This story was reported and written by VPM News.
Ace, 5, is laying out some magnetic letters to spell out his name in a study room inside the library at Brightpoint Community College in Chester.
He’s with his mom, Ashlie Butler, and 2-year-old brother, Akhai. This room is set up specifically to accommodate parents: Kids can’t push the door open from the inside, and there’s a small table with activities and books set up in one corner.
Butler says Akhai knows exactly where to go to find the toys: The college also has a whole wall of toys right outside the study room.
“He grabs what he likes,” Butler said. “Now, he might want to come out here two or three or four times.”
Butler is studying early childhood education at Brightpoint and says she’s able to study here, even with her 2-year-old in the same room. She’s used the space a couple of times to study with her kids.
“As a parent, you learn to muffle out the background noise,” Butler said. “Him being occupied, actually, is what keeps me being able to do my work.”
It’s part of a new program that started last summer for single parents like Butler. It’s called the College Attainment for Parent Students program and offers an array of support for this group of students — including a $2,000 financial stipend every semester that participants can use for child care or other expenses.
There’s also additional emergency funding available for things like catching up on bills and unexpected car trouble.
CAPS was piloted at five community college systems across the state, including Brightpoint, with tentative plans to expand to more schools and students.
Right now, it’s limited to 20 students per college each semester — and each participating school already has a waitlist.
“We've seen there's a huge need for it,” said Anne Rogers, CAPS manager at the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education, which launched and is funding the program. “There are a lot of students who are juggling families, studies, jobs, and they need support.”
CAPS coaches like Wakeshia Jefferson, at Central Virginia Community College, have made a point to connect parenting students — students who are also parents — through events and get-togethers.
“I'm very big on building that community and allowing them to meet one another, just to see that they're not alone,” Jefferson said. “Perhaps what one parent is doing to make it work someone else won't know about and so they can just share in experiences.”
Sara Silvius received a car seat and stroller from another student at a Germanna Community College orientation event.
“It was such a blessing,” Silvius said, adding that she’s not sure she would’ve felt comfortable having another baby without the CAPS team in her corner.
Butler says connecting with other parents has been extremely helpful for her.
“A lot of times you do get burned out and you're tired, and then you have those other parents that are like, ‘You can get through it, you’ve got this,’” Butler said. “Sometimes those words of encouragement are what you need to go the next day and the next day after that.”
Katrina Bailey, Brightpoint’s CAPS coach, says sometimes students will call and tell her they’re overwhelmed or depressed. She uses inspirational quotes to encourage them to keep going.
Bailey sees her role as multifaceted: being a listening ear, a confidant, a cheerleader, a connection to resources — as well as helping students navigate everything from financial aid to advocating for themselves when requesting deadline extensions.
“If I can help them with that, that's helping them stay in school,” she said.
Hope Murphy, the CAPS coach at Germanna Community College, says she builds a rapport with students so they feel comfortable asking for help when they need it.
“If a student has an emergency and their car is not working, or they missed a payment on their car, or they're going to be evicted from their home, or they need a tank of gas, I want to know about that,” she said.
Parent student Zepora Moore says the program’s financial support has been a tremendous help.
The single mother of four was able to use the program’s financial stipend to put her kids in a YMCA camp over the summer so she could focus on her school work — and a basketball camp for her daughter. It also helped her purchase some back-to-school items for them. But the financial help didn’t end there.
“They even had a stipend for a technology bill, and that was actually able to pay my phone bill for me,” Moore said. “And it came at the right time, because at that time I didn't have the funds to pay the phone bill.”
She also received emergency funding to help make a car payment. Moore completed a health sciences degree in May at Brightpoint and is now working on her certificate to become a nursing aide, even if that means sometimes working the overnight shift so she can attend classes during the day.
CAPS has been so beneficial that Moore referred a co-worker to the program.
“I know it has helped her, and I'm glad I was able to help her help herself,” Moore said.
It’s difficult for colleges like Brightpoint to know how many of their students are parents, because that’s not a question Virginia’s community colleges ask on their applications. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid asks about dependents, but not all students fill that out.
According to U.S. Department of Education data, at least 1 in 5 college students is a parent, and the largest share attend community colleges.
Brightpoint recently surveyed its students — and around half of those who responded said they were parents, and a majority of those are single parents. Bailey estimates that at least one-third of Brightpoint’s 9,000 students are also parents.
“I can sit in these halls and hear folks talk, and they’re like ‘I have to run and go get my kids,’” she said. “I hear that conversation more than I hear: ‘I'm just gonna go to work.’ I hear people talking about their kids a lot.”
But Bailey said it feels like parenting students are sometimes in the shadows.
“People don’t want to share that identity of themselves, because they don’t want to be stigmatized,” Bailey said. “I want to make it so that students don’t have to be in the shadows as parenting students.”
Colleges participating in the CAPS program are making other changes to normalize being both a parent and student, and make the campus more welcoming for them.
For example, Central Virginia Community College designed special graduation stoles for students in the CAPS program, and Germanna is including parenting students in marketing materials as well as parking signage: their mascot, the grizzly bear, now has a grizzly cub atop his mother’s back.
They’re also grappling with how best to help students struggling to find affordable child care options, as well as those who don’t have child care.
“Many think that college is the single most important thing in a student's life, and it is not for many students,” said Pamela Currey, a senior education consultant with HCM strategists. “That’s a mindset that has to be changed.”
Next week: VPM News will report on how some community colleges are addressing students’ child care needs on- and off-campus.
WHRO’s Vice President of News, Maurice Jones, serves on Virginia’s State Board for Community Colleges. Jones is not involved in editorial decisions, including what stories the WHRO newsroom chooses to republish from state media partners.
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