This story was reported and written by VPM news.
Lack of child care is a common barrier keeping some people from taking college classes, and others from completing their degrees. One Virginia community college has decided to fill the void by providing full-day child care on campus: one of the only ones in the state to do so.
On a Tuesday in mid-November, preschoolers at Tidewater Community College’s Norfolk child care center are instructed to draw things they can measure: everything from snakes to windows and bricks.
The center is conveniently located inside the student center, on the second floor. All qualifying Tidewater students can send their kids ages 2-5 here free of charge, through a federal grant program called CCAMPIS, which stands for Child Care Access Means Parents in School.
Students qualify for CCAMPIS at Tidewater if they are Pell-eligible, in good academic standing and are enrolled in at least nine credit hours of coursework. For students who don’t qualify, the college also has some scholarships available to help provide access to child care at little to no cost.
Hazell Pulido is a 25-year-old single mom, and is grateful that her academic advisor told her about this program for her 3-year-old son Legacy.
Before enrolling Legacy in the program, Pulido’s mom was helping care for him while she searched for child care elsewhere. But everything she found was too expensive. With Legacy at home, Pulido said it was hard to find time to study. Now, that’s not an issue.
“During the times where I don't have classes and he's in daycare, I could focus on my homework so I won't be behind,” Pulido said. “That's a good thing. That's a really good thing.”
Ciera Streeter, director of the child development centers at Tidewater, said the impetus for opening the child care centers was when university staff noticed that lack of child care was one of the barriers to completion of coursework.
“The lack of childcare is why students could not attend class, or would not enroll in class because of that child care need,” she said.
That rings true for Meredith Johnson, who was previously a stay-at-home mom, but is now a full-time student in the college’s funeral service program. She said without the free full-day child care on TCC’s Norfolk campus for two of her kids, Ethan and Ean, she wouldn’t be in school now.
“I could not do it without it,” Johnson said. “The way the economy is right now, I couldn’t do it.”
Streeter said Tidewater was intentional about providing child care on campus to help students who don’t have reliable transportation — though grant funding also pays for certain off-campus child care options if that’s what the student chooses.
“Whatever logistically works for that family, we wanted to make sure that we met that need,” Streeter said.
TCC’s goal is to open child care centers on all four of the college’s campuses — where they previously existed for a number of years, but weren’t operated by the university.
The student center in Norfolk was built over a decade ago with child care in mind; Streeter said the facility was originally set up so that parents could drop their kids off while they were in class. The YWCA operated a daycare in the space from 2013 to 2018, but it sat vacant for several years before reopening in January.
“As childcare and early childhood development has evolved, the Child Development Centers came to fruition,” Streeter said. “They’ve always been part of what we wanted to do here at TCC. But it's just growing as our knowledge is growing.”
The student center on Tidewater’s Portsmouth campus was similarly designed, with a child care space within it. The YWCA operated a daycare here as well for several years, but Streeter said it made sense to have the university run these centers this time around —especially since the centers also operate as lab schools in partnership with the college’s early childhood education program.
The centers utilize curriculum materials developed by the University of Virginia.
“When we reopened, we were very intentional that every toy, every activity, has that academic component in mind,” Streeter said.
The Portsmouth child care center reopened in the fall of 2023, this time run by TCC, like the Norfolk center.
Recently, teacher Elizabeth “Ella” Waynick took kids on a make-believe bear hunt on the playground there before lunch. They also hunted for dandelions, rocks, and at one point, zombies.
Waynick has worked in early childhood education for the last 25 years, and said it’s a privilege to work with the kids – and help their parents.
“It's huge,” Waynick said. “It’s a big deal to allow parents to have the opportunity to be able to know that they can take classes and not worry about: ‘Where can I put my child?’”
In the late afternoon, parents arrive to pick up their kids. Some don’t have to travel far, like Trina Ferguson, the mother of 3-year-old Jasmine.
Ferguson works as an advisor on the Portsmouth campus – walking distance from her daughter’s child care center. TCC staff can also send their kids here at a discounted rate; community members can too, but spots are prioritized for students.
“I've enjoyed having my daughter close to me while I work,” Ferguson said. “I can go out on my lunch and peep and see her on the playground playing.”
Ferguson said Jasmine has made best friends at the center, and she has developed a lot since enrolling last year.
Several other parents also told VPM News they were happy with the quality of care their kids were receiving at both of the locations. Two parents said staff were caring thoughtfully for their children with autism.
There are still spots available at both this campus and the one in Norfolk: there’s room for 40 total kids in Norfolk, and 37 in Portsmouth. The centers also accept children enrolled in the Child Care Subsidy Program, a state-run program that subsidizes the cost of child care for low-income parents.
Tidewater also plans to open another child care center in August on its Virginia Beach campus. That facility will have the largest capacity of the three — serving up to 100 kids, including infants.
Streeter said the other two centers haven’t been able to serve infants because of space limitations; infants must be in a room that has a door with direct access out of the building.
She said the Virginia Beach space has a “room that's perfect for our infants and toddlers.”
Several Virginia colleges and universities have recently received the CCAMPIS grant — seven in the most recent award cycle.
But Tidewater Community College is one of the only Virginia community colleges to provide full-day on-campus childcare. New River Community College runs an on-campus Head Start program, but it’s not open during the full workday. Danville Community College also has an on-campus child care facility, but it’s operated by a third-party provider.
Tamekia Johnson-Dover runs the CCAMPIS program at Virginia State University, where she said 24 students are receiving child care support for 28 children.
She said due to space constraints, it’d be difficult for VSU to offer on-campus child care, but also said about half of the students served by the grant are able to access care very close to campus.
“We do have two providers that are actually walking distance, like you could walk across the street to them,” Johnson-Dover said. “We have some within a one-to-two mile radius of the campus.”
Like VSU, Northern Virginia Community College is also only providing CCAMPIS grants to students for off-campus child care.
John Boggs, associate vice president of student support services at NVCC, said he’s not aware of any plans to change that. He said he’s been involved in operating on-campus child care centers at colleges in other states that were expensive endeavors.
“It’s a very costly process,” Boggs said. “It has a lot of challenges.”
Meanwhile, Tidewater is committed to the on-campus child care model for the long haul.
“We’re hopeful to stay, and continue to grow,” Streeter said.
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