Jacob Lindley and his wife got on child care waiting lists before their daughter was born.
“We had heard horror stories about how hard it was to find child care and affordable child care at that,” the Vandenberg Village resident told the Sun. “We started looking early, and it took three to four months of getting an appointment and getting in to see somebody, and there were places we weren’t thrilled with, … but we did not want to get stuck in a situation where one of us would have to quit work or turn down a job offer because we didn’t have something lined up.”
They saw prices anywhere from $1,100 to $1,500 per month until the couple finally found a spot at Casa dei Bambini, one of the latest child care centers to open its doors in Lompoc. The state-funded center makes it more affordable for Lindley to send his 16-month-old daughter to day care every day.
“We were incredibly fortunate to find Casa dei Bambini. I wish that program was more widespread, but the fact it is state funded, I feel like every single family should have access to the program they offer,” Lindley said.
Fewer than 7 percent of Lompoc children under 2 years old have access to child care, said Lori Goodman, the executive director of LEAP: Learn Engage Advocate Partner—a Santa Barbara County nonprofit dedicated to providing high-quality, trauma-informed child care and services to its community members.
“We identified Lompoc as the area in the county of the highest need,” Goodman said. “It’s just a crisis for people who need infant care for children under 2; over 2 there’s more availability.”
Like Casa dei Bambini, LEAP provides state-funded child care services that meet parents where they’re at and makes costly programming more attainable for more families. The nonprofit currently operates a child care facility in Goleta and is working on opening a facility in Lompoc, but permitting and licensing requirements have set back the center’s opening.
“We have a ribbon cutting on Dec. 5, but we are not complete with the licensing yet. We are still waiting for one more building permit; we need architecture plans to be submitted,” Goodman said. “Every time I think I’m close, there’s one more thing we find we need to do.”
LEAP partnered with Trinity Nazarene Church in Lompoc to open a new child care facility to serve infants and toddlers. The church has three classrooms that had been used for a child care center, but it closed during the pandemic.
“One of the things I’ve learned in this process: To get a space license-ready is a huge investment. I thought we would be spending a couple of hundred thousand dollars to get this space ready. I’m now looking at $800,000,” Goodman said. “This was a children’s center; this wasn’t transforming office space into a child care center.”
LEAP replaced the flooring and cabinets as well as the pipes after discovering that the old plumbing system turned “completely black” since last being used in 2020. It installed new fencing and crafted new outdoor spaces catered to infants and toddlers. Trinity Nazarene helped fix the roof and install double pane windows.
“Each classroom has a reading area, a gross motor skills area, dramatic play like imaginative play—kitchen, stoves, [where] kids can create their own experiences—calming skills area for self-regulation,” Goodman said.
The team expects to have 16 new spots available for infants under 2; 24 spots for toddlers ages 2 to 3; and at least 24 spots for preschoolers ages 3 to 5—taking a small chunk out of the city’s child care gap.
According to the Lompoc Early Learning Project—a needs assessment conducted by the Lompoc Unified School District, the Lompoc Adult School and Career Center, and First 5 Santa Barbara County—there’s more than 2,700 children under 2 and more than 2,100 children ages 3 to 5 living in Lompoc but only 186 and 1,300 child care spaces, respectively, per age group.
“This translates to the potential unmet need for 93 percent of children ages 0 [to] 2 and 38 percent of children ages 3 [to] 5,” according to the report.
Serving children under 2 requires more licensed staffing and more space per child—making it more challenging to open and operate a facility, Goodman said.
“It’s very hard to find staff to do that because it’s physically hard work on the body; many children’s centers don’t take children under 2,” Goodman said. “We start at 3 months, and rarely they go below 18 months. There’s just not a lot of that in our county, sadly.”
If LEAP can open its doors, it would contribute to an estimated 200 licensed spaces coming into the city alongside Casa dei Bambini and ComUnify’s centers. But LEAP has run into several setbacks with the licensing and permitting process.
LEAP is bound by state regulations, which help it provide high quality care at a reasonable cost to families, but it can be tricky to get all of the necessary permits to open.
“The state of California has invested in adding more child care spaces over the last few years, and many programs like ours, … so we’ll be able to receive state funding so families won’t have to pay or have a small copay to send children there,” Goodman said. “But getting the space ready to go is so slow. We applied for state funding two years ago, and we received notice but no funding has come.”
Notice means that LEAP’s application was approved, but it won’t get the contract until it’s licensed. Goodman said that LEAP has been ramping up its fundraising efforts to keep the project afloat and has dipped into some reserves.
“We’ve hired staff, we’re ready to go, but we can’t go yet. You don’t want to be running an unlicensed center,” she said.
In the meantime, the new staff LEAP hired work in Goleta.
Lompoc resident and lead infant child care teacher Hannah Covarrubias plans to transfer to the new center once it’s open.
She currently commutes an hour one-way every day with her husband—who also works in Goleta—and her two children (3 years old and 9 months). Her kids come with her to LEAP and she works with the 0- to 2-year-olds all day. Despite chasing and redirecting little ones all day, she said she loves working with this age group.
“This is the age where you see a lot of the milestones, they use words, fine motor skills, and you see them grow from 1 to 2 and it’s hard to see them go because you become attached,” Covarrubias said. “At the same time, I am happy because they’re learning, growing, becoming their own individuals.”
Transferring to the Lompoc center once it’s open will help her save on gas, stay closer to home, and allow her to serve her own community, she said.
“Before I began at LEAP, I was looking for child care for my son but there were too many waitlists,” she said. “I feel like this facility in Lompoc is going to help tremendously because the care is huge for infants; it’s really needed in that town.”
Reach Staff Writer Taylor O’Connor at toconnor@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 28 – Dec 8, 2024.
