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Orange Coast College will downsize childcare center, parents need to find new schools

February 28, 2025

Parents with children enrolled at Orange Coast College’s Harry and Grace Steele Children’s Center say they are scrambling after the college told them recently the center would see a significant cut in the number of childcare spots it’ll offer beginning this summer.

The downsizing is forcing parents to seek new childcare locations for their young children and they are pleading with the school to not move forward with the change.

The center provides early care and education for children ages 1 to 5 of college students, faculty and staff and other residents, but has run at a significant deficit in recent years, according to college officials.

Parents who have children enrolled at the school said they received an email on Feb. 21 that said the college “has made the difficult decision to reduce its services at the Children’s Center” beginning July 1.

Beginning then, the center will offer only two preschool classes and will no longer have classes for infants, toddlers or Pre-K ages. The cut will reduce the number of children from 105 currently to 48 spots.

“Our parents are obviously spiraling right now and freaking out trying to figure out if they need to quit their jobs? Where are they going to be putting their children?” said Megan Richards, a student at Orange Coast College with two children at the education center.

Richards, 29, has a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old enrolled at the center. Richards is graduating OCC this semester and said the center’s closure would likely prevent her pursuit of a bachelor’s degree because she would need to stay at home to care for her children.

“Parents are very open to resolution and how we can fix this,” Richards said. “They’re not giving us anything.”

Juan Gutierrez, a spokesperson for the community college, said the center has been operating at a deficit for a few years, which has now reached a projected $630,000 shortfall for the current fiscal year.

“When you’re running on the red, you have to do something,” Gutierrez said. “It’s an unattainable kind of position.”

The college’s board of trustees will still need to vote on a final decision for the center. Gutierrez said the school has used its general funds and pandemic relief money to offset that deficit. He said other colleges have had to give up or cut their childcare programs, and this is the decision the college has to make, too.

Gutierrez said even a 20% increase in tuition would only cover about a third of the center’s deficit. And even after the reduction in classes, Gutierrez said the center would still have a deficit.

He said seven employees at the center are working with the college’s HR department to move to a different job, but there’s no guarantee that they will be able to transfer.

After the cuts, the center will have a maximum enrollment of 48 students. Currently, there are 105 registered students at the school, 19 of which are children of OCC students, 17 children of faculty or staff and the rest are from the community.

Gutierrez said the school’s director is going to offer to schedule appointments with affected parents to help them find childcare elsewhere. OCC students are getting priority to keep their children enrolled in the remaining classes.

The college, he said, wants to continue to have the center since it serves the school’s core mission of education by allowing parents to take classes while their children are looked after.

“If we’re not financially responsible now, who knows what could happen in the future,” Gutierrez said. “It might be … a little more dire, so we’re taking these steps now to be able to offer these resources to our students.”

Courtney Prouty said she and others were shocked by the downsizing. She said the school should have made parents aware of the financial situation sooner, so they could work together on solutions other than downsizing.

“Every single person and parent I have talked to that currently has students at the center are absolutely willing to pay an increase,” Prouty said. “If (parents) are not, there is a waitlist of over 80 kids for some of these classes.”

Prouty said childcare is a necessity for her and her husband, who both work full-time making childcare a necessity.

Parents said it will be difficult for them to find other schools to put their children in since many are already enrolling for future sessions and there’s still uncertainty about who will get into the remaining classes at Orange Coast.

Several spoke highly of the care and education at the Harry and Grace Steele Children’s Center, saying the staff treated each child as if they were their own.

Claire Smith said her son enrolled at the center lacked some gross motor skills and would fall down often. The teachers at the school created new activities for him to test his body and gain these skills, Smith said, helping him to now become “the master of the monkey bars.”

“It’s just like mind-blowing because they see the opportunities that the children need and then they focus on them,” Smith said. “And they’re doing this for every kid, not just one single child.”

Orange County Register

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Orange Coast College will downsize childcare center, parents need to find new schools

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