Kids on Campus aims to increase the number of Head Start programs on community college campuses to remove child care barriers for student parents.
When Dayonera Rivera drops off her 4-year-old daughter Keilanys at the Holyoke-Chicopee-Springfield (HCS) Head Start center each morning, she doesn’t have to worry about traffic or rush back across town to make her classes. Instead, she walks a few hundred yards across the Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) campus, knowing that if she needs to check on her daughter, pick up materials from the library or meet with a professor during office hours, everything is within reach.
“I was ecstatic when I found out that they were literally right on campus,” said Rivera, a medical assistant working toward her nursing degree. It provided convenience, she said. “It just made it easier. … It made me come to school.”