DATE: Thursday, October 9, 1997             TAG: 9710080507

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Military 

SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: QUANTICO                          LENGTH:   77 lines

MILITARY IS POLISHING ITS SYSTEM OF CHILD CARE

Not long ago, the last visitor wanted at this ``Crossroads of the Marine Corps'' child-care center was the nation's first lady.

But last week, Hillary Rodham Clinton was welcomed without embarrassment at a center once declared unsafe and unfit for children.

Lt. Col. Frank Pote, Quantico's manpower director, recalled that just about the time he reported to work five years ago, Defense Department inspectors shut down the center. That was particularly unsettling to Pote, whose job gives him overall responsibility for the center and whose son needs special care.

He was concerned enough to call his former boss to see if he might get his old job back, Pote told Clinton. His new staff at Quantico was embarrassed, he said. ``They had been slapped in the face.''

But Pote and his civilian corps of teachers and other child-care workers were almost giddy with pride last week as they showed Clinton the modern facility a chastened Corps built after the inspectors went back to Washington.

Now two years old, the building has spacious, bright classes, with plenty of room for active play and a staff of caregivers who have been specially trained and earn competitive wages. The first day he took his two girls to the new Quantico center, Staff Sgt. Leroy Head told Clinton: ``They cried when I left them. The second day, they cried when I came to pick them up.''

Clinton said her two-hour visit, including time spent stringing beads and making puppets with children, underscored her sense that the military has built ``a remarkable system of child care.''

The first lady and the president say the military's success at fashioning a system of child-care centers and after-school programs, along with a network of families certified to provide care in their homes, should serve as a model for the nation. More civilian employers need to make similar investments for the families of their employees, she said.

Not that the system is perfect. While the Air Force, for example, has managed to get all its child-care centers up to Pentagon standards, Defense Department statistics indicate only 42 percent of the 135 centers run by the Navy have been certified.

A Navy spokesman said additional inspections conducted since those figures were compiled earlier this year have raised the service's score to 67 percent. By June of 1998, the Navy expects 83 percent of its centers to be accredited, the spokesman added.

During her visit, Clinton talked to another Marine staff sergeant, Matthew Torres, who related his satisfaction with the care his three children get at Quantico but was frustrated because he had to search for a new home-based caregiver for his infant daughter four times in 11 months. The Quantico center won't take infants less than six months old.

The Marines have given him plenty of help, but, ``It's hard to find good child care,'' Torres said.

And soon, he will have to look again. Torres is being reassigned as a Marine recruiter. If his office is near a military base or in a government building, he may be able to get his child into another center run and subsidized by the government. If not, he will have to find civilian care and foot the entire bill himself.

With almost as many children (1.3 million) as troops (1.4 million) to look after, the Pentagon is the world's largest child-care provider, Deputy Secretary of Defense John J. Hamre told Clinton during a panel discussion that capped her visit. ``This is a readiness issue for us,'' he said. To have troops which are completely ready, ``you have to look after families in depth.''

The majority of military families, like most civilians, make their own child-care arrangements. But the Defense Department estimates that it needs space for almost 300,000 kids in its child-care centers; it is just over halfway to meeting that goal, with 166,000 spaces in about 300 centers last year.

At Quantico and other military facilities, families pay for care on a scale based on their income; the average fee of $65 per week is about $20 less than the national average in civilian centers. The payments cover about half the centers' expenses; $273 million per year in tax dollars pay for the rest.

The money is well spent, Pote assured the first lady, and appreciated by commanders like himself because good child care ensures that when it's time to report for duty, ``My Marines will be there, and their minds will be on the job.''

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