University Child Care

Greetings! Welcome to University Child Care.

Our teachers work to facilitate "active learning" in a developmentally appropriate environment for young children, and their parents.

Our goal is to promote physical, cognitive, linguistic, nutritional, social and emotional development in an environment which prides inself on the caring and nurturing of our children, parents and student staff. We also focus on supporting the development and parenting efforts of our student parents whom we attempt to assist, whenever appropriate, with their parental responsibilities.

You want the best for your child, the best possible early education. University Child Care offers exceptional care for children 2, 3, and 4 years of age.

The Center's program model is that of a developmentally-oriented nursery school,with a Pre Kindergarten Program and, the wrap-around of day care-type hours. As of Fall, 2007, we no longer offered our Kindergarten Program. We will, inevitably, have some children who will be five years of age after September 1 and not be able to meet The Maryland State Department of Education's cut-off date of September 1 for entering Kindergarten. We will, for those children, within reason, offer developmentally appropriate programming within the context of our mission which is that of offering a PreK Program.

Applicants are admitted in the following order of priority:

• Children of current full & part time Towson University Undergraduate, Graduate, & Doctoral Students
• Children of Towson University Faculty, Staff & Alumnus
• Children of current USM Students, Faculty, Staff & Alumnus
• Children of The Citizens of our Community: The State of Maryland
  

Please note: 95% of our staff are university students. We have a staffing "issues" with reference to our normal 10 hour day when the dorms, where many of our student staff reside, are closed. The following days are days when dorms will be closed during this year, and, correspondingly, when we will adjust our normal 10 hour day down to an 8 hour day…8:30A.M. - 4:30 P.M. The list of dates below includes a list of days when we are open an 8 hour day, as well as a list of days when we are completely closed.

If you are a 52 week family you are responsible for paying for every day. If you are a 40 week family, you pay for all of the week days that fall between 8/15/11(new, incoming families and 40 week families all start a week earlier and thus are actually 41 week families) and 5/25/12 (the last day of our 40 week year). Please note: all 40 week and new families are required to start Monday, 8/15/11 to give us a chance to help the children begin to get minimally adjusted to our space and our Teachers prior to the rest of our group arriving the following week.

2012

Days when we are open an 8 hour day (8:30 - 4:30) instead of our typical 10 hour day:

• January 24, 25, 26, 27
• May 23, 24, 25
• August 4 through August 28
• November 21
• December 20, 21

Days when we are completely closed

January 16:  Martin Luther King

March 19-23:  Spring Break

May 28:  Memorial Day

July 4:  Independence Day

September 3:  Labor Day

November 22 and 23: Thanksgiving

December 24-January 1, 2013:  Winter Break

(We will not be closed for Columbus Day, Election Day, Veteran’s Day, or President’s Day; we remain open on those days thereby allowing us, along with the rest of the university, to "move" our earned "holidays", to the winter break in order to be able to stay closed longer during winter break.) 

*As of this writing, the University's Calendar is not yet published beyond December __.

Current Families:: Applications for the up-coming year, '11-'12, are due to us, signed and dated by 12/15/11. Please pay your $250 deposit to the Bursar's Office. (No money is handled within the Center.) Use our "Tuition and Related Charges" link to ascertain the variety of methods available for paying bills.*After we know which of our families intend to renew their contract(s), we will begin the process of planning for the children we already have, children who may be moving to the next class, etc.. After knowing how many spaces we actually have empty, we will begin offering spaces to our existing "waiting list" families. Calls and emails will be made/sent through both of the following weekdays, evenings, and weekends utilizing a 24 hour turn-around clock during which time the interested family must get to the Bursar's Office with their $250 deposit, and have the $250 receipt faxed to us by the Bursar's Office. After waiting 24 Bursar's-Office-Available-Hours, we will assume that the just- notified family is not interested and move on to our next waiting-list family. (Please listen to your voice mail at home and at work numbers, as well as read your email more than daily during the time you are still waiting to hear from us. If your voice mail does not pick up, and the email address we have is not current (our email to you is returned as being "undeliverable") we will note those problems w/date and time on your application, while, nonetheless, moving on to the next waiting-list family on our waiting list.

*  Incoming Alum and Community Families who do not have current accounts with the University will need to arrange with the Center to contact the Bursar's Office for purposes of having an account established before your $250 deposit will be accepted. (The Bursar's Office will not accept payments from anyone without a preestablished account.) To establish an account with the university you will need to give us the full name of the person to be billed (same person as the person signing the contract) your mailing address, and social security number.

Applications for Summer from our 40 week families are due in w/$250 deposit by 3/28/08. All summer requests from current families will be met before new waiting-list families are considered, assuming that our families complied with the 3/28/08 deadline. We will work with the same intensity, weekdays, evenings, weekends, applying the same standard of "responsiveness" to our voicemail messages and emails.

Calendar of Events

• Halloween Parade leaves from the Child Care Center walking toward the Towson Center at approximately 10:30. Returning either when Lead Teacher feels it to be necessary, or by 11:30 (Please have raincoat and boots available in your child's cubby. No umbrellas, or any props are to be carried by hand. Thank you.
• November 18, '10, 11:30-12:30, Thanksgiving Pot Luck Gala. Sign-up sheets to distribute food donations for the Gala will be posted in classrooms. More info coming.
• November 24, 25 and 26 '10: Thanksgiving Holiday Closed
• Speech and Hearing Testing: 12/3/'10 from 9 -10:30 A.M. Parent authorized permission slips required.
• Winter Fest: 12/3/10, Towson Center, Time to be announced. Parents are invited to join us.
• February 26, 2010 ; Speech, Language, Hearing Clinic: Beginning at 9:00AM. Permission sheets will be passed out to families as soon as we get them. This is an exercise during which the students of the Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic, under the direction of Professor Karen Day (also a former parent here) will be testing our Threes, Fours, and Fives. (No Two Year Olds will be tested.) This is an opportunity for students to learn how to test real, live children. They will NOT be interpreting results of the testing.Professor Day will alert us if there are any concerns, and we will alert parents to please speak with their pediatrician.
• December 16, Thursday: Our condensed eight hour days, ending on Tuesday, 12/21 we will be opening at 8:30-closing at 4:30
• December 22, '10:Center is closed from 12/22/10 through January 2, '10
• January 17, 2011 Center closed, Dr. Martin Luther King
• Date not yet established : Parent/Teacher Group Class Meetings, 4:30-5:25
• March 21-25: Center closed, Spring Break
• March 28, '10: Center reopens, 7:30-5:30
• May 25, 26, 27"11are condensed 8 hour days
• May 30, '11: Holiday, Memorial Day
• May 31, '10: Center reopens, full 10 hour day, 7:30 -5:30
• July 4, '11, Holiday, Closed for The Fourth of July
• August 3-28: Condensed eight hour days, opening at 8:30-closing at 4:30
• August 22, '11: Resurme 10 hour days--7:30-5:30
• September 5, Holiday, Closed: Labor Day

University Child Care
Auburn Drive
Hours: Monday - Friday, 7:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.

phone: 410-704-2652

fax:      410-704-3771

http:     www.towson.edu/daycare