Public-private partnership benefits day care

Talking a mile a minute, the 2-year-old boy ran to greet his mom when she came to pick him up yesterday at the new Early Learning, Family and Childcare Center at Bellevue Community College (BCC).

Christi Kang and her husband, Mike, visited a number of Eastside day-care centers before Kai landed a spot at the BCC center — something his parents say is "a real blessing."

"Here, there's a much different attitude about the children. It wasn't the warehouse attitude," said Christi Kang, laughing.

The joke: Both Kangs work for warehouse retailing giant Costco, which contributed about $2 million toward the $5 million center.

The company and the college, with help from the state, formed a public-private partnership two years ago to build a day-care center to relieve a severe shortage.

Today, Costco Chief Executive Officer Jim Sinegal — along with Gov. Gary Locke, BCC President Jean Floten and other dignitaries — will mark the official opening of center, which is being touted as a model for both early childhood education and parental learning. Half of the 190 spots for children aged 3 months to 6 years are for children of Costco employees.

"It's bringing all the components together," said Betty Kaczynski, the center's director. "It's a college that's really trying to pay attention to community needs and Costco's vision of replicating (this program) around the country.

"Their passion is to influence other business partners to take some leadership."

The college raised about $2 million in private donations, and the state contributed $500,000.

While public-private partnerships have produced sports stadiums and parking garages, the idea of such a partnership in a day-care and family-learning center falls a little outside the norm.

But it's not the only thing that makes the BCC center unusual: There's evening child care for student-parents, and all parents are required to participate in PALS, the center's Parents As LearnerS program, Kaczynski said.

"We care about people demonstrating learning to their children and parenting is one of the most difficult jobs you can do," she said of the philosophy of offering classes on everything from child-proofing your home to dealing with your kid's nightmares. Parents are also expected to volunteer and attend quarterly family events.

An added bonus for BCC students studying early-childhood education is that they get hands-on experience and mentoring from professional care-givers — which, in turn, makes them better care-givers, Kaczynski said. The child-adult ratio is usually 3-to-1 but drops even lower when students are able to help out, she said.

And then there's the center's focus on fostering parent-child relationships, which child experts say is one of the greatest indicators of a child's emotional, social, language and cognitive development. Two researchers from the University of Washington's School of Nursing are conducting a study with the center's families to examine how infants make the transition to day care.

"We're not just serving children, we're developing relationships with parents," Kaczynski said.

Given that brain development peaks at age 2, children's relationships with the adults who take care of them are extremely important, she said. One of her goals is to have teachers follow the children as they move from one age bracket to the next "so there's some consistency in their relationship."

Kai already has become attached to a number of his teachers, whom his mom described as "really dedicated and loving."

"He never cries or clings — he wants to go to school and play with his friends," Christi Kang said.

Sara Jean Green can be reached at 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com