The primary goal of Moss Street Children’s Center is to remove child care as a barrier to student parents’ access to the University.  This is accomplished by providing high quality, affordable child care in a convenient location and with scheduling options that support students who are also parents.  The secondary goal of Moss Street Children’s Center is to enhance the learning experiences of undergraduate and graduate college students by providing quality employment, internship, volunteering and observational experiences in the field of Early Childhood Education.  Incidental fees, parent fees for service, and federal and state sources combined, allow us to meet our mission.  Towards our mission, we are committed to the following:

• Supporting multicultural awareness and diversity by ensuring that all families and staff are treated with respect and feel welcomed and supported in our classrooms and curriculum.  Also, by offering opportunities for the children and staff to learn about each other’s culture, values and beliefs.

• Promoting child development and learning in all domains by providing empirically based and developmentally appropriate activities, planned and implemented by teachers, based on their observations in the classroom, knowledge of the children and families and expertise and experience in the field. The social- emotional development of the children is strongly emphasized in our program.

• Including children and staff with a variety of abilities.

• Adhering to high safety and supervision standards.

• Being child centered and family focused.

• Providing multiple scheduling options, such as full time, part time, hourly and the opportunity to change schedules each term for both families and student staff.

• Actively seeking opportunities for parent and staff input and engagement, including: Parent Council meetings, parent-teacher conferences, director office hours, morning coffee chats, family surveys and individual meetings.

• Offering after-school transportation for children in neighborhood elementary schools. 

• Supporting student staff to maximize their co-curricular experience at Moss Street- towards their academic and professional goals.  Providing on-the-job feedback and training, group trainings, mentoring, and performance evaluations.  Covering critical points of professionalism, such as, early childhood best practice, self-management skills, health and safety, work habits and school to work transitions. 

• Maintaining minimal turnover of staff, in part, through professional development support and planning.

• Offering USDA supplemental food program.

• Aiming to reduce expenses and access new resources by prioritizing student employees with   work-study, reducing personnel costs; collaborating with and encouraging student families to access ASUO Child Care Subsidy and encouraging fundraising to offset operational costs.

• Creating safe and nurturing environments for parents to breastfeed.