Siler ends semester wondering

12.10.09 / News / By Charlene McCloskey

CLARION, Pa., Dec. 7 – News broke just over two months ago, on Oct. 6, about the closing of the Earl R. Siler Day Care and Child Development Center. The day care is scheduled to close before Christmas Eve.

Clarion University is closing the center, which is located in the basement of Ralston Hall and has been serving the campus and local community for almost 20 years.
The closing is said to be due to a lack of funding. After a need for the center to stay open was expressed through several student and faculty petitions, options to save the center began to be explored.
The big question now is what will happen to the children.
Another group that has also been affected by this are the student-parents.
Hannah Mills, a junior sociology major and one of several student-parents who rely on the day care while in classes, has her 2-year-old daughter Annia at Siler.
When Mills was first told of the closing, she considered transferring to another school that did offer a campus day care service, but she said she knew the services would lack in comparison to those at Siler because it is also a child development center.
This setting is much like a preschool or kindergarten; it’s a setting many other Pennsylvania state colleges lack.
The group Pregnancy and Parenting Resources Initiative met just over a month ago to discuss where to go from here.
“Parent-students are a grueling constituency here at the university,” Dr. Robert Girvan, faculty adviser to PPRI said in an earlier interview.
Girvan also said even though they do not deserve special treatment, they do deserve to be represented and their needs considered.
PPRI has tried several times to connect the Clarion University President Dr. Joseph Grunewald, but has had no luck scheduling a meeting with him. The student-parents and the faculty who are fighting to save the center are hesitant to look for outside assistance because they can not guarantee the site to them.
As for Mills, she will be transferring at the end of this semester to California University of Pennsylvania. Her only reason for the transfer is because of the absence of childcare in Clarion.
CalU offers both the childcare and development center in one, much like the Siler Center.
“I am shocked that a smaller campus is able to meet my needs when Clarion can not,” said Mills.

Charlene McCloskey is a staff news writer for The Call.

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