Campus Child Care Has Become Less Available. A New Partnership Aims to Change That.

The number of on-campus child-care centers has declined over the last 10 years, with the steepest declines taking place in the community-college sector.

Only 45 percent of public-academic institutions offered child-care services in 2019, according to research by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. The pandemic likely drove down the number of on-campus child-care centers even further, with many losing revenue when they were forced to close or when parents chose to keep their children home. Meanwhile, Head Start, the collection of federal programs for young children living in poverty, has seen enrollment declines in recent years.

To combat these issues, Head Start and the Association of Community College Trustees announced a partnership on Wednesday that is meant to put more child-care facilities on campuses.

Here’s how the partnership could work: Community colleges would offer rent-free space on their campuses to Head Start providers. That exchange would allow providers to reach a 20-percent requirement of philanthropic funding they need to raise to open. The Head Start programs would be free for community-college students with children who qualify. Head Start works with local agencies to provide educational activities, wellness programs, and other services for infants, toddlers, and children up to age 5, and also offers support for parents. Federal funding makes Head Start free.

Almost half of all students who have children are enrolled in community college, according to the Association of Community College Trustees.

Child-care centers have struggled to hire enough staff since the pandemic. Carrie Warick-Smith, the association’s vice president of public policy, said moving Head Start programs onto college campuses could help alleviate that problem — because students pursuing a degree in the early-childhood field at the colleges would be able to work at these campus centers.

The partnership is in an exploratory phase, Warick-Smith said. The community-college group and Head Start have six months of funding from the ECMC Foundation and the Seldin/Haring-Smith Foundation to conduct focus groups with community-college students who have children and with Head Start parents, to put together lists of interested colleges and programs, and to raise more money. Next year, she hopes they’ll begin moving Head Start programs onto campuses.

The goal would be to move 100 Head Start programs onto campuses, bringing the total number to 150. Tommy Sheridan, the deputy director for the National Head Start Association, said the details of the partnership will be largely determined by the individual programs and colleges.

Nicole Lynn Lewis, the founder and chief executive of Generation Hope, a nonprofit that works with teen parents who are in college, was excited to see the announcement between the two organizations.

“If you don’t have reliable child care, you don’t go to class,” Lewis said. That’s particularly true of students who are attending college in person, but it’s a factor for students attending class online as well, she said.

While access to affordable child care is a huge concern for students who have children, Lewis said, the existence of a center is not the only thing colleges should do to support them. The centers need to be open at the times when students need them, and administrators and faculty members must know how to accommodate student parents in the classroom, so they stay on track academically.

“There’s a lot of work to do to make sure the institution is set up as a whole,” she said.