Grant Abstract

The initiative to open a child care center at City College aims to provide support to CCNY’s students that are parents. A student life is already full of stress; let alone with struggles on how to pay tuitions and find a balance between work and school. There is another problem confronting students with children, that is overlooked by the administration. The absence of childcare on campus.
Students can’t afford childcare services which are very expensive in New York City, especially in Hamilton Heights.  For this reason, students have no other choices than registering in classes that don’t interfere with their children’s schedules.  Hence, the possibility of graduating is in jeopardy and they often miss classes that they want.
The CCNY’ Day Care Center, aims to provide support to parents by caring for their little ones, while they are in class. We hire four permanent staff members, Andreas Efraim, Diaraye Diallo, Humaiyara Effat, and Malafa Mase, and open the opportunity students majoring in childhood education to get firsthand in working with kids. Moreover, we will try to arrange college credits for education degree pursuing employees with their department.
When the center starts functioning, students with kids will have the opportunity to enroll in classes of their choice. Additionally, they won’t have to stress about the quality of care provided for their kids. Most importantly, they will graduate on time.

Problem Statement

For more than three years, City College remains the only CUNY institute without a daycare facility to accommodate students with children. The center was shut down in 2015 for ‘renovation’. Initially, the administration said that it will only be closed for the period of renovation work of 16 months. Despite exceeding the time frame and the negative response from students and faculty, the daycare was never brought back. Being a parent of young children and going to school is a struggle; students especially have trouble balancing family, work, and study. Many students are forced to work part-time to fit their school schedule and get minimum wage as a result, which is not enough to meet their family’s needs. It is extremely difficult for the moms and dads at City College to afford a quality child care for their children under these circumstances. If they decide not to drop out of school to take care of their children, parents often choose the most affordable home daycare next to the school where the kids spend the whole day watching TV and eating snacks. Opening a Childcare Center on campus is the only way to help these students continue their study and graduate on time. Besides, this center will give student parents the opportunity to have a more flexible schedule that would not conflict with their children’s. It is not fair to have anyone choose between education and family.

Project Narrative

To combat against this struggle, The CCNY Daycare and Babysitting services, or C-DABS, aims to create an accessible, affordable, and community-oriented daycare center on campus available to all student and faculty parents with children aged 7 months to 11 years of age. The facility will be built within four weeks between 16 employees working five and a half hours four times a week. A breakdown of the renovation process is depicted in the gantt chart below.

Task	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4
Finding space
Buying Materials
Renovations
Hiring people

Before the building process begins, there will need to be clear communication between the officials of City College and the parents attending the institution. A clear dialogue between both parties will ensure transparency, honesty, and an understanding of current situations. Officials of City College will be able to do their part in meeting the needs of their students better by having this pre-discussion and decipher what the true problem is and what standards need to be met according to potential customers’ expectations.

First we need to find a space that fit at least 40 children. We want this space to be on campus and enough space for children to run around and play in. We will have to figure out if there is empty room at city college we can transform the space for the daycare. Once we find the space, we would then have to buy all of the supplies and appliances. The places we will be looking to buy these appliances are big wholesale retailers such as costco and Walmart. We will be buying items such as cleaning supplies, microwaves, fridge, rugs, sleeping mats, diapers, and water bottles. Designing a diaper change unit within the room will be very essential and sanitary. We want the room to have as much open space as possible, so walls could possibly have to be knocked down for the sake of making more room.
Hiring employees will be a big part of this process. During the initial month of building the facility, we will need a supervisor who will be responsible for maintaining the space and overseeing the employees. There will be one supervisor and three employees working to renovate during each week. We will hire a total of 16 employees so if someone calls out sick, we always have a replacement. A portion of the budget will be used to pay temporary workers for helping build the daycare prior to opening. The pre-opening stage will require temporary workers for building purpose. The daycare will be running from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm. The open to close time will coincide with the schedules of other CCNY facilities, and gives parents plenty of flexibility with their schedule.

The age requirement for a child allowed to be in the daycare as mentioned before is 7 months to 11 years old. We chose this age group because we find that children between these ages are able to be away from their parents but still need close adult provision. Also, this is a very safe age for children to interact with each other.

We want this space to be comfortable and safe for the children so there will be a lot of rugs, soft couches, and big stuffed animals to serve as a cushion so no injuries occur. Also, these children could be here for long periods of time depending on the schedule of the parents. We want this daycare to feel like a home. Food will be served, it will have a good source of air conditioning, and the needs of the children will be served at all times.

After the pre-opening stage, there are several options that can be taken to maintain the daycare services through the semester. The ideal employee would be a student in need of work study, and/or a student pursuing an educational, child services, or other degree relevant to child care. These employees would be responsible for a multitude of activities, such as tidying the center, creating plans for each day, and taking care of each child or age group as needed. Other available positions include a qualified nurse, a receptionist to keep track of all check-ins and check out, a website designer to maintain the C-DABS webpage on the CCNY website, and security to maintain the safety of all customers and employees. After the daycare is physically created, new workers will be paid with money received through payments and/or donations. Students looking to keep their children at the daycare center have several payment plans to choose from. A one day plan would be offered for $40, a one week plan would be offered for $80, a one month plan would be offered for $150, and a semester plan would be offered for $250. All transactions are final and no prior reservations are necessary for a student to board their child. A downpayment is required on the initial day of boarding, and the rest can be paid in increments until the full amount is paid before the end of the plan. C-DABS would require no more that $40,000 to start up, which can be granted by the Zahn Innovation Center.

The budget accounts for supplies needed prior to opening, such as a months worth of rent, the renovation cost, permanent supplies such as furniture, and temporary supplies, such as diapers, snacks, first aid, and toys, that would need to be renewed throughout the year, but are factored into the budget for the facility to have before the generation of revenue.

City College is the oldest institute within the CUNY system, however first come first serve does not seem to apply in the case of child care services as CCNY fails to provide one for its patiently waiting parent students and faculty. On top of the increasing college tuition rate which now exceeds $6,600, the cost of babysitting in New York City averages to $7,000 a year. C-DABS is necessary for parents to simultaneously live their lives while ensuring an efficient one for their children. In order to help our fellow parent students, it takes a campus to raise a child.