A local school provides a program that allow students who become mothers to leave their babies in a daycare just steps from their classrooms.

This is the 15th year of the operation of a daycare for the children of Goshen High School students.

The school’s daycare is serving nine children right now (it has had up to 12) and has nine on a waiting list, said Director Joni Covert, who has been with the program for 10 years.

Students are able to visit the daycare and interact with their babies during any free periods and at lunch.

“The moms are caring — they do come in,” Covert said.

The daycare also offers the staff an opportunity “to see how the moms interact with their babies. We can help them if they need it,” she said. The moms must take a parenting class to utilize the daycare.

The program started out in 1993 in the former Whiteman Junior High Building, which adjoins the high school. During a school construction project, it moved to College Mennonite Church, then to First Presbyterian Church before moving back to the high school in 2001.

The daycare serves children ages 2 weeks to 2 years. While the primary goal of the program is to serve student moms, a few slots (four this semester) are earmarked for the children of staff. The cost to students is $15 per week, which is partially possible through a government voucher program. Staffers pay $150 a week.

The school board also budgets $20,000 a year for the program.

“The school board has been very supportive,” Covert said.

The daycare is staffed by Covert and two part-time workers, but also offers an opportunity for students studying child development to receive credit for working in the daycare.

The students working there must have taken child development and advanced child development, Covert said.

Senior Michelle Waters, the mother of Madison, 4 months, said at $15 a week, the daycare is way more affordable than anywhere else. She also loves to be able to check on her daughter during the day. Waters hopes to attend cosmetology school after high school.

Sophomore Jasmine Aguilar brings her son, Adan, 1, to the daycare.

“I didn’t have anybody to watch him,” Aguilar said.

She said she was scared to take her son to the daycare at first, because she had no idea what it would be like.

“Now I feel more comfortable bringing him here than anywhere else,” she said.

Aguilar said she believes she would have had to drop out of regular classes and attend Merit Learning Center, GHS’ alternative school, if the daycare didn’t exist.

“I’m in the marching band. I didn’t want to drop out,” she said.

Sophomore Lace Caverley, the mother of Natilie, 8 months, did have someone to watch her daughter at first.

“My mother was watching her,” she said. But Caverley said her mother didn’t get to “just be a grandmother” while serving as a childcare provider.

Caverley also likes that she can come and see her daughter during free periods at school.

“I also like her being with other kids,” Caverley said. “She is learning faster.”

Caverley hopes to attend college and become a veterinarian.

Covert said she believes the program has helped many students graduate who would otherwise have dropped out.

60 percent graduate

Out of about 100 girls served, 60 have graduated and several have gone on to college, Covert said. Including Jessica (Cervantes) Guerrero, who graduated in 2005 and is a student at Indiana University at South Bend.

Guerrero said the program “was so helpful to me. I was so grateful to have the daycare right there. When I went to school, I could just take her with me. I could stop in there any time. They are really open to moms stopping in to see their babies.”

She had her daughter, Jaqui, the summer before her senior year.

With both her mother and now mother-in-law working at the time, “I had nobody to watch her,” Cervantes said. She was afraid she would have to take a semester off her senior year to find assistance or enough money to pay for childcare elsewhere.

The daycare allowed Guererro to finish school on time. She took a semester off, then started studying for a nursing degree at Goshen College.

After attending GC for a year and a half, Guerrero married and had a second child. Her husband encouraged her to go back to school after her baby was born. She is now at IUSB working toward a nursing degree.

Misconception

All four of the moms interviewed said they knew the daycare existed before they had their babies, but paid very little attention to it.

Covert said she disagrees with the idea that an on-campus daycare could encourage teens to have babies.

“There is a misconception,” Covert said. “When teenagers are having sex, they are not thinking in advance about childcare options.”

Instead, there is zero planning ahead, she said. The daycare is all about keeping those girls in school.

Guerrero agrees: “I don’t think the daycare has any influence on that (teens getting pregnant.) She said before she got pregnant she thought the daycare was for the children of staff.

“What it does, is keep these girls from dropping out,” she said.