September marks National Student Parent Month in the US, a month to recognize the obstacles faced by student parents and promote resources to help them succeed.
According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, roughly one in five college students is also a parent. Student parents statistically graduate with more student debt, yet maintain higher GPAs (Grade Point Average) than other students. They also have some of the highest dropout rates among college students, simply because there’s not enough hours in a day to care for children, work, and attend classes for many.
Student parents have a first responsibility to their children in addition to classwork and assignments. If their child´s daycare is closed for the day, for instance, they may need to stay home from class to put their child’s well-being first. The costs of childcare, food, and medical care for children further strain those striving to get a degree.
As part of its goal to support and retain student-parents, Madison College joined the FamilyU cohort of 2022. FamilyU is a program designed to improve their success in post-secondary education by working with staff and student parents at participating colleges and universities to make positive changes at the institutional level.
“There are four topics that FamilyU works to develop: data, policy, culture, and people,” explains Erin Trondson, the Early Childhood Project Manager at Madison College. “And through that, we are exploring all sorts of obstacles, resources, questionings, curiosities about how to better support student-parents at Madison College.”
One of the biggest challenges for student-parents is to find and afford childcare while they work and attend classes. Particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a shortage of childcare workers, causing closures and reduced scale service for many childcare facilities nationwide and locally.
To help fill this childcare gap, Madison College has begun working on implementing its district childcare roadmap, which has a few key goals. Among these goals are increasing childcare access, reviewing college policies, and developing childcare professionals.
As far as the first goal is concerned, the Madison College Early Learning Campus may see changes over the next years.
The Early Learning Campus is an on-campus childcare facility for children ages six weeks to 5 years in age to stay while parents work or attend classes.
The Early Learning Campus provides care for children of students, staff, and community members Monday through Friday, mornings and afternoons. The Early Learning Campus includes meals (breakfast and lunch) for children on the campus during meal service times, opportunities for children to learn by exploring their environment in hands-on activities, and additional services for children with special needs.
Unfortunately for many parents for whom childcare is a barrier to getting a post-secondary education, the waitlist for Madison College’s Early Learning Campus is longer than there are spots available in the program; after all 50 spots are filled, almost 90 children remain on the waiting list. For the lucky parents whose children made it off the waitlist into the Early Learning Campus, Trondson describes the scholarships that exist to help cover the cost of childcare while parents attend classes. For instance, “the college has a grant called ‘CCAMPIS,’ (which) pays for the tuition of the children while the parents go to school.”
As part of the districtwide childcare roadmap, Madison College is working to expand the Early Learning Campus so that more children can be served, and more student-parents have access to reliable childcare. Potential Early Learning Campus services at the Goodman South Campus, where childcare services are even less available, are being discussed and could be implemented as soon as 2025.
Also discussed in the districtwide childcare roadmap, Madison College offers several free courses in early childhood education for students in the early childhood program; this to help introduce more qualified professionals to the childcare industry without putting them behind with student debt. The hope is that putting scholarship funds into training additional childcare workers may help alleviate shortages in childcare in future years
On a more direct level, during this student-parent month, Madison College has run several events, including a family night for students and their children to enjoy face-painting, balloons, and entries to drawings for free passes to the YMCA.
“We’re hoping to make it much bigger in other years, and to extend it to all the regional campuses as well,” Trondson sad regarding the student-parent month events,