July 9, 2001
Southeastern closes child care center
___By Tony Cartledge
___North Carolina Biblical Recorder
___WAKE FOREST, N.C. (ABP) --Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary has announced plans to close its child-care center, citing as one of the reasons "ideological problems" with the school sponsoring child care.
___The Ruby Reid Child Development Center has served both seminary and community families for decades. It was designed as a learning laboratory for seminary students while providing quality care for children ages 2 to 5, according to Beth McLeod, who directed the program from 1965 to 1985.
___That is no longer seen as the center's function. Seminary President Paige Patterson said the center doesn't fit into the school's "Statement of Institutional Purpose."
___Providing day care "is not really a part of our mission, especially when the vast majority of our clients are from the community and not students," he said. "We have no program for early childhood education, and the center serves no educational purpose."
___In separate letters to student parents, community parents and the center's 21 employees, Patterson related a variety of reasons for the closure. He told parents from the community that the children had been "an infinite spring of happiness" but that child care is not the seminary's focus, and he was concerned about the seminary's liability exposure.
___To student parents, Patterson said the seminary could no longer afford the liability or the operating cost of keeping the center open. Raising fees to a break-even level would make it impossible for students to afford the service, Patterson said. The center reportedly has lost $332,000 over the past five years.
___Patterson also told students seminary officials had "ideological problems" with seminary sponsorship of a child-care center.
___"Recent discoveries regarding children reared in child-care centers have only escalated our convictions that the child that is most likely to have a happy and useful life is a child reared in the home with the parents, not in a child-care center," he said.
___Patterson said Southeastern students embrace those views.
___"However, our position on child rearing did not close the center," he told Baptist Press. "Had that been the case, we would have closed it nine years ago when I became president."
___The center currently has 60 pre-schoolers enrolled for the summer program, with 86 children pre-registered for the fall semester, according to director Tina Dekle.
___The closing comes on the heels of similar actions at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo.
___Southern Seminary officials announced in April 2000 that the campus child-care program would close at the end of July. After a public outcry, seminary President Al Mohler pledged to keep the center open at least one more year while seminary leaders studied long-term options to meet the seminary's child-care needs.
___Mohler cited financial issues for the closing and denied claims the decision was based on a belief that mothers should stay home with their children. The center remains open, with its future status still uncertain.
___Midwestern's child-care center has been closed and reopened twice since 1995. Interim President Michael Whitehead reopened the center in August 2000, but new seminary President Phil Roberts decided in April to close it. However, a May 23 article in the Kansas City Star said seminary officials are considering keeping the campus center open by negotiating with an outside operator to run it.
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