Purdue task force implements initial measures to increase child care availability to serve additional 40 children at campus centers

A Purdue University-led task force focused on campus child care services has delivered a plan designed to increase available spaces and help manage costs of these services for Purdue faculty, staff and students. Overall, the university expects to be able to serve an additional 40 children and will now provide an annual operating subsidy of nearly $2 million for Purdue child care centers for the next year.

Purdue’s Ben and Maxine Miller Child Development Laboratory School, the Patty Jischke Early Care and Education Center and the Purdue University Early Care and Education Center (PUECEC) provide care for infants, toddlers, twos, preschool/pre-K and school-aged children and feature a variety of classrooms totaling nearly 400 seats. 

Announced in January, the Purdue Child Care Task Force recently assessed the current state of child care at Purdue. Through listening sessions and an online survey of the campus community, several needs were identified, including: Better matching of availability and demand for specific classrooms; additional qualified personnel and a reduction in personnel turnover; better matching the hours of child care volunteers and part-time workers to the times when care is most needed; better management of costs overall; and a desire for more options in the community, such as summer camps and school-age care.

The Task Force has implemented several measures to address these needs:

• A $250,000 grant from Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration is being used, starting this summer, to defray child care tuition for faculty and staff with children enrolled in Indiana early childhood programs.
• Conversion of a PUECEC roomto a new toddler classroom to provide 10 additional seats starting this October, funded by a Community and Campus Collaboration grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc.
• A new course credit fee audit waiver to help in recruiting au pairs to provide child care for an additional 15 Purdue families.
• Enabling Early Learning Indiana (ELI, which operates the Jischke Center and PUECEC) to reduce costs and hire more staff sustainably, for which Purdue will:
  • Relieve ELI of $80,000 of annual operating costs.
  • Help promote ELI part-time job opportunities among Purdue students, Ivy Tech students and the retired community.

“The availability of high-quality child care is crucial to our goal of attracting and retaining the best and brightest here in our campus and community,” said Purdue Provost Patrick J. Wolfe. “We thank the members of the task force and all those in our community who provided helpful input. At nearly 400 seats — the second-highest in the Big Ten — we are ideally placed to build on these task force measures further through efforts across the Greater Lafayette region.” 

Such efforts include READI 1.0, the state-led regional economic development initiative that has an objective to license home child care options in the Greater Lafayette region. Furthermore, the Lilly Endowment Community and Campus Collaboration grant will help bring 500 additional child care seats to Greater Lafayette by 2029 and will also target child care workforce development. The city of West Lafayette is conducting its own child care analysis, which will take into account Purdue’s developments and seek to build on them. Lastly Ivy Tech recently hired an early learning coalition director, a position created in partnership with IU Health Foundation, the city of Lafayette and the Community Foundation of Greater Lafayette, to work with the Greater Lafayette employer community to organize and respond to the challenges and demands related to the access, affordability and quality of early education and care across Greater Lafayette.