Child Development Center ‘a Godsend’ for Students, Community

Up and Running

Mendoza, who spent two years helping to secure the center’s licensing before its launch, oversees classified staff and students on assignment at the new CDC.

“The biggest challenge is finding a way to support my staff when everyone is new,” she said. “It’s a unique place. It’s a childcare program. It’s a training facility. Some of our staff were used to only supervising other adults, not students or interns or lab students.”

As site supervisor, Mendoza also tracks who gets approved for childcare. Merced College students need to fit income guidelines and prove another need to qualify for campus childcare, like being a full-time student or a part-time student with a job.

Feedback from student parents has been nearly 100 percent positive, Mendoza said. One told her, “If you weren’t here, I wouldn’t be able to get an education.”

Community Childcare

In its first year of operation, the Los Banos Campus CDC is currently serving roughly 20 infants and toddlers aged 6 months to 5 years. The facility is licensed for up to 24 children aged 2-5 and 16 infants or toddlers aged 6 months to 2 years.

“Other programs assist students who need childcare, but let them go once they get a job,” Merced College CDC Director Michelle Joseph said. “Ours is designed to stabilize a family until they’re able to stand on their own two feet in that period before their children are eligible to enter kindergarten.

“Getting this facility together and licensed was long, hard, time-consuming work. But seeing our student parents become successful in their academics, knowing their children are cared for, has been a truly great experience.”

Community Asset

Asking Los Banos ECE students to travel to and from Merced, even for a part of their program, was too much for many.

“If you have to drive 45 minutes each way—if you have a car, if the bus is on time—that’s a lot of ifs,” Heft said. “Having a center on campus is just a more equitable learning environment.

“What I love most about it now is working with the support of the site supervisors and other faculty. We offer as many face-to-face classes as we can, and all of our labs are face-to-face, so students have continuous support from me and the center employees in tandem. And they can still take online courses whenever it’s convenient.”

Churning out qualified childcare job applicants is important, since Los Banos has grown by 10,000 residents the past 14 years.

“Before I leave or retire, I hope we see the center triple in size,” Heft said. “We’ll be giving back to this community, and that is the coolest thing. Someone even described the center as a ‘godsend.’”

Pathway to Student Success

When the opportunity came for 53-year old Maria Romo to finally go to college, she ran for it.

“When one door opens, you don’t say, ‘Who’s there?’ You just walk through,” she said.

The proverbial door was actually a flyer for Extreme Registration that Romo found on her doorstep one day. She said it was like God himself was shoving her out the door.

“It was perfect, because I live 5 minutes from the Los Banos Campus,” she said. “My youngest son helped me enroll. He was like, ‘Come on, Mom. You got this!’”

Romo is turning years of volunteering in her sons’ classrooms into an ECE degree. She will become the family’s third BA recipient, after her two sons, when she graduates from Cal State Stanislaus in a couple of years. Right now, she’s taking 18 units to finish her general ed requirements and her student internship at the Los Banos CDC.

“Working and learning there has been an eye opener,” she said. “I get to do everything that the regular teachers do as an intern. I tell my husband all the time that I’m so grateful I got the chance to intern here. All of the women make me feel like I belong.”

Competency-Based Education Coming

Her experience as a classroom volunteer would have made Romo a perfect candidate for the Competency-Based Education (CBE) program that will eventually become available for ECE students at Merced College.

In CBE programs, like Merced College’s new Ag Systems Certificate, students earn credit based on their mastery of skills and competencies rather than time spent in classrooms and labs, enabling experienced students to move through the program more quickly.

Heft said a CBE working group has already crafted formative and summative assessments to show skill mastery in roughly six of the nine required classes in the early childhood education pathway.

Opportunities Await

With the opening of the CDC and all that will come from the Measure P bond that passed in November, the future of the Los Banos Campus is bright.

And having actual children on campus underfoot is balm for the soul.

“They did a little parade around campus for Halloween,” Heft said. “We look out the windows and see them playing or walking to the food forest. They bring joy here each day, but we also hope that we’re seeing the next generation of Merced College students.”

Merced College’s child development program meets California’s stringent requirements for credentials, permits, and licenses, as well as an AA in Child Development and an AS for Transfer Degree in Early Childhood Education.

Students, faculty and community members looking for childcare can apply for children ages 0-5 years by submitting a waitlist application online, in person, or by phone at 209-384-6245.

The center is also currently hiring full-time CDC Master Teachers and full- and part-time CDC Associate Teachers.

“I invite people to come out and see the center and ask questions and tell their friends and family about our new program,” Joseph said. “The students who come to the CDC gain skills and knowledge that will help stabilize the childcare industry throughout Merced County. We build them strong at Merced College.”