A Center for Learning

The Fullerton College Child Development Center was granted a stay of execution. At the Board of Trustees meeting last week, an absent member asked that voting on the center's closure be postponed until the entire board was present.

The center is a source of passion for many people, but the Board of Trustees has to be clinical and logical in its decision.

Three years after the initial proposal to drastically downsize the center was dismissed, the same financial problems are bogging down FC's budget. The idea then was that a few more years would allow the center time to find more funding and operate in a manner that would allow FC to continue the community service.

The extra time has not helped, as the center is still in the red. The Child Development Center runs a deficit of about $200,000 per year, according to Faculty Senate President Kenneth Collins.

The Faculty Senate is currently circulating a petition of support for the center, and parents lined up at the Board of Trustees meeting to plead for the center to remain as it now operates - the emotional impact of the center's closing is powerful.

The center is in danger of a major overhaul that would leave 80 children in search of another preschool and 13 FC classified staff members looking for a job. Those 80 are children of community members, not students.

If the center is downsized, the Child Development Lab would remain and approximately 30 children would still have a place there. Children of FC students are first to fill those 30 slots, with children of staff and faculty granted any leftover spaces. Those who are going to lose the most in the downsizing are the FC staffers who will be laid off.

In a time when California's economy reflects the recession the nation is coping with, Orange County has been hit particularly hard with a housing crisis. Money is tight and state budget cuts are on the way - the situation will likely get worse before it gets better.

FC's priorities should be clear; the college's primary function is to serve its students. A child care program for the community has to be less important to the college than the education of collegiate students.

The only reasonable way for the center to remain as it now functions is for it to stop being a financial liability for the school. Alternate funding must be found before the Board of Trustees meets again Tuesday if advocates are to effectively argue against the downsizing.

Those routes have been explored already - the center had three years to change its practices and ease the school's financial burden. It did not.

The center must be downsized for the sake of programs that benefit FC students.

The Board's decision may be painful, but it is also painfully simple - FC is an institute of higher learning, not a child care center.