The owners of drop-in child care centers in Portland contend that citizens are underserved because of day care rules.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
Securing child care for business professionals in the Rose City has come under a microscope of late.
The owners of drop-in child care centers in Portland contend that citizens are underserved because of day care rules in a story on OregonLive.com Monday.
“They’re not really willing to change things because they’re not really willing to listen,” said Sheila Baer, owner of Baerly Big Drop In Child Care in Tigard, near Washington Square. Her first meeting with a state licensor lasted six hours, three times the usual length, she said, because she “didn’t agree with any of it.”
“You have to plan your center basically as if you’re a full-time center with the same exact children coming Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. But then on top of that … you have to meet all these additional requirements,” said Faith Thomas, who opened DropNPlay in downtown Lake Oswego in November 2013 but closed it in July 2014.
Intel addressed its policies regarding parent employees last week by allowing eight weeks of “bonding time” for new mothers and fathers.
It may also be an effort to make Intel a more appealing destination for tech workers, which are in huge demand in California and, increasingly in Oregon. Technology jobs in Intel’s core specialties – electronics manufacturing and software – are at their highest point in Oregon since the dot-com era.
Silicon Valley tech employers have been steadily adding new benefits aimed at women. Apple and Facebook, for example, will now pay to freeze the eggs of female employees so they can delay having children until later in their careers.
Read more at OregonLive.com.
