By CHRISTINE HOPKINS
Staff Writer
 

Since 1991, Bates has offered a base amount of fifteen dollars a week to help faculty and support staff pay for daycare. This year, the amount has jumped up to twenty-five dollars per week due to a proposal put before President Harward by the Director of Personnel, Judy Marden Bergevin.

The increase has caused about a fifty percent increase in applications for the subsidy.

According to Brenda Sawyer at the Personnel Office, most of the applications have come from faculty and administrators.

The office has also received requests for an on-campus daycare facility. But the office feels that the subsidies offer "more flexibility to the employee to choose a daycare provider," Sawyer explained

In fact, a survey taken seven years ago showed that the preferences for child care differed greatly among Bates employees.

The same survey caused Bates to cease its relationship with Rocking Horse Child care center and adopt the subsidies policy.

Some employees disagree, however, pointing to the problem of transportation and the distance of the children from the parent's workplace.

Associate Director of Dining Services Christine Schwartz estimates that "seventy to eighty percent of Dining Service employees have children" and that on-campus child care could be a "great convenience" to these employees.

At Bowdoin College, a daycare center is available for the children of Bowdoin employees. The center serves only children age six and under.

This service costs $28 per day, compared to $20 at New Gloucester's Learning Tree Center and $22 a day at Rocking Horse Child care.