Eight years ago, Brookhaven assisted in setting up Just Kids Learning Center with a $15,000 no-interest loan from Associated Universities Inc., which operates BNL for the Department of Energy. That was just a year after Fermilab’s establishment of its Children’s Center, with $10,000 in seed money from Universities Research Association, the DOE contractor operating Fermilab.
The AIM loan was paid off three years later, and though no financial ties or formal agreement exists between Brookhaven and Just Kids, the children of BNL employees continue to be admitted to that center preferentially.
However, as over half of Long Island women with children under 18 are now in the work force, the demand for daycare has grown both at BNL and in our local community. Realizing this and the fact that today’s child-care solutions must include children up to age 12, a Brookhaven employee committee was established last January to survey the...