Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 30, 1992 TAG: 9201300330
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
SCHOOL HELPS FAMILIES THROUGH THE LEAN TIMES
On Christmas Eve, a young mother came into Greenvale Nursery School in Roanoke and laid some crumpled dollar bills on the front counter.She told the school director, Sandra Carroll: "It's all I've got. Take what you've got to take. I know I'm behind in paying."
Carroll told the mother to keep her money and spend it on Christmas for her two children. Carroll said she'd find a donation to pay for the kids' day care for December.
Since 1934, Greenvale Nursery School has been providing day care - and more - to the children of families living on the financial edge.
The private, non-profit school provides a low-cost alternative in an era when finding decent, affordable child care is almost impossible for many working families. At Greenvale, families pay an average of less than $29 a week per child.
More than 11,000 children have come through Greenvale's doors since it opened 57 years ago in an old railroad YMCA building in Northwest Roanoke. It was one of the first day-care centers in Southwest Virginia.
Back then, it served families left unemployed by the Great Depression.
Today the school - now at 627 Westwood Blvd. N.W. - serves working families. At least one parent must be employed.
Two hundred seventy kids arrive each morning at Greenvale to find a wide choice of programs and activities: full-time registered nurses, counseling and speech therapy, a lending library, 3 1/2 acres of blacktop and grass playgrounds and a fully stocked wood shop.
In the toddler room, teacher Pam Deel sat on the floor and lifted 16-month-old Heather over her head, smiling and speaking her name.
Heather is deaf. Before she came to Greenvale a few months ago, her lack of hearing had slowed her development.
Her mother, Beth Stultz, says the stimulation from the teachers at Greenvale has done wonders for Heather. Stultz, who went to Greenvale when she was a child, said her other children, Megan, 4, and James, 3, love it, too.
When her husband was laid off in August, Stultz said, Greenvale helped out by adjusting the family's fee. They now pay $75 a week for all their children.
Greenvale uses a sliding scale that takes household incomes into account when setting each family's fee. One-fifth of families pay the maximum weekly fee of $55 per child. About 17 percent pay less than $5 a week. Some pay nothing.
Donna Blankenship, a hospital secretary, pays $60 a week for her three children. Without the sliding scale, she said, she would have to quit her job and stay home.
Greenvale does it all on a budget of less than $750,000 per year. It's been able to keep its fees low because of contributions from individuals and groups and an allocation of more than $200,000 a year from the United Way.
Most of the children at Greenvale are preschoolers, as young as 1 year old.
About 70 older children, up to age 13, attend Greenvale's Youth Connection program. They come in the morning before school and in the afternoon after school. During the summer, the Youth Connection program expands to all-day.
Most classrooms have an average of one teacher for every seven children. For toddlers, there is one teacher for every four.
"I feel really comfortable leaving my children here," Blankenship said. "I don't have to go to work and sit and worry."
Justine Galloway has taught at Greenvale for 20 years, long enough for some of her pupils to go on to graduate from college and come back to visit her.
"I have three grandchildren, and every one of them came right through Greenvale," Galloway said. "And now they're in public school and in gifted classes. I feel like Greenvale had a big hand in helping them get a good start."
`We feel for the whole family'
Greenvale has been expanding its programs to help more "special needs" children - kids who have handicaps or problems behaving. The number of these children at Greenvale has tripled in 18 months to more than 50.
Along with intensive help, the school also offers services that would help any family struggling day-to-day.
A school nurse checks all the children as they come through the front door. She looks for fevers and rashes. Parents rushing to get their kids to day care and get to work sometimes miss illnesses, even the chicken pox.
Greenvale parents often are lower-rung workers who can least afford to stay home because of a child's sickness. School nurses even have written notes to employers explaining that a child was sick.
"We feel for the whole family - we don't just have isolated children here," the school's program director, Rosana Rosdol, said. Greenvale tries to do as much as it can for parents "so that our children can go home to as stable a home as possible."
The school has had its share of success stories. School Director Carroll gives an example: A single mother on welfare began bringing her child to Greenvale and going to school. She paid no fee for day care.
Now, she's a registered nurse and helps support other, less-well-off families in the program by paying the full fee of $55 a week.
Tapping the community
Families who can pay little or nothing are supported through the fund-raising of a 100-member school auxiliary and help from individuals, foundations and other organizations.
For example, a General Electric retirees council drops off 45 loaves of day-old bread each week for the school's breakfast toast. In return, parents drop off their old newspapers when they leave their children at school. The GE group uses the money from recycling the newspapers to help fund its charity work.
Despite all community support, Carroll said, tough times are making money tight at the school.
It may have to raise the prices it charges parents if it can't find more funding, she said.
Carroll said it's hard for Greenvale to raise its prices, knowing what families are facing. In a single week this month, a dozen parents came into the school to say they had lost their jobs or had their work hours cut.