Aiming to enhance the quality of its Child Care Center, LSU announced plans to partner with a private firm to manage the center at a meeting last week, launching an “exploratory” process to find a suitable organization.
Vice President for Finance and Administration Daniel Layzell is forming an evaluation committee of parents, composed of LSU faculty senate, staff senate and Student Government representatives, to have a voice in the discussion.
The campus-based center opened in 2004 and cared for than 170 children of LSU faculty, staff and students, ages six weeks to five years. The center charges $700 per month for full-time students and $770 for faculty, staff and part-time students.
The search will span the next four months, and Layzell said if LSU selects a viable partner, it will announce the decision February 2016. He emphasized the model would be a private-public partnership, with some oversight from the school’s administration.
Faculty and staff representatives on the committee said their constituents voiced concerns about a private organization
running the center.
“A lot of the parents were concerned that the quality of the curriculum might not be as good, that the ratio of students to teachers may rise, that not as much personnel is going to be available that is highly qualified,” said foreign languages and literatures assistant professor Gundela Hachmann, who is the committee’s faculty representative.
The center has a five star rating from the Quality Start Child Care Rating System of Louisiana and is accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Hachmann, mother to a 20-month-old girl who stays at the Child Care Center, said the center is considered one of the best in Baton Rouge, and faculty members expressed reservations about changing an already effective system.
While Hachmann said she is not for or against the plan yet, not everyone agrees it will benefit LSU, as privatizing often means layoffs and significant structural changes to the way an organization runs.
“Privatization does not always work in favor of the people involved,” Hachmann said.
While LSU would encourage the potential partner to retain current staff members, Layzell said, the firm would have complete hiring authority.
First Year Experience assistant director Ramon Lopez represents the Child Care Center workers on the staff senate and the newly formed committee on the privatization plan.
Lopez said child care workers and other staff members have given detailed responses to the plan, but he said he could not specify what they included.
To ensure the private organization will improve the center’s care, Layzell said he wants the center to retain accreditation from the NAEYC. He said he will also study the track records of child care centers at other universities, and their hiring and retention practices.
Other large universities, including Purdue University and Duke University, partnered with private providers to manage campus child care centers, Layzell said.
The plan is not aimed at cost-effectiveness, he said, but at enhancing care. LSU would have some oversight in contract talks to ensure affordable care, he said.
“Down the road, if they expand programming, might that require an increase in rates?” he said. “Potentially, but that would be part of a conversation between the university and the provider and the parents to make sure that would be something we would be comfortable [with].”