Beginning June 20, the Cornell Office of Human Resources will accept applications for the fall semester for the new Cornell Child Care Grant Program.
This past December, Cornell President Hunter Rawlings announced that a new Child Care Grant Program would be created to help faculty and staff with the cost of quality child care, which can be a substantial financial burden to families. The Office of Human Resources (OHR) has been working with the Day Care Council of Tompkins County to develop the logistics and funding for this program and now is positioned to award partial-year grants for the fall 2001 semester, during an introductory award period, in preparation for a late August offering of full calendar-year grants that would begin in January 2002.
Faculty and staff members may submit applications for the September-December 2001 period from June 20 through July 20, and all eligible applicants will receive a monthly subsidy amount.
Since a significant portion of the Cornell community is absent during the summer and many new faculty and staff begin working in late August, a reserve will be held back for those who do not apply by July 20. All applications received after July 20 will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis from that reserve.
In late August, shortly after the partial-year grant awards have been decided, another grant enrollment period will be held, this time for accepting applications and awarding grants for the 2002 calendar year.
"We expected to have a full-year program up in place for 2002," said Mary George Opperman, Cornell vice president for human resources, "but because the logistics have fallen into place and the inquiries into the program have been so numerous, we thought we should accept applications as soon as possible and offer partial-year grants now, in advance of the full-year program, to help us in fine-tuning our official roll-out in August and September."
It is not known how large the grants for individual families may be, as the size of the grants awarded will be determined, in part, by a family's total child-care costs and in part by the number of applications received.
"We especially wanted to do something to ease the burden for those families whose annual cost of child care is over 20 percent of their total income," said Opperman. The grant money is expected to supplement a family's other child-care financial resources.
All members of Cornell faculty and staff who are benefits-eligible and have children ages 12 and under in any of the following types of legal child care are eligible to apply for the grant:
Awards for part-time employees who are benefits-eligible will be prorated according to the number of hours worked.
The Day Care Council will review all applications for need and nominate a list of employees who are eligible for the grant. This list will be transmitted to a Cornell selection committee, without the names attached, so that the committee can decide the distribution of funds based solely on need and the amount of funds available.
In many cases, this financial assistance will be applied to an employee's current Select Benefits Dependent Care Account or through a new Select Benefits Dependent Care Account, if one is not already established. Employees will be able to apply those funds to meet their child-care expenses through the normal Select Benefits reimbursement process.
Applications can be obtained by contacting Benefit Services at 255-3936, e-mail benefits@cornell.edu, or by printing a copy of the application from the OHR Workforce Diversity, Equity and Life Quality web pages at http://www.ohr.cornell.edu/ohr/diversity/index.html. The deadline for returning complete applications to the Day Care Council of Tompkins County, 609 W. Clinton St., Ithaca, N.Y. 14850, is Friday, July 20. Notification of award amounts will be made by Aug. 24.
More information, including a "frequently asked questions" section and the definition of legal child care in New York state, will be forthcoming in the next issue of For Your Benefit, due out in the next two weeks, and on the OHR Workforce Diversity, Equity and Life Quality web pages. For further information, call the Office of Workforce Diversity, Equity and Life Quality at 255-3976, or send e-mail to childcare@cornell.edu.
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