children are currently attending six Harvard-related child care centers. Each of the centers makes a conscious effort to be much more than a babysitting service for the children.

Although Harvard provides space, heat and light for each of the centers, many students and teachers feel more help should be given to the schools and to students with children requiring day care. Although many people are pleased with present results, others are afraid to voice complaints since University repercussions might jeopardize present programs.

The Harvard-Radcliffe Day Care Council has attempted to coordinate day care efforts in the Harvard-Radcliffe community and act as a liaison between the University and the day care centers. The council's main functions are to bring together people from the different centers and to raise funds for each of the centers. Nevertheless, the council maintains an overriding attitude of plurality where the centers are concerned. Each center is administratively, economically and philosophically independent of all other centers and Harvard.

Harvard Yard Day Care Center is in many ways typical of Harvard child care operations. Located in the Vanserg Building, it is a second home for 35 children, between the ages of six months and five years, two-thirds of whom attend for the full day. The staff of eight consists of three full-time teachers, five part-time teachers, and several student teachers and volunteers from local colleges.

Since the program is a parent cooperative, organized by parents in June 1971, the parents are required to put in three hours per week in the classroom, as well as serve on committees.

The center has no written contract guaranteeing it the rooms it uses, but Jane Trumpy, director of the center, said that the verbal agreement which the school has with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has had excellent consequences. The parents themselves built the school in the space provided by Harvard.

Philosophically, the center maintains a type of open classroom with "family grouping"--all age groups interacting together. Children engage in free play, then move to structured play in one of the different interest areas in the room. A music period, outdoor activity period and nap period are included in each day.

The center is rather unique in that it provides a group meeting for children after the outdoor activity period. In the meeting, children are encouraged to talk about what they are thinking, what they liked doing and what they would like to do in the future.

The Vanserg center is also rather distinctive in its emphasis on field trips and community-oriented projects. Besides the conventional trips to museums and aquariums, the group goes into the community to gather resources for its projects.

Financially, the school is similar to the other centers. Tuition for full-time infants is $155 a month; for pre-schoolers, $140 a month.

The International Day Care Center, 20 Sacramento Street, receives its utilities and space from Harvard's Afro-American Cultural Center. The basic precept of the center is to maintain a racial balance, with 50 per cent black children. Because the school wishes to maintain this racial balance, the $27 to $37 a week tuition will probably not be raised next year, according to director Brenda Brewington. Nevertheless, Brewington admits that salaries of staff are at about half that of public school teachers, a problem she attributes to high cost of child care.

The Day Care Council provided the school with some funds--as it did for other schools--but sand and fences which were promised by Harvard last fall have not yet been provided, Brewington said. On the other hand, "We don't really want too much Harvard involvement since we don't want Harvard to come in and take over," she said.

The school was organized a year ago November by a Central Square parent group, Parents for Quality Education, which favors racially balanced education. Teaching focuses on racial equality and children of different cultures. Teachers try to emphasize that children are individuals with different personalities and backgrounds.

The Law School Child Care Center, 23 Everett Street, serves a total of 45 children, 36 at one time in three age groups. The school is at present concerned with obtaining more space for five-year-olds since the kindergarten school day is not long enough to take care of the children of most working parents.

All parents except those on welfare pay the $147 per month tuition, but Director Helen Goldstein said that a tuition increase for next year is likely. "We've had people who couldn't come to us because they couldn't afford us." She said that some have even had to leave the school after having already enrolled their children because they could no longer afford the payments.

Although staff salaries account for a large part of the expenditures, Goldstein said salaries are very low: from $50 a week for part-time workers to $150 for full-time teachers, the local average rate. She said that many of these people are not receiving salaries commensurate with their training.

The center had hoped loans for day care could be made available to students, but Goldstein said, "No one seemed really interested when we first asked for that. We've only dealt with the Law School in the past. Maybe it's time to push again, but money is tight there."

"Things look worse for us next year," she said. The center is entering its fourth year, and Goldstein said unforeseen expenses each year have made it difficult for the center to get on its feet.

The school has been approached with several research and observation proposals, some of which are long-term, but a parent committee must evaluate and vote on the proposals before observation takes place. "We've limited the use of the center because we don't want the kids to become guinea pigs," Goldstein said.

Unlike the other facilities, the newly-formed Oxford Street Day Care Center originated with the Day Care Council instead of independently. It is also a parent cooperative center.

The school is the only one to operate on an essentially sliding scale base. Parents of full-time students pay from $60 to $200 based on their present earnings and projected incomes.

"It was the desire of the parents to have a center that was heterogeneous in terms of class and income," Frances Maher '64, one of the parents, said. "We would like Harvard employees, such as secretaries, to be able to afford our center as well."

Since the center stresses the involvement of parents, many of whom are Harvard employees, several of the parents advocate more financial aid from Harvard, especially in the form of release time for employees, Maher said.

The building in which the center is located was renovated to house the day care center. So, although the parents must renew their space agreement with Harvard each year, they feel fairly confident they can maintain their present space. Repairs in the yard and the building's exterior which were promised by Harvard this year have not yet been completed.

The largest of the centers, the Radcliffe Child Care Center in Larsen Hall and Currier House, serves 81 children. The staff of 14 teachers and two office staff includes three male teachers to serve as role models for boys.

The Radcliffe Center receives space from the Graduate School of Education and now uses one room in Currier House which was donated expressly for the purpose of a child care center. The other rooms in Larsen Hall are given to the center on an annual basis. The parent board, however, has requested a three-year assurance that the same rooms will be available to the center. The group must decide whether to make improvements on the outside yard--improvements which would involve long-term expenditures. The parent group recently had to install extra toilets to meet licensing requirements.

Peabody Terrace Nursery School differs from the other centers in that it is actually a school and not a day care center. The school has about 25 three-year-olds in the mornings from 8:45 to 11:45 and an equal number of four-year-olds afternoons from 1 to 4.

Children of Peabody Terrace parents are given some preference in enrollment, but one-half of the children are from the community-at-large. The school is also a parent cooperative, begun about 12 years ago, but parents are not involved in actual classroom teaching any longer.

The school is not actually concerned with recruiting for a racial mix since an ethnic mix exists by the nature of Harvard graduate students, Director Barbara Rassman said. Several children who come to the school are non-English speaking at first.

The school operates on a 38-week per year basis, with an additional but separate eight-week summer school program. This year's tuition for the 38-week period was $400. For 1974-75, the parent governing board has voted unanimously to raise tuition to $450. Rassman said that several of the graduate student parents have had to take out loans to pay the tuition. In a select number of cases, non-student parents from the community receive scholarships from the school to send their children to the center. "So far the few who have needed help, we could help out," Rassman said.

The insecurity which the present child care situation offers has caused great concern within some of the parent groups. Helen Quinn, a member of the parent board of the Radcliffe Child Care Center and assistant professor of Physics, said that the center is just now "breaking even financially." She said she felt it was very important that Harvard award scholarships to graduate students for day care.

Of course, the chief issue regarding child care is what is good for children.

A questionnaire mailed to parents of students at the Radcliffe center asked them the reasons the reasons why they sent their children to the school. Although the first reason was that both parents work, it was a single-parent family or the parents were students and working, many of the parents added that they felt the experience with other children was good for their children at that period of their development, Quinn said.

Another independent educational observer of the center reported a "remarkably positive attitude in the children and said they were mature for their ages, particularly in relations with one another and with strangers." Quinn said.

However, quality child care demands quality personnel, which costs money.

The question of aid for parents and teachers is the overriding concern with the running of the centers. A dependency allowance which "would partially offset the cost of child care" is accounted for by the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences Financial Aid Director, Richard Kraus, said. The present dependency allowance is $650 per child. But allowances and money from the parents' resources cannot exceed the budget which the financial aid institutes, Kraus added.

Kraus said it was possible for students to borrow money for day care, but said that when the student borrows from federally insured or Direct Student Loan Program funds, he is technically borrowing "for educational expense."

Kraus said that in 1973-74 few loans were requested and that more loans went to single students than married students.

In terms of staff supplements to salaries, Harvard Yard Center director, Jane Trumpy, said that benefits such as health care and social security would "significantly add to the staff's satisfaction with salaries."

Most directors agree that maintenance provided by Harvard would ease budgets of day care centers. Helen Quinn of the Radcliffe Center said that equipment can only be purchased through fund-raising by parents; tuition is barely meeting salaries and material expenses for the center.

Although only policies of informal involvement in child care prevail, Harvard is considering child care in some of its long-term projects. The 500 units of housing being built near the Business School will contain a day care center as part of the facilities.

But although availability looks better in the future, financing still looks bleak. Like the battle for married student housing in the forties and the fifties--which was not won until colleges recognized that students marry--the day care problem will not be resolved until college administrators recognize that many also have families.