Angelina Espino, a junior social work major, with her 3-year-old daughter, Marissa.

University takes baby steps toward helping student mothers

By: Kimberly Tsao

Posted: 5/13/09

Devony Taylor is expecting.

She is seven months pregnant with her second child. She was carrying her first daughter while attending SJSU, in the fall of 2004.

She is one of the 32,746 students enrolled at SJSU in 2008, according to the Office of Institutional Research Web site.

She is one of the 32,746 students who paid for SJSU's services, and one of the estimated 120 parents who use the Associated Students Child Care Center.

She is not, however, one of the few people who are on the SJSU Women's Resource Center's e-mail list.

Women's Resource Center

Bonnie Sugiyama, the center's director, said it's more of a "referral service" right now.

"When I refer people to places, like when I'm not sure they're going to get exactly the services they need," she said, "I always call the provider and find out what exactly they offer, so that I'm not sending somebody on a wild goose chase, because that's the worst thing you can do to somebody, be, 'Oh, I don't know, here. Go here. Go there.'"

Sugiyama said she has worked at women's centers in Sacramento and Sonoma State.

"When people asked me what we did and I was, like, 'Well, what do you want us to do?' because if you have a question, I'm going to do the best that I can to figure out the answer for you, or many answers, to send you in the right direction - even if it's not about women's stuff," she said.

The center, located in Building BB near Campus Village, offers books students can borrow and a lactation room, which Sugiyama said the staff is going to spruce up over the summer so mothers can breastfeed their babies between classes.

Sugiyama was hired as a staff member, working part time for the women's center and part time for the LGBT Center.

"It's just hard to do the women's center right now because I have no background information," she said. "I have nothing on that group and there's not a lot of involvement, and I have a whole bunch of students who are really involved with the LGBT stuff."

At the women's center, she works with two other students, one of whom was gone for most of April.

"Right now, she's not really in because she's behind in her classes," Sugiyama said. "You know how that happens."

Sugiyama said the center is open when she's there, but she goes "in and out of meetings all the time."

Wiggsy Sivertsen, the center's faculty adviser, said she hasn't checked in on Sugiyama.

"I'm not sure what they're offering now because Bonnie's just been with us for this year," she said.

The center is affiliated with two clubs, Sugiyama said. One club, also called the Women's Resource Center, was started and left by students who already graduated.

"It is ongoing just because we needed - because (the former club members) had money leftover in that bank account, and so we needed access to that bank account," she said. "We'll probably keep it for one more year until we figure out how to do all the transfer of money."

Sugiyama said the staff used it to fund the "Vagina Monologues." Student Involvement has a women's resource center club listed in its online student organization directory and Nam Nguyen, leadership development coordinator, confirmed that the center is a club until Sept. 18, when they have to file for renewal.

Sivertsen, though, denied that there is a women's resource center club. She said it has always been just the Women's Resource Center.

The other club, National Organization of Women, was chartered this semester but has no formal meetings and is "more like an e-mail list right now," Sugiyama said.

"My job is to build it up in the future so that we can start doing some of that stuff that women's resource centers traditionally do," she said. "And I like to do some untraditional events but right now, really, what we're really working in - just maintaining what we have and next year, really working on getting some more students."

Day Cares

Taylor, a senior biology major, enrolled her 3-year-old daughter, Natalie, in the day care in the Fall 2008 semester.

"She didn't seem to have any problems transitioning - not even the first day," she said. "It was, 'Bye Mommy! See you later!'"

Angelina Espino, a senior social work major, also finds comfort at the center.

"A lot of times, professors will ask in the first day of class to introduce yourself and say one thing about yourself, and it amazes me how many women actually raise their hand and say, 'Oh, I have a 3-year-old' or 'I have a 5-year-old' or 'I have three, four kids,'" she said. "You kind of feel you're not the only one anymore, and then bringing her to the center in the morning and crossing paths with all the other moms that are here and seeing them carrying their backpacks and all that kind of stuff, it's like, 'OK, I'm not the only student, you know, that has a child.'"

The day care opened in 1972 at a church on 10th Street. A.S. took over around 1997 when it paid to have it rebuilt on 8th Street, said the SJSU Child Care Center's director Fran Roth.

"Most of the activities that we do, they're brought upon by the children themselves, like in the Bumblebee classroom, they were talking about butterflies and so, one child wants to know, 'How do butterflies become butterflies?'" said Bineeisha Williams-Oliver, an office and teacher's assistant at the day care. "So they did this wonderful project where they all got together and they made this humongous caterpillar, and it goes across the wall and then, it goes through all these different stages to where it's in the cocoon, and then it's hanging from the tree, and all of a sudden, it just becomes this big beautiful butterfly."

Angelica Garcia, a teacher's assistant, said she's worked at other centers that don't compare to this one. One teacher, she said, would have to buy art supplies out of her own salary and another was mean to the children.

"There was one time a boy threw something in the toilet and it got clogged and she really, really yelled at him," she said, "and she told him that he couldn't go to the restroom for the rest of the day."

Blanca Dominguez, a senior social work major, said a teacher at the A.S. day care helped potty train her son, Emiliano. While Emiliano didn't speak English before, she said the day care taught him and allowed him to grow.

"Sometimes he wants something, and I don't want to give it to him. He's like, 'Mommy, we need to share. My teacher says all children need to share,'" she said.

As a result of the day care's services, more than 180 are on the waitlist "pretty much" every semester, Roth said. The center divides the children into three groups: infants, toddlers and preschool, of which toddlers are the hardest to get in, she said.

"The way this building is set up, you can't have 18-month-old children in the same play yard as preschoolers," she said. "I mean, it would take a major renovation to change that, so people just have to wait. We have some very unhappy parents on the waiting list."

Roth said it only goes as far as "nasty e-mails," but they have panic buttons just in case.

"One day, a child pushed the button at the front desk, and we didn't realize he'd done that," she said. "He was crawling around underneath and suddenly, the police were right there so we feel very good about that."

In the past, they had a bad leak in one of the pipes, which led to mold in the walls, Roth said. She said they have roof leaks now and then, but they deal with it.

Espino, who is also a justice studies minor, said she can only complain about the lack of participation in workshops on topics such as discipline.

"I kind of stopped attending them because it would only be one other parent, two other parents - you weren't really getting a lot of feedback, just kind of listening," she said.

Taylor, a full-time employee for the city of San Jose, said she wishes the center would always stay open.

She said even though the day care basically operates year round, there's a period between, say, the last day of the spring semester and the first day of the summer session when it is closed.

The day care in the Central Classroom Building is open during fall and spring semesters only, said Joy Foster, a preschool lab instructor. This day care operates from Monday to Thursday with morning and afternoon sessions.

Even though the afternoons aren't filled, Foster said every semester there's usually 10 people on the waiting list for the morning time slot, which runs from 9 to 11:30 a.m.

Cheryl Vargas, A.S. executive director, said the A.S. day care's budget is a little more than $1 million going into next year.

"Some of our funding comes from the department of education and that funding helps low-income families have their children here without paying the full cost," Roth said. "Some parents have their children here and don't pay anything if their income is low enough, so we haven't heard anything about that being cut, but we don't know."

Vargas said although the day care's budget isn't solely from student fees, that allocation may decrease from $345,464, in 2008-09, to a proposed budget of $299,134 in 2009-10.

Shawn Chan, A.S. finance and accounting manager, cited lower enrollment as the reason. Students pay a fixed fee of $73.50, whether they're part-time, full-time, undergraduate or graduate students, Vargas said.

She said the center receives reimbursement for its food program and several grants, one of which amounts to $200,000 and is up for renewal in September, she said.

"Child care, as a field, is a break even," she said. "It's not a revenue-producing entity. It's a service. It's a true - from the truest sense of nonprofit - it's a service to the community."

Even the day care's employees reap the benefits.

"It's the funnest job ever," said Williams-Oliver, a sophomore psychology major. "It's not too strict and I feel like kids teach you a lot if you just listen, but no one really listens."

Dominguez, a single mother, said the A.S. day care allowed her to be a full-time student, graduate this May and concentrate on her job.

"After that, things are going to change - my income, my stability - everything will be changed," she said.