New building to house Caring Center

Tadpoles evolving into frogs are painted on the outside of the building located at 3101 Spring Garden Street. But Philadelphia has not opened its version of an aquarium. The building at the corner of 31st Street is the new home for the city's decade old Caring Center child care facilty. Although the building has been in use since January 6, the Center's grand opeing celebration was held earlier this month to coincide with national Week of the Young Child, Center Director Sherilynn Kimble said. April 10 was also exactly one year after children and parents broke ground for the two story, 14,000 square foot facility. "It's a very nice building," Kimble said. "It's a great environment for children." She said many of the Center's facilities are designed to accomodate children, such as small toilets and sinks and porthole windows closer to the floor. The tadpoles and frogs on the exterior of the building symbolize growth and development, Kimble added. Originally located at the Institute for Scientific Information on Filbert Street, the Caring Center was forced to look for a new home after ISI officials announced in May 1990 that they were going to close the Center. Almanac Associate Editor Marguerite Miller, who sits on the Center's board of directors and has a child at the Center, said parents have been very instrumental in finding a permanent home. "This is all just a labor of love," Miller said. "We did not want to see the kind of care that we've all been accostomed to evaporate." "All parents were involved in that they gave us our moral support," Caring Center Vice President Francesca Seidita said. Seidita is also the University's Manager of Resource Planning Information Systems and has a child that attends the Center. She added that about 30 parents contributed "significantly" to the process by volunteering their professional services. And, according to Seidita, the University has guaranteed the Center's loan to pay for construction of the new building. Parents agreed that the staff is one of the Center's strongest assets, and Seidita called them "a very experienced, dedicated staff far above the norms in child care." According to Miller, "The Caring Center represents . . . the best quality of child care that is available." Kimble said the Center pays the staff more than the national average in child care, but that in comparison to other fields, child care workers do not earn that much. "You need staff that have been trained to work with children," she said. "It's very demanding and stressful so we try to give them a good place to work [and a] full time salary." "We definitely are committed to working with this age group," Kimble added. "That's the reason [we] do it."

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