Vera Casey This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. Berkeley Daily Planet

   www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/ar - [Cached]

   Published on: 6/1/2004   Last Visited: 6/1/2004

   "Obviously this is an emotional issue for me," said Casey who painted the center's walls before it first opened in 1972, and, several years later as an economics major at UC Berkeley, helped produce a report on the financial value of keeping student mothers in mainstream schools-a concept pioneered by Vera Casey.
   
   Still, he said, "If I had found that this wouldn't have paid for itself I wouldn't be doing this. It just quickly became clear that there is an economic model that works."
   
   Casey proposes to boost enrollment for community members and charge them higher fees to help subsidize the student mother program.
   
   His plan, however, faces stiff competition and some unlikely skeptics.
   
   The Vera Casey Center Board of Directors, a natural ally for Casey, feels he has ignored them, according to David Hench, the husband of a board member.
   
   "The board is concerned that Dan Casey is coming in from Alaska and asserting authority he doesn't have," said Hench, who added that Casey had not yet met face-to-face with a single board member.
   ...
   Casey charged that District Preschool Director John Santoro had been pushing Head Start, which contracts to the district's preschool program, into the center long before the board cut funding for program.
   ...
   "He started going around saying Vera Casey was dead meat," Casey said.
   
   Pamm Shaw, executive director of Berkeley Head Start, said the two centers had never understood each others' programs and that Vera Casey Center management had rebuffed her previous offers to work together. "I'm sorry for the families that it's been so political," she said.
   ...
   What Head Start can't provide, according to Vera Casey supporters, is the combination of child care and parent services all under one roof.
   
   Dealing with high school mothers takes special skills and every professional says it makes a big difference to have staff that's primarily focused on that mission, Casey said.
   
   That was his mother's philosophy, he said, when she worked to make Berkeley the first school district in California to provide infant care and counseling for student mothers.
   
   Vera Casey was an unlikely reformer. Born into a strict Virginia home, she became a teacher late in life. While working as a home economics instructor at the former continuation high school in Berkeley, she realized that many of her chronically absent students were parents. To get them into class, Casey set up a day care program through the First Presbyterian Church adjacent to the school.
   
   Later she determined that the mothers should be able to attend the regular high school, so she raised money to buy the future Vera Casey Center on Martin Luther King Jr. Way next to Berkeley High School.
   ...
   Kidango runs other programs similar to Vera Casey in Fremont, Newark and New Haven and they are all losing money, Miller said.
   
   The culprit is that state government has woefully underfunded the grants, said Miller. Since 1981, in adjusted dollars, state grants to nonprofit child care centers have fallen 30 percent.
   
   Marcy Whitebook, director of the Center for Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley, said the state system has stacked the deck against programs like Vera Casey.

2. 2. Berkeley Daily Planet

   www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/te - [Cached]

   Published on: 6/1/2004   Last Visited: 6/2/2004

   "Obviously this is an emotional issue for me," said Casey who painted the center's walls before it first opened in 1972, and, several years later as an economics major at UC Berkeley, helped produce a report on the financial value of keeping student mothers in mainstream schools-a concept pioneered by Vera Casey.
   
   Still, he said, "If I had found that this wouldn't have paid for itself I wouldn't be doing this. It just quickly became clear that there is an economic model that works."
   
   Casey proposes to boost enrollment for community members and charge them higher fees to help subsidize the student mother program.
   
   His plan, however, faces stiff competition and some unlikely skeptics.
   
   The Vera Casey Center Board of Directors, a natural ally for Casey, feels he has ignored them, according to David Hench, the husband of a board member.
   
   "The board is concerned that Dan Casey is coming in from Alaska and asserting authority he doesn't have," said Hench, who added that Casey had not yet met face-to-face with a single board member.
   ...
   Casey charged that District Preschool Director John Santoro had been pushing Head Start, which contracts to the district's preschool program, into the center long before the board cut funding for program.
   ...
   "He started going around saying Vera Casey was dead meat," Casey said.
   
   Pamm Shaw, executive director of Berkeley Head Start, said the two centers had never understood each others' programs and that Vera Casey Center management had rebuffed her previous offers to work together. "I'm sorry for the families that it's been so political," she said.
   ...
   What Head Start can't provide, according to Vera Casey supporters, is the combination of child care and parent services all under one roof.
   
   Dealing with high school mothers takes special skills and every professional says it makes a big difference to have staff that's primarily focused on that mission, Casey said.
   
   That was his mother's philosophy, he said, when she worked to make Berkeley the first school district in California to provide infant care and counseling for student mothers.
   
   Vera Casey was an unlikely reformer. Born into a strict Virginia home, she became a teacher late in life. While working as a home economics instructor at the former continuation high school in Berkeley, she realized that many of her chronically absent students were parents. To get them into class, Casey set up a day care program through the First Presbyterian Church adjacent to the school.
   
   Later she determined that the mothers should be able to attend the regular high school, so she raised money to buy the future Vera Casey Center on Martin Luther King Jr. Way next to Berkeley High School.
   ...
   Kidango runs other programs similar to Vera Casey in Fremont, Newark and New Haven and they are all losing money, Miller said.
   
   The culprit is that state government has woefully underfunded the grants, said Miller. Since 1981, in adjusted dollars, state grants to nonprofit child care centers have fallen 30 percent.
   
   Marcy Whitebook, director of the Center for Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley, said the state system has stacked the deck against programs like Vera Casey.