Oh, wait. I am a postdoc...
... just a minute...
Okay - because I'm an eternal optimist, I just went and checked to see if maybe I would still qualify, but nope. I am not eligible.
I am not sure whether to be angry, or disappointed, or happy, or defeated.
Well, yay for undergrad and grad students. Let's see if they can extend it to postdocs in the near future.
I am pleased to announce that last week UC Berkeley became the first public university in the U.S. to offer both graduate and undergraduate students highly subsidized access to back-up child care. This program enables student parents to focus on study sessions, writing papers, or travel to attend conferences or give presentations when their usual caregiving arrangements are unavailable.
The pilot program — modeled on one which our faculty have found useful since 2009 — is linked to a student’s current registration status (not conditioned on campus employment). Students with dependent children will be eligible for up to 60 hours per academic year of in-home and/or center-based care by professional caregivers, with a very low hourly co-pay. As the pilot program’s capacity is limited, students will be registered on a first-come/first-served basis.
This extension of the campus’s family-friendly services was initiated by the Graduate Division, endorsed by the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Student Services and Fees (CACSSF), and approved by Chancellors Robert Birgeneau and Nicholas Dirks. The program is administered by the Graduate Division in partnership with the Student Parent Center in the Division of Equity & Inclusion. It is generously sponsored by the Hutto Patterson Charitable Foundation.
Details are at http://grad.berkeley.edu/backupchildcare. Please join me in getting the word out to all student parents at Berkeley, as well as prospective students who will appreciate our campus’s pathbreaking family-friendly culture.
George W. Breslauer
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost
As a postdoc, aren't you classified as "faculty"? You may not be tenure-track, but you should still be faculty, right?
ReplyDeleteNo, unfortunately. Postdocs are generally classified as "staff", and there is no back-up childcare option for staff.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the core principle of what this blog is saying. Health care is really everybody's right, and with that is child care as well. No one should be left astray, especially if they are of the rest of our society.
ReplyDeleteYMCAEUC.org