Childcare negotiations

SCFA worked with the Academic Mothers Faculty Community Network in trying to negotiate for a temporary childcare subsidy for faculty with children under the age of five years old. Childcare is an urgent need for faculty parents, and especially mothers, whose careers are impacted by the lack of available and accessible childcare in Santa Cruz county. UCSC is the only UC campus currently without a childcare center on campus, and childcare has been at the top of UCSC’s Senate Committee on Faculty Welfare’s list of concerns for over a decade. While UCSC is building a childcare center on campus, the center is scheduled to open at the end of 2025 at the earliest. In working with SCFA, Academic Mothers hoped to establish an interim subsidy program, modeled off the existing graduate student childcare subsidy program. The interim program would have provided $1400 in subsidies, per quarter, to eligible faculty households, with an estimated total operating cost of between $300,000 and $400,000. Representatives from Academic Mothers attended three labor relations meetings between SCFA and UCSC admin in Spring 2024. UCSC administration ultimately rejected the proposal, citing budget constraints, despite the fact that this would have been a very low cost program that would finally address a long-standing issue that is producing significant and unequal hardship for a portion of the faculty. Establishing this interim program would also have demonstrated the administration’s concern for academic parents, especially mothers who take on the bulk of child care when it is unaffordable.