Parenting education to be cut at WWC?

The Parenting Education program at Whatcom Community College is facing elimination next quarter. The department submitted two proposals, which reduce operating costs by 60 percent to stay alive.

If the department is cut, three parent educators will lose their jobs.

Children’s Co-Op Preschool in South Hill, Bellingham, is one of five preschools also affected by this decision.

Parent Educator Peggy Wepprecht has worked for the program for 34 years.

“The state and the nation had a recession,” Wepprecht said recalling the 1980s. “We had a huge cut back at that time. It wasn’t as drastic as we are facing now.”

Children’s Co-Op Preschool

When parents sign their children up at Children’s Co-Op Preschool, they are also signing up for the parenting education program at Whatcom Community College.

Parents pay $125 a month to Children’s Co-Op Preschool. Fourteen of those dollars are then turned over to Whatcom Community College as tuition for the program. The program is a three-credit class each quarter. In May, at the end of the school year, parents will have received nine credits and will have paid $126 for classes normally worth about $900.

“The state has always had tuition wavers, that’s what we fall under for the parent education program,” Wepprecht said explaining the reduced tuition. “That isn’t just here at Whatcom, but state wide.”

Children’s Co-Op Preschool is fully run by the parents and the parent education program coach parents in running the cooperative preschool as a small business in addition to parent education.

“The parents run the business, its their business, they have a non-profit number,” Wepprecht said. “The college is an advisor to the business. We only advise their board of directors, which are the parents, make the decision. We advise them but we do not have a vote on that board.”

The Children’s Co-Op Preschool has a board of volunteer parents who operate the preschool as a business.

They make all business decisions, from finances to staffing.

The board has a high turnover rate because children are typically in preschool for two years.

Coordinator of the Parenting Education program Kris Smith said that many parents do not have experience in running a small business.

Because of the high turnover rate, it would be difficult for Children’s Co-Op Preschool to operate without Whatcom Community College’s support.

In addition to the college’s support, Children’s Co-Op Preschool is under an umbrella liability insurance, which insures all cooperative preschools in the State of Washington.

To keep costs liability costs down, they require the child to adult ratio to be one to five, smaller than the state’s ratio. Additionally, parents need to go through health and safety training. The combination of the two criteria results in fewer incidents reported.

The proposal

The first proposal offers an immediate solution for the spring quarter. The second proposal offers suggestions for the future. The program’s current budget is $100,000 a year, most of which goes to salaries and benefits. The proposed budget would reduce the college’s cost to $40,000 a year.

The 60 percent cut back in operations entails parent educators working fewer hours, and cutting three of the four employees’ benefits.

The coordinator position that Kris Smith holds would be eliminated.

As part of the cutbacks, 10 sections will be reduced to five. Children’s Co-Op Preschool has three sections and will be reduced to one, under the proposal.

The reduced sections would not exclude any of the 130 families currently in the program. The class sizes at the college would increase and parent educators would spend less time in the preschools with the parents and children. Parent educators would spend time in the preschools as they see needed.

The decision

President Kathi Hiyane-Brown and has yet to make a decision.

“I could find out today, I could find out next week,” Smith said referring to decision to keep the parent education program and her job.

The decision will be made by the beginning of spring quarter.

Smith said that spring quarter is usually when the volunteer board meets to plan for its next year.

Smith encourages parents and residents to send emails to the school. She said it puts “friendly pressure” on the college to keep the program running.