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Lawmaker: New child care centers not staffed

A key Democrat accused the Pentagon of making hollow promises to military families by building new child care centers on military bases but not hiring enough people to staff them.

Rep. Vic Snyder of Arkansas, a member of the House Armed Services and Veterans’ Affairs Committees, raised the issue at a Tuesday hearing when he recounted attending the recent ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new child development center at Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark.

The center was fully equipped with toys and cribs and other needed equipment, but it could not open to full capacity because the base did not have enough money to hire extra people, Snyder said at an armed services committee hearing on military personnel, where Defense Department and service personnel officials had been talking about how important it was to improve child care facilities.

“We are screwing the kids,” Snyder said.

Little Rock, like virtually every military base, has a waiting list for on-base child care, Snyder said, so families were excited when construction began — only to be disappointed when space remained limited.

Snyder said he is aware that the services are facing difficult tradeoffs with tight budgets, but said he was never told a child care center might not be fully functional because of staff shortages.

Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on military construction, who succeeded last year in having 16 child care centers added to the 2008 defense budget, said he was shocked by Snyder’s report. “I asked the Pentagon, if we built the child care centers would they staff them, and they assured us that they could. This is something we have to investigate,” Edwards said.

Snyder’s question about child care center staffing came minutes after David S.C. Chu, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said the Bush administration was making child care a top priority to improve the retention of career service members. Chu said a lack of child care is one of the hurdles military spouses face as they try to have a career.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Richard Newton III, deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel and services, also talked about continuing to focus on family programs, but he had prefaced his remarks by saying that the Air Force had been forced by budget pressures to make “difficult choices” so there would be money to pay for weapons modernization. Snyder said it appeared to him that the staffing at child care centers was one of the sacrifices being made.

Currently the base child development centers (including the new CDC) employ a combination of 58 non-appropriated fund (43 regular, 15 flexible) and 23 appropriated fund employees, according to an email from Little Rock officials. The number of employees varies depending on the number of children, employee certifications, budget and personnel hiring timeline that is currently happening.

Currently Little Rock is in the process of hiring four more APF employees to fill existing vacancies, according to the e-mail, and will hire additional NAF employees in accordance with DOD childcare directives given above. In addition, Little Rock AFB needs an additional six funded APF slots in order to eliminate the current child care waiting list and remain within DOD financial guidelines.