Ashland Daily Independent

It's an ambitious goal: To raise $1 million to build a child development center to serve the children of Ashland Community College students and staff. Three Ashland physicians -- Dr. Richard Paulus, Dr. Michael Goodwin and Dr. E.B. Gevedon -- have committed their names to the project and contributed money to it, and they are encouraging other physicians and health care professionals to do the same.

Frank Salisbury, director of advancement at ACTC, said the child development center is a major goal of the school's "Fulfilling the Promise" campaign that has raised $3.98 million in about five years.

The child development center would be built at the corner of Harlan and Ramey streets, just across the street from ACTC's College Drive campus. With campuses on College Drive and Roberts Drive in Ashland, and at EastPark and with plans to move its nursing program to the upper floors of the former Parson's Department Store in downtown Ashland, the community and technical college has become so spread out that it would be impossible to build one child development center that is convenient to all students, but the proposed site certainly would serve the hundreds of students and numerous faculty members who use the College Drive campus.

If the child development center is built, it will not mark the first time the college has offered day care. At the urging of former President Angie Dore, ACTC operated a day care center on the ground floor of the main building of its College Drive campus. The center failed to generate enough funds to break even and it eventually was decided that while child care was an excellent service for the college, the school had no obligation to subsidize that service. That still holds true.

The new center would be in a completely separate building and presumably would be able to offer more to the children than the rather confined quarters of the former day care center could. That should help it attract more children.

Salisbury said about 60 percent of ACTC's students are nontraditional and many of them have small children. Offering affordable day care could enable more young mothers to enroll in ACTC. Surveys of ACTC students consistently cite a need for day care services.

To date, only about $25,000 has been raised for the center -- or some $975,000 short of the goal. Even with the support of three dedicated physicians, it likely will take some time to raise the needed funds, but it is a goal worth pursuing,