Cat Gonzales
Lantern Staff
For parents who are attending Butler and who use the EduCare Center Learning Lab, the tuition for their children will now be more affordable. EduCare received a Child Care Access Means Parents (CCAMPis) grant in the amount of $116,012, which may concern parents who are Pell-eligible and low-income.
“The EduCare teaches the children hands-on experiences,” Sue Barrientos, a professor of Early Childhood Education, said. “We learned that the children learn by hands-on experiments instead of worksheets.”
EduCare is a program that designed to assist parents who attend college and need someone to watch their children. While the children are in this curriculum, they will learn different social and hand-on skills, so when they are ready for school, they will have all necessary resources that will be needed.
“EduCare itself has given me the opportunity to finish my music degree,” sophomore Ashley Atchley said. “It’s a rather intense and focused major, so knowing that my girls are being taken care of and safe is such a load off my mind.”
Before applying for the grant, there is a conference where different schools can attend to see the grants and how to apply for them. In order to apply for the grant, a team of writers from the program must create a draft for the grant. The grant is modified and rewritten until they believe it is ready. The next step in the grant process would be to wait for two months. For Butler, the grant was given a perfect score from those who read it.
“The unfortunate thing is that (the) funding year starts off Oct. 1,” Barrientos said. “We had a lot of parents that have been on our last grant that could not continue to get funding for child care this fall because we would not find out until October the first if we were funded this round of grants, and so many went ahead and enrolled with good faith that we would get funded again. Some just could not in case we did not get it because it would be too expensive even at the student rate.”
The average cost for the children might differ, as an infant would approximately cost $200 a week, and ages one and two may cost approximately $175 a week. Preschoolers have an approximate cost of $160 a week with an advantage that they can attend to an after school daycare for an additional $67.50.
“If I recall correctly, it was upwards of $2,500 per child for the whole semester before access to the CCAMPIS grant,” Atchley said. “After the grant came back through, I paid just $640 for both of my girls for the entire semester.
With this grant, Educare encourages students to use these services to benefit them to continue their studies.
“Since it is a continuing grant for four years, students may continue to take advantage of it as long as they are academically successful, and children may continue to attend EduCare,” Barrientos said.