Between trying to be a “normal” college freshman and trying to create new programs at State, Curtis Workman, a freshman senator, is proud of his SGA contributions.
“I just want people to get involved with SGA. We can’t help when we don’t know the issues going on,” he said. “E-mail the SGA. E-mail senators. E-mail your class-specific senator. E-mail the president. Go to open forum meetings SGA holds. Go to SGA events. Check your e-mail for any way to get in touch with SGA.”
Workman said it doesn’t matter who students talk to within SGA about problems – just talk to someone.
“I met a woman in the student union who had her daughter with her. We got to talking about why she had to bring her to class.” Workman said. “Most parents don’t want to have to put their child in daycare every single day. They want to be able to have that connection with their child rather than a daycare teacher having it.
“We got to talking about how State doesn’t have childcare anymore.”
Workman said that’s something that he is going to fix.
“The majority of students a State are non-traditional,” he said. “A large percentage of students is commuters. We have a lot of students with children. What happens when those kids are sick? When school is closed for them? What about if the child is not at school age yet?”
“Childcare is very expensive.” Workman said.
According to the American Health Rankings website, the average cost of center-based childcare in West Virginia is about $10,408 per year as of 2017, and it has only gone up since then.
Workman said SGA approved a new committee to look at the problem.
“We just scheduled out first committee meeting,” he said. “There is where we will discuss and research the requirements that State needs to meet in order to have a daycare on campus.”
“We need to find the funds,” Workman said. “That’s where it might be tricky for us to do in the timeline we want.
“Another thing that was brought up was the option to partner up with a local daycare. In doing this, we would have a contract for State students at a very low rate or no cost at all in exchange for students from our education program working with them.”
Workman is eager about the opportunity to not only help out parents but also help education majors get credit for working at the daycare.
“It’s a win-win situation.”
But Workman needs help.
“I need the students’ opinion,” he said. “Do they think this is something that State needs? Would they be interested in the opportunity to get help with childcare? Would education majors be interesting in the opportunity to get credit for helping out?”
Workman is open to any and all interest, opinions and critique, as well as ideas that students have about how the program would work best for them. He wants to hold open meetings to get everyone’s opinion, but, he continued, “Please just e-mail me if you have an idea about it.”
“This is something that I am passionate about. I am excited to see how this will come to fruition in the future.”
For more information or to talk to Workman, please e-mail him at ccworkman16@wvstateu.edu.
