Campus care concerns

Parents of children at school-run, off-campus care center say area is unsafe; staff say school is working to find a solution

By Laban Pelz
The Collegian

Parents and staff say the location of a school-run daycare center is putting children in danger.

Fresno State’s Early Education and Care Services runs a program director Catherine Mathis said serves nearly 300 children. The vast majority of the kids’ parents are students, she said, and most of the other children belong to faculty or staff.

The program has four locations, three on campus. The off-campus site at the Lutheran Campus Ministries building, just south of the school on Shaw and Jackson Avenues, worries those who use it.

“It’s unsafe. There’s gangs around,” said Carina Lopez, whose 4-year-old son goes to the center.

Lopez, a post-baccalaureate student who has an infant daughter at another campus center, said about a month ago she was outside the Jackson Avenue site when she saw two men about to break into a teacher’s truck.

“They saw me and came towards me and called me names,” she said. “I went back inside and told them (the staff). A teacher went outside and they called her names too.”

Lopez said she called the police, who arrived after the men left.

“They (the police) drove around the block and left,” she said.

Lopez also recalled another incident where parents and staff were having dinner on the building’s patio, which is fenced off from the sidewalk, and someone broke into a vehicle and stole a purse.

Lopez said many of these crimes’ perpetrators live right across the alley from the care center and take advantage of the street’s poor lighting.

“It’s too dark,” she said. “I’m not safe.”

Mathis said the off-campus care center, known as Site One because in 1973 it was the first of the four sites to open, has long had trouble with vandalism and loitering in the area, but in the past two years trouble has increased.

“The neighborhood isn’t doing as well as it used to,” she said. “At least for the last two years we have tried to get kids back on campus.”

Mathis said she knows of no assault on any staff member or parent using Site One, but said staff members’ cars have been broken into and it’s possible the building has been broken into.

“The university has been very diligent,” she said. “The police always come over when called.”

No more than 30 children can use Site One at a time, Mathis said, but the school is having difficulty squeezing all the kids back on campus sites, which combined have a 166-child capacity.

The other sites are in the Education building (capacity 124), next to the Food and Family Sciences building (capacity 20) and in the Campus Courtyard area (capacity 22).

While the school is working to bring children from Site One back to campus, staff members are brainstorming safety measures for the location, Mathis said.

“We have a list of options for increasing security,” she said. “We’ve talked about things from a sophisticated security system to changing the lighting.”

Lopez said Fresno State is not doing enough about the situation and is simply not investing in a solution.
“They say there’s no money,” she said, “but I think there’s money.”

Children’s ages in Fresno State care centers range from 3 months to 12 years, though most are between 3 and 5 years old.

Mathis said most student-parents don’t have to pay for use of the campus care centers, and those who do (mostly the parents of younger children) pay 50 cents to two dollars a day.

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