LTCC expands child care to evening hours to help student parents

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - For some students, there are many barriers to their being able to get a college degree, one of them being affordable child care. A recent move by the Lake Tahoe Community College (LTCC) is helping remove that barrier by having extended hours on Monday and Tuesday evenings so parents who are LTCC students can attend classes and/or study.

The LTCC Child Development Center (CDC) received a federal grant called CCAMPIS, which stands for Child Care Access Means Parents in School. This enables student-parents of LTCC to have access to wait-list free child care for two evenings a week for evening classes or study time on Mondays and/or Tuesday nights from 5:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

LTCC Child Development Program Director Leslie Packwood Amato said most of their age groups are normally wait-listed, meaning parents need to put their child(ren)'s on a list that could possibly be a year-long for the daytime program.

"While the program (Monday and Tuesday evenings) is not free, it is wait-list free, which is quite a feat in our town," said Amato who said the new nighttime care is $20 per child for Pell-grant eligible students and $35 for non-Pell grant eligible students.

Just as their daytime programs, the evening will open to children ages six-weeks-old to five-years-old. It just started this month and Amato wants to get the word out so they can meet both the needs of the parents and fill the facility.

The evening program includes dinner for the children as well.

In addition to verifying Pell eligibility, student-parents will also need to:
• Submit an application for child care services with the CDC
• Submit a current LTCC class schedule.

CDC is currently accepting applications during business hours at LTCC CDC or by visiting the school's Financial Aid office. All parents will need to meet with Amato to get on a list. The center is open Monday-Friday 7:30 a.m. - 6:30 p.m and parents can stop by anytime (ring the doorbell on the inner door).

The program will be offered through Winter and Spring quarter and the days for the evening care, may change to accommodate student-parent schedules. The grant funds to run the evening program are for the next four years.

CDC currently offers 70 families the 46 slots for daycare in their facility located on the LTCC campus.

Open since 1993, the LTCC CDC is state-licensed for 46 children. The infant room is for those six-weeks-old to 16 months and they can have six infants at a time. Their child-staff ratio is 1:3. Over in the toddler room, kids are 16 months to 30 months. The CDC license allows them to have 10 maximum and maintain a 1:4 ratio of kids to staff. Preschool is for those 24 months to kindergarten and CDC can have 30 kids in that program which has a kid-staff ratio of 1:8.

While the infant program can have a wait of at least a year for parents, the other two age groups can have openings sooner.

Amato recommends parents getting on all waitlists and signing up as soon as they know they are pregnant.

Coming in the spring is the new Early Learning Center which will be home to the Tahoe Parents Nursery School (TPNS) as well (that will bring an additional 32 families to the program). It will be on land adjacent to the CDC. Amata oversees both programs and will work with both buildings. She currently has a staff of 26, though that can change depending on student aide schedules.

The new center is being funded by Measure F funds. When TPNS is not there the space is multi-functional and can offer training classes and other educational programs.

Amato has been in the South Lake Tahoe childcare business as long as the DCD has been open. She started there and stayed until 1998 when she moved over the Heavenly Ski Resort and managed their daycare center until 2017. She then returned home to CDC.