Displaced Child-Care Program for Teen Mothers Moving to Inglewood

The bureaucratic odyssey of 18 babies and their student mothers ended this week with the Inglewood school board’s decision to provide space for a child-care program that had lost its home in Lawndale.

Despite a financial crisis that required painful budget cuts earlier this year, Inglewood board members voted at a special meeting Tuesday to pay about $30,000 to house the infant-care program of the Youth and Family Center of Lawndale in a trailer on the grounds of the school district headquarters.

District administrators recommended that the board deny the proposed move unless it could be financed through contributions from outside sources, but board members said the program for teen-age mothers was worth the financial risk.

The Youth and Family Center lost its lease with the Centinela Valley Union High School District last week after several months of emotional debate about Centinela officials’ decision to end their seven-year association with the program. The school building used by the center will house programs serving “high risk” students, including immigrants and students with disciplinary and academic problems.

The center has a $1-million state-funded budget and a 40-member staff serving adults and juveniles with a variety of counseling and training services. The program moving to Inglewood this month provides child care and parenting classes for the high school-age mothers of about 18 infants from the Inglewood, Lawndale and Hawthorne areas, said Stephanie Vendig, director of the program.

“We’re extremely pleased that Inglewood has taken this step even though they’re having financial problems,” said Vendig. “We’re very gratified.”

Although she has found a place for the day-care center, Youth and Family Center Director Gayle Nathanson continues her search for an Inglewood office building to house the center’s administration and its other programs. The center’s lease in the Centinela district expires today; Vendig said lawyers for the district and center will meet Friday to discuss a request for a 90-day extension of the lease.

Relocation Costs

Inglewood school board members Larry Aubry, Caroline Coleman and Zyra McCloud voted to pay to move and house the day-care program. Board member Lois Hill-Hale abstained. Citing the district’s dire financial straits, Hill-Hale has expressed support for the idea of moving Nathanson’s program to Inglewood if private funding can be found.

It will cost about $20,000 to move and set up the program in a large trailer on a softball field near district headquarters and about $10,000 annually to house it there, board President Coleman said Wednesday. The money will come from the reserves of the district, which cut more than $3 million in staff and programs this year.

Coleman said the district could have lost access to the entire gamut of center programs if Nathanson had moved the center to the Los Angeles Unified School District. She estimated that the district will gain about $2,500 per school year in attendance-based funds for each of the 18 student mothers who remain in school due to the child-care services.

McCloud said the district’s Parent Community Action Team has approached various Inglewood businesses in an attempt to raise money to reimburse the district. About $2,000 has been raised, McCloud said.

But McCloud also said the district will gain financially and would ultimately have had to provide its own services to student mothers at a greater expense.

“This is an investment in the children,” McCloud said. “We’ll get the money back.”