Amye Warren raises some good questions regarding the UTC Children's Center.
Perhaps I can shed some light on these issues.

1. Comparable costs for child care at other universities. For UT Martin
there is one site serving 99 children. According to Tom Rakes, Provost at
Martin, the university's subsidy of that program, including fringe
benefits, is approximately $98,000, or just under $1,000 per child per
year.  As for UT Knoxville, the information I received from Bob Levy
indicates that in FY 2003 the total university subsidy, including benefits,
was $198,202 for 111 children at 3 locations, or $1,783 per child per year.
By comparison, UTC's subsidy of its Children's Centers last year was
$288,000 for 128 children, or $2,250 per child per year.

2. Other comparable costs for child care at other facilities in
Chattanooga. I collected information on six other child care centers in
Chattanooga: Burks United Methodist, Country Brook, LilyLand, Treehouse,
KinderCare and First Centenary Methodist Church. Five of those centers
provide care for infants, at a cost ranging from $115 per week (LilyLand)
to $155 per week (First Centenary), compared to $135 per week for UTC. For
toddlers ages 3-4, the range for the six centers is from $92 per week
(LilyLand) to $126 per week (KinderCare), compared to $104-115 for UTC's
Children's Center.

3. Costs attributable to the Children's Center being a lab school.
Originally I had the same thought, and so I inquired of Dean Mary Tanner as
to what portion of the cost of operating the Children's Center was due to
its serving as a lab school, as opposed to the cost of operating a child
care facility. I quote from her response: "John, I am afraid that I do not
know who has suggested to you that the cost of running the UTC Children's
Center is higher because it is used as a lab school to provide clinical
experiences and instruction for those teacher candidates who will work with
young children. . . . I can not determine that there is any additional cost
because we use it as a lab school."

I hope this information proves helpful. I also want to reiterate the
message conveyed in a recent newspaper article and that I stated at the
budget committee meeting last Monday: we do not wish to close one of the
Children's Center sites, nor do we wish to reduce the number of children
served. We do, however, believe that with a combination of increased fees,
reduced expenses and support from non-university sources, we can reduce the
University's subsidy to a level that is consistent with our financial means
and that reflects our desire to provide greater support to our academic
programs.

Sincerely,

John Friedl



At 09:27 AM 3/18/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>This message is primarily in reply to Betsy Darken's comments.  But I would
>like to begin with a more general comment about what these budget problems
>seem to be doing to us.  Those of us in psychology are all aware of some
>old research on rats.  They took rats and put them into cages together and
>gave them occasional electric shocks no matter what they did.  There was no
>behavior that they could learn that would let them escape the
>shocks.  After a while, the rats turned on each other and fought viciously.
>
>Here we are, calling each other names (lazy), suggesting that others don't
>care about our students' skills, suggesting getting rid of some programs
>and departments that just aren't "necessary" to our primary mission.  I
>realize we are in a difficult situation, but I hope that we don't go
>farther than necessary in demeaning our colleagues and their jobs in the
>process of defending our own worth.  When we are talking about closing one
>site of the Children's Center or increasing fees substantially, we are
>talking about real kids, real parents, and real staff members' lives and
>livelihoods.  Just as we all felt demoralized when the state government
>shut down that June a couple of years ago and we were told we were not
>"essential", the staff in these programs are feeling demoralized and
>undervalued.  We are all underpaid and undervalued, and we are now being
>pit against each other in the fight for limited resources.  Yes, the
>Provost is correct that we can't be all things to all people, and we have
>difficult decisions to make.  I am glad I don't have to make them.  But
>let's think about this clearly.  Let's try to get all the
>information.  Yes, I think faculty need raises and travel money and we need
>equipment and increased operating budgets.  But I am not willing to say
>that a faculty raise and travel right now, this year, is MORE IMPORTANT
>than anything else.  Are you?
>
>Now my specific responses to Betsy's questions about the Children's
>Center.  Again, I don't work in the College of Education or for the
>Children's Center, so I don't have all the facts.  But I do know enough to
>shed light on these questions.
>
>1)  Why do we spend more than UT Martin?  My question is why are we only
>hearing about that one comparison?  Is our program similar to theirs?  Does
>all their money come from the same part of the "pie" -- from the academic
>budget?  What about UTK?  What about lab schools on other campuses similar
>to ours?  I think you will find that our subsidy for the children's center
>is in line with most others once you do the research.  Comparing us just to
>UT Martin strikes me as very similar to the effort to change our "peer"
>schools to those in worse budgetary situations but NOT with similar
>programs and quality.  From what I understand, every 4 year university in
>the state that has an early childhood education program also has a lab
>school of some sort.  But we need to compare apples to apples....
>
>2)  Why shouldn't the Children's Center be fully supported by parents like
>the "for-profit" childcare centers in town?  I am not sure how much it
>might cost to send a child to a center the quality of UTC's children's
>center -- but my guess is that it would cost a few thousand dollars more
>per year than it does now.  Why does it cost so much -- or why do other
>childcare centers cost comparatively less?  The answer has to do with
>quality and services.   Our children's center is a LAB SCHOOL.  It is
>accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young
>Children.  We are teaching our undergraduates how to provide the best early
>childhood education.  It's the difference between a teaching/research
>hospital and a strictly hospital.  The for-profit childcare centers in town
>do not serve as teaching labs, so they can get away with hiring far less
>educated and trained people.  They can hire kids straight out of
>highschool, who then get something like 12 hours of training each year (if
>they even last a year in the field).  And they can pay minimum wage, no
>benefits, because they don't worry about the incredible turnover rate in
>the childcare field.  High turnover means that a young child might have a
>different caregiver every few months.  Would you want that for your
>child?  Do you want that for the children of Chattanooga in general, who
>will go into our public schools, and then perhaps eventually UTC?  In
>addition, for-profit childcare centers have the highest child/teacher
>ratios they can get away with.  (I would say the highest ratios allowed by
>law, but I have seen classrooms with more children than the legal
>limit).  You can't use student "volunteers" in place of paid staff.  They
>cannot be relied on to be there -- and the appropriate number of adults HAS
>to be there every minute of every hour the children are there.  And the
>students who are doing their observations and field work in the Children's
>Centers are there doing assignments -- not providing child care or just
>playing with the children.  Betsy and some other parents might be willing
>and able to pay more -- but how many faculty and staff and students
>will  have to move their children to lower quality facilities if fees are
>increased significantly?  And what kind of population of children are we
>trying to serve? Only those from the highest income families?  That defeats
>part of the purpose of a lab school, which is to help prepare our students
>to teach children from ALL backgrounds.  Speaking of which...
>
>3)  Why do we have 2 sites of the Children's Center?  Why did it expand
>when other things were being cut??  Hmm, perhaps we should ask the people
>at the highest levels of the administration who willingly partnered with
>Hamilton County Public Schools.  (This agreement predates the current
>provost).  When several private donors and the Hamilton County Schools and
>UTC hooked up, they raised the funds to build 2 magnet schools.  The
>understanding was that the children's center would be part of both schools
>-- for many reasons.  The Children's Center serves as a recruitment and
>retention tool for the best teachers.  I know of several of the teachers at
>Battle who have children attending the center there.  The Children's Center
>was to serve as a "funnel" into those public schools.  I know several of
>the children who were at the Children's Center who went on to school at
>those schools.  You may say, well, that's how we are helping the schools,
>but what's in it for UTC?   Our Children's Center got two beautiful new
>facilities off campus, and Hamilton County also provides maintenance for
>those facilities.  The old children's center (a small metal building) was
>torn down to make way for the UC expansion.  We did not have to find space
>on our campus to build a new Children's Center.  More importantly, with the
>new facilities we became able to provide infant care, which was not
>possible in the old space.  All our 400 majors in early childhood education
>are required (for state license) to show competencies in working with
>children from birth to 4th grade.   Infant care facilities are expensive to
>build and to run -- the ratio is much smaller, so the number of infants in
>a room is much smaller (I think it is only 8 in each room).  It is a great
>benefit to UTC to have 2 infant classrooms to process all our early
>childhood majors through.
>
>Just some information that should be considered as we are making these
>tough choices....
>
>Respectfully,
>
>Amye Warren

John Friedl, Ph.D., J.D.
Provost and Vice Chancellor
for Academic Affairs
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
102 Founders Hall, Dept. 5555
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga, TN 37403-2598
Phone: (423) 425-4633
Fax: (423) 756-5559
Email: [log in to unmask]