
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, November 3, 1994                   TAG: 9411030056
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MAGIC PLACES

IT'S A relay race every weekday for many school-age children of working parents. Hustled to awaken before dawn and get dressed. Hustled into a car for a rush trip to a relative's or baby sitter's. Hustled again into another car or bus to get to school on time.

At the end of the school day, it's back to the baby sitter's, there to be picked up later by a parent and finally shuttled home. If such routines exhaust kids, well, they're no cakewalk for parents, either.

Fortunately, for some 400 local schoolchildren and their parents, much of the push and shove has been taken out of the daily race by a private-public initiative launched by YMCA in Roanoke. The Magic Place program provides needed child care before and after school in elementary-school buildings - relieving transportation and supervision headaches and relaxing frazzled nerves.

Parents can take children, ages 5 to 12, to school as early as 7 a.m., confident they're safe with adults trained and experienced in child care until school starts. Then, when school is officially out, the children can remain until 6 p.m. Magic Place staffers provide outdoor activities, wholesome snacks, occasional field trips, arts-and-crafts programs and even help with homework until parents pick up the kids.

It not only offers convenient and affordable child care to parents, many of whom head working-poor families. It also removes some of the fears and waste from lives of latchkey children - vulnerable youngsters who otherwise would be on their own too many hours, perhaps to get into trouble or to sit numbly in front of the boob tube.

In four years, The Magic Place has expanded into 14 of Roanoke city's 21 elementary schools. This year, it's also in one Salem school, and is expected to grow in that city.

The YMCA, whose mission has increasingly shifted to family services, is to be credited for striving to meet a pressing need of working families in this community. So, too, are school officials who have opened their facilities for Y programs, including day care for pre-schoolers at Highland Park elementary and kids' summer camps at five neighborhood schools.

School buildings represent a major investment by taxpayers - many of whom are parents who desperately need child-care services to be able to keep working and paying taxes. No community should let these resources sit idly before and after school hours when, as the YMCA has demonstrated, the space has valuable other uses.

by CNB