BY JUDY LIN-EFTEKHAR
UCLA Today Staff
How many UCLA faculty, staff and students with
preschool-age children could use help with their kids while
juggling full-time jobs and school?
“The universe of campus parents seeking
good child care is huge,” said Economics Professor Janet
Currie. “And it’s very desperate. Because if you
don’t have good child care, you can’t work effectively.”
Currie, who received her Ph.D. from the University
of Toronto and who has been on UCLA’s faculty since 1988
— except for a brief stint at MIT — knows the benefits
of high-quality child care firsthand, as well as through her
research. With a longtime interest in “human capital,”
as economists term it, Currie investigates programs that focus
on children’s health and well-being. She has, for instance,
scrutinized Head Start to ascertain its effectiveness in improving
test scores and school graduation rates.
But it wasn’t until she became a mother
— Currie and her husband, Bentley MacLeod, a professor
of economics at USC, are parents to Joana, 5, and Ben, 3 —
that the importance of quality care really hit home. The couple
enrolled both Joana and Ben at UCLA Child Care Services’
Fernald Child Care Center when they were just a few months old.
Ben is still at Fernald, while Joana has moved on to UCLA’s
Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School.
“I have been very impressed with the
way that Fernald has supported me and my children and enabled
me to do my work,” Currie said. “In a lot of ways,
the people at Fernald have been substitutes for having my own
extended family nearby.”
So appreciative is Currie that she now chairs
the UCLA Child Care Services Advisory Board, which oversees
the Fernald and Bellagio centers on campus, a third center at
University Village married student housing off campus, and a
child-care resource and information service.
“I see child care from the faculty perspective,
where it’s a very big retention and recruiting issue,”
Currie said. “The fact that we have child care on campus
is a real draw.”
Demand for UCLA’s child-care services,
unfortunately, runs much higher than supply. What’s more,
fees that range from $825 to $1,035 per month, depending on
the child’s age, are beyond the pocketbook of many parents.
Thus, at the top of the board’s to-do list is overseeing
the building of the new Krieger Child Care Center adjacent to
the Bellagio Center, which would increase child-care slots from
about 250 to 350, and providing scholarships.
Construction costs have been met by a donation
of $2.8 million from the late Milton Krieger, and $1.2 million
from the UC Office of the President. However, the board needs
to raise funds for scholarships and an operating budget. Actor
John Lithgow, whose child attended the Bellagio Center as a
preschooler, has already agreed to take part in a fund-raising
event this fall.
So crucial is their children’s care and
education that Currie and her husband moved into a home near
campus only after making sure Joana and Ben could attend a UCLA
child-care center.
“Child care and schools — those
are really very important things for your family,” Currie
said.
