The Select Board has endorsed a proposal for a state-licensed day care center for the children of Harvard’s school employees. The endorsement was not without controversy, as board members wrestled with questions about the program’s scope and cost. In the end, the board unanimously supported the Harvard schools’ application to the state to extend the license of the local after-school day care program called Bridges to include the hours from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. during the school day. (The after-school program itself is not operating because of COVID-19.)
The Select Board held an off-cycle Thursday morning meeting Aug. 27 to consider the schools’ proposal to set up the day care center in the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Building. The School Committee had already voted to cover the monthly rental fee, and the program was to be run by staff from the school’s Bridges program, with school employees who use the service paying an hourly fee to cover the caregivers’ salaries. Five Harvard teachers had already indicated that, to be able to return to teaching, they needed day care for their nine children.
Originally the schools had hoped to make the day care program available for children of town employees as well. But Select Board member Lucy Wallace said she had been told by Assistant Town Administrator Marie Sobalvarro that the proposed hours did not match the needs of town employees, who work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. So the Select Board dropped that option from the license application and limited the program to school employees. Wallace also wanted to be certain that no costs for the program would be passed along to the town.
“If [the program] is not going to help town employees, that bothers me a great deal,” Select Board member Stu Sklar said.
But Select Board Chair Alice von Loesecke pointed out that the schools might need to find replacements for five teachers in just two weeks before the start of school if the day care program was not offered. “We’re trying to plug a hole in an emergency situation,” she said. Her argument carried the day, and the motion to endorse the plan passed.
