Syracuse University will offer child care grants to graduate students for the first time starting in the spring semester.

The pilot grant program will provide full-time graduate students $375 per eligible child younger than 6-years-old, capped at $750, or two children per household for the spring 2015 semester, according to the application form. The application deadline is Nov. 3.

The pilot program comes after the university created a similar program for faculty and staff last fall, said Kal Alston, senior vice president for human capital development, in an email. Because the program was so successful, she said, the Office of Human Capital Development collaborated with the Child Care Advocacy Committee to provide one for graduate students.

“The university wanted to extend similar support to graduate students to help underwrite the costs of child care,” she said.

So far 19 students have applied with one of the students applying and having all necessary tax information submitted within two hours after the announcement of the program, Alston said.

Patrick Neary, president of the Graduate Student Organization, is on the Child Care Advocacy Committee and was part of discussions that centered on the details of the policy and helped decide the amount of the subsidy, he said.

Neary said the subsidy isn’t particularly large, which is due in part to some legal requirements from the Internal Revenue Service on how much money can be given to people for child care and also because of budgeting.

The money is being taken from the fringe benefit pool, which SU employees pay into for these types of programs, but SU students do not pay into it, Neary said. SU and the Child Care Advocacy Committee weren’t sure how many would apply for it and wanted to be conservative with the initial amount so that they didn’t run out of money, he said.

Courtney O’Dell, a doctoral student in the religion department, is in the process of applying for the stipend. O’Dell has two children and she currently sends one of her children to a preschool while she has two babysitters come to the house to watch her kids, she said in an email.

O’Dell said she and her husband pay between $1,200 and $1,600 a month for child care, which can vary depending on how much work her husband and her have. While preschool for one of her children is free because he has special needs and his tuition is covered by the city of Syracuse, this doesn’t cover the after-school care needed, she said.

She said she will use the stipend to help with the cost of child care in the month that she receives it.

“But the reality is that this is a tiny band aid measure at most,” O’Dell said. “It is important to point out that every little bit of funding helps but I also think it is OK to advocate for child care subsidies for graduate students.”

There will be a reassessment done in the spring or summer in which SU and the Child Care Advocacy Committee will decide whether to continue the program and how much money should continue to be offered, Neary said.

“This will relieve a little bit of the pressure, a little bit of the financial pressure on graduate students with children,” he said. “It will ease the burden of having to find child care outside the university system.”

Neary said he believes SU has recognized that affordable child care is difficult to obtain in Syracuse and that the campus day cares have physical space limits. It displays a commitment from the university to be supportive of students who are parents, he said.

Said Neary: “I hope that this represents a first step in continuing to make efforts toward providing more cost effective child care and is not the only step.”

Published on October 6, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Kayli: kathomps@syr.edu