Additional Child Care Options
Dear Carnegie Mellon Faculty, Staff and Graduate Students:
I am delighted to inform you that after careful consideration, Carnegie Mellon University will be offering additional child care options this fall, due to the ongoing impact of COVID-19, that will provide flexibility to many in our CMU community. Thank you to so many of you who completed the recent survey about child care needs that informed our decision-making.
Beginning in October, we will be able to offer families a new, temporary flexible child care option for children ages 24 months to 5 years old at a space in the Penn Avenue Cyert Center. Please note, this will be a new child care option and not part of the Cyert Center program, allowing families to choose between two sessions of child care during the work week — a morning and an afternoon session. These sessions will be available daily to parents who need some care but not necessarily full-day or everyday care. There will be minimum and maximum hour restrictions to allow us to serve the largest number of families. We encourage anyone interested to begin registering through our website.
The second temporary child care option will be on-campus proctoring for children in online school between the ages of 6 and 12 years old. These full-day sessions will be offered Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. throughout the fall semester. The university is currently finalizing the location and space requirements and we plan to have this option available in October. Interested families can learn more through our website. Registration for this service will be available soon.
One of our goals was to provide affordable options to the CMU community. We are pleased to offer both of these child care services for $5 per hour, which is a reasonable, lower than current marketplace, nominal rate for part-time care.
Finally, we are now able to offer a family and child care concierge service. This free service will provide parents and families with information, support, guidance and education on all dependent- and care-related topics and will utilize current available resources, such as Care.com, Carelink, EAP, local child care centers and other after school programs. Some of the child care needs the concierge service can assist with include:
- Help finding in-home care and/or tutoring (individualized or group sharing);
- Assistance finding child care or tutor sharing groups;
- Help finding care for a sick child;
- Assistance finding online proctoring for school-aged children;
- Help finding other child care related services as needed; and
- Help finding other types of family care (elder, pet, home, etc.).
As a reminder, CMU’s membership to Care.com provides you with unlimited access to help you find providers for your ongoing care needs for children, seniors, pets, your home and more. It also provides 10 backup care days at a reduced rate of $4 per hour (in-home care) and $10 per day per child (in-center care), as well as a 10% tuition discount for KinderCare child care centers in the United States. Those interested in the family concierge service can learn more by visiting our website.
We are truly excited about these new options for parents and families within our community. I want to thank the Family Care Advisory Committee for making these recommendations and the university’s executive leadership team for making this possible and allowing us to move forward so quickly.
Sincerely,
Michelle Piekutowski
Associate Vice President and Chief HR Officer