A group of University faculty and staff plan to highlight the need for more on-campus childcare options during a University Council Benefits Committee meeting today.

The group called UGA Childcare Coalition, with a core of about 20 students and faculty members, began pushing University administrators to pursue on-campus child care options more than a decade ago.

However, history professor Susan Mattern-Parkes said top administrators do not understand the need and consistently have brushed off their concerns.

“There is an incredible and overwhelming need for childcare in Athens,” said Latin American history professor Pamela Voekel. “It affects staff, faculty, students and cafeteria workers.”

The coalition contends that the need for affordable childcare hurts the University’s recruitment and retention of professors, said music and women’s studies professor Susan Thomas.

“It takes a lot of time away that I could spend with students and doing my own work,” Thomas said.

“It also affects students whose lives are severely impacted because they don’t have sufficient childcare and miss a lot of class.”

Thomas said as soon as her three children were born, she put them on the waiting list for the McPhaul Children’s Center, the University’s educational research center on Carlton Street.

None were admitted. Outside of state and federally funded programs, McPhaul serves 56 children with a waiting list of more than 250 children, said program coordinator Lori Maerz. Priority is given to children with siblings already enrolled and the children of University faculty and students. Tuition rates range from $180 per week for infants to $140 per week for 3-year-olds.

At the beginning of this school year Thomas said she could not find a childcare facility to take her children.

Instead of putting her children in three separate day cares and shuttling them around two hours a day, Thomas opted to hire a sitter for the twins and send her son to day care.

But for many, that is not an option, Thomas said.

The coalition believes alleviating the childcare problem will increase faculty productivity, reduce absences and prove an antipoverty initiative for Athens, she said.

Peer institutions with such childcare facilities include Georgia Tech, University of North Carolina — Chapel Hill, University of Michigan and University of Washington.

In 2001 the University Council conducted surveys and studies on childcare in Athens.

The committee concluded that the University does not have the budget to expand current childcare facilities and recommended the coalition submit a proposal, according to the University staff council Web site.

Meanwhile, more than 70 University employees are circulating a childcare petition and have collected approximately 600 signatures of students and faculty members, Voekel said.

The group is planning a rally Sept. 27 at Tate Plaza and will present the petition to University President Michael Adams that afternoon.