[Gsc-hca-family] Minutes for 10/17/12 Families Sub-Committee Meeting

[Nathaniel Schafheimer]

Greetings all,

Here are the minutes (paraphrased a bit) for our meeting from last night.  A summary of developments/action items is at the top.  Thank you to all who attended, and we'll see you at the next meeting.  We look forward to hearing about new developments from everyone's assignments then!

Those needing access to files to do their tasks will be hearing from Randi and I soon.  Feel free to shoot thoughts/questions to the sub-committee chairs or HCA chairs.  And if you'd like to get involved but couldn't get to the meeting, do come to the next meeting or email the chairs!

Best,
Nathaniel


Family Sub-Committee Co-Chairs for this academic year: Anna Haggman and Ramya Nagaraja
Next meeting: Monday 10/29, 6PM, Location TBD
Tasks:
1) Looking at Cost of Living numbers in terms of families ==> Kim
2) Family Survey data examination ==> Jason
3) Survey of Off-Campus Daycare options == > Anna
4) Off-campus preschool options ==> Ramya
5) Peer Institution Childcare options ==> Remi
6) First draft of a position/recommendation letter to EBOC ==> Marzyeh and Monali


Attending:  11
Nathaniel, Jason, Becky, Kim, Ramya, Monali, Tiky + Wenjun (Westgate), Marzyeh (Eastgate), Anna (Eastgate), Remi (Eastgate)

N: Who has a partner? 9
N: Who has a child/expecting? 7 

N: On Structure,
Subcommittee will meet fairly frequently (likely weekly). We need a person to lead the committee, and would work with Randi and I. 
Will be the head of the committee.
Anna: I would be interested in the position. But I don't know if I have the time, I have 2 kids. 
N: I think we can work with this.
Tiky: We will be talking about this position in the Westgate Town Hall meeting. 
N: We would like to have this filled as soon as possible, since childcare's timeline this semester is very tight.
Ra: I'd be interested too, I'm in a similar position to Anna with kids and time.  

<Consensus on Anna and Ramya being co-chairs of family sub-comm.>

N: Logistics-wise, how does this time and location work for attendees?
Anna: How about using subcommittee money to pay for sitter? We can hire 1 or 2 for 2 hrs. 
Anna: How about 6-7pm on Mondays?
<Consensus that this is better.>

N: We were thinking about alternating meeting between Westgate and Eastgate. 
<Consensus that this would be a good accommodating solution>

Agenda Item: Childcare. 
Background: Work Life offered childcare scholarships a few years ago. It got cut back due to cost. Right now, grad students are not using TCC as much as they should (according to family survey). Spots are very competitive and it costs way too much. 
Family survey: We should focus on stipends, housing and childcare. 
What does your spouse do? Other category: undergrad, disability, 
How do you handle child care? Other category: nanny, share the cost of the nanny. 
Child care cost? $0 stay at home, $>2,000 more than 1 child. 
In general, wording/directions needed more clarity to delineate between family, respondent, and partner income/occupations.


N: Randi and I have spoken to EBOC, they want to hear a recommendation from GSC about what should happen with TCC Vassar. We are happy about it, but we will likely have a very specific vision for this to make it useful to grad students. We want to have a recommendation letter stating this by mid november. 
N: we thought that the best way to go about this was to break it down in terms of tasks that we need to do in order to get this letter into persuasive form. 


N: running down the list of data, and taking volunteers to examine/gather information:
1. Look at CoL Numbers. - Kim 
2. Family Survey - Jason 
3. Off-campus daycare options - Anna  
4. peer institution - Remi
5. Marcia+Mulari, will like to work on crafting messages for report. (3.d.v)
6. Off-campus pre-school - Romia

In discussing daycare options off-campus:
Jason: Work life has monthly options. MIT is a couple hundred dollars cheaper because they don't pay rent, but not a whole lot different.
Marzyeh: Family run daycare center. small daycare center, $8-11/hour. usually someone, certified by a national organization, and authorized to take care of X children. 
Kim: my kid is on a pre-school that runs cost based on income. I can find out a bit about this. 

N: next item is peer institution info. We would like MIT to be the leader in this field, not just conform to the landscape, but first we have to know what the landscape looks like.  
Remi volunteered. 
  
N: let's move to timeline and brainstorming. 
N: Have this document by Nov 30 at the latest. I think we can get this done by Thanksgiving. 
Everyone in consensus. 

Brainstorming Arguments/Thoughts for the Draft:
N: Cost, right now it is the cost of your entire stipend. Fraction of stipend.  
All: the time-window to respond to a slot offered is very short (~48 hours).
Anna: the older the child, the shorter the waitlist. 
Marzyeh: If you want to promote women at MIT, then we should focus on helping women…. the single biggest concern is affordable and reliable childcare, this is how we promote health and wellness.
All: idea of portable benefits is reasonable. 
Ramya: there is no option for pre-school plus care, and many kids are at the point where daycare alone isn't what is needed.

N: (devil's advocate) why subsidize only a small subset of population?
Jason: this argument is valid for any minority of the population. For example, handicap, and ramps are still available for all, and when buildings are built. 
Aalap: This is a really good argument, why do we spent so much money in the minority office, or rainbow lounge. 
Marzyeh: I think that having families definitely helps mental wellbeing….
N: what if they say, this is too big of a problem to tackle. We can only do so much? 
Kim: this is a particular problem to Cambridge, MIT should try to look at what it can do, with where it is. 
N: this is part of competitive, we should take this into account. 

N: what do you guys think about breaking down the labels of grad/ postdoc? 
Marzyeh: I like that
Jason: the difference in price between the income of postdocs and grad students is pretty small when compared to childcare costs. 
Kim: is there a way of using extra money we bring with stipends, to pay for childcare?
R: From what I know, the institute doesn't want to do piecewise/individual stipends.   
Anna: there is a lot of money flowing around for events, how about using some of it for childcare? For example, ODGE, housemasters, DSL?
N: we should be careful not to eliminate everything for social events. 
Kim: it would be a statement of how serious we are.   
Anna: It might be good to consider the Cooperative structure where parents help out and communally manage a daycare.


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