Day-Care Center Searches for a New Home

Original plans called for the day-care center to leave Takoma Park Elementary at the end of the current school year, which would have given it until this fall to find a new home. But the project ultimately pitted the day care's needs against the interest of students at Takoma Park Elementary, who will have to relocate to another building while the addition is built.

School officials decided that only by bumping the day-care center sooner could they guarantee that students from the elementary school would be displaced for only one academic year, the one that begins in August. As it is, the students will be housed eight miles away at a holding facility on Grosvenor Lane in Bethesda, a half-hour drive in rush hour.

The relocation is a controversial topic among Takoma Park parents, who worry about the toll the daily commute will exact on the children, most of whom are 5, 6 or 7 years old. The PTA has assigned committees to study various aspects of the move, including such matters as checking that each child has a chance to use a toilet before boarding a bus.

"We're getting tremendous interest from the community in ensuring that students are out of the building for only one year," Lavorgna said. "Our choices were very limited."

A potential retail space within a former driving school is closer that the site offered to Morgan Day Care by the school district, but it has only half as much space as the day care uses now, at a higher rent.

Low rent is how the day care can afford comparatively low fees: $650 a month for full-day care and $375 for before- and after-school services, with about one-third of families receiving subsidies. Parents who make their monthly payments on time get $100 off.

"If they move to another center," Miller said, "they're going to have to pay a lot more money, and they can't afford it."