Childcare Committee

Ad Hoc Committee Meeting on
Cornell’s Childcare Center
316 Day Hall
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
1:00 — 3:00 p.m.
MEETING NOTES

I. Welcome at 1:07 p.m.

II. Committee Discussion of BH checklist (approx. 1 hour)

III. Discussion of BH checklist with BH Representatives; (1 hour) Kathy Baker, Lynne Meservey and Fatima Tavares — Combined Discussion

Bright Horizons suggested the following tuition plan; Infants (6 weeks-18 months) — $290/week, or $1,244/month Toddlers (18–36 months) — $250/week or $1,079/month Preschoolers (36 months +) — $227/week or $984/month

• Bright Horizons can administer a sliding scale for tuition, will start at $25,000 annual income and go to $120,000 ideally families would pay $10–12% of their income for tuition. They will come up with some models of this for review at a future meeting.
• There will be no payroll deduction option available. The contract would be between Cornell families and Bright Horizons. Electronic payment of funds could be arranged.
• Mark Jasinski said that by 2010 any NYS 4 year old will have access to a preschool program, which includes an assessment. $2,700 is ICS’s current allowance for 180 1/2 days of care. This will off-set the costs for the preschool population.
• Betsy Shrier is working on a schedule to allow for the possibility to increase the Child Care grant so that families are paying no more than 15% of income for child care expenses, more on that at a later time.
• Bright Horizons suggested 7 a.m. - 7 p.m. for the center’s hours of operation. Discussion on this concluded that this was too long of a day to start at opening, and suggested scaling back to 7:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. instead. Would consider adding additional hours in the future. 10 hours would always be the maximum amount of time for a child to be at the center.
• Further discussion needed on saving some slots for Grad student families who come in later in the year.
• Further discussion needed on the idea of asking units/depts./schools to pay to hold slots open for new grads, new faculty until the slot was filled with a family.
• Further discussion needed on enrollment policy.

Committee asked for additional meetings to be set for the remainder of the summer in order to keep up our momentum.

IV. Adjourned at 3:15 p.m.