Employers scramble to add childcare to benefits, but the public college seems headed in the opposite direction.
By Florence Fahringer/Old School Catalyst
Original Air Date: May 7, 2025
Host: Affordable, quality child care is rare in this area. Many employers scrambling for workers are moving towards offering child care among their benefits, but New College seems to be headed in the opposite direction. After nearly two decades of caring for the children of faculty, staff and students, as well as neighbors, the New College Child Center will be expelled from campus. Old School Catalyst reporters Andy Trinh and Florence Fahringer dove into the child care center’s past, present and lack of a future. Here’s Florence with the story.
Florence Fahringer: The New College Child Center, or NCCC for short, began as a dream. Four faculty members, all expecting their first children around the same time, started thinking about where those children were going to go while they worked their jobs at New College. And then they thought, why not New College?
Sarah Hernandez: [unintelligible] in 2002, and as we were getting together and thinking about creating a day care—it takes a lot of planning and effort and thinking about, “What would be the shape? Where would it be held?”
FF: That’s Sarah Hernandez, professor of sociology at New College of Florida. She says the biggest hurdle at the time was the fact that New College wanted to be in no way responsible for the day care. That meant the four professors had to start the non profit themselves, get the day care insurance, and find employees for the day care. They also convinced the college to provide low-cost space in a college-owned 1960s ranch-style home on the west campus.
SH: It was a relief that they agreed once we met all their conditions. But the college really could not be a lot more generous [unintelligible], and that was really delightful.
FF: For fifteen years, the college administration’s relationship to the NCCC was, at best, supportive, and at worst, indifferent. Then came the takeover. Governor Ron DeSantis gave New College a new board of trustees, which then gave New College a new president: Richard Corcoran. About a year after his appointment, Corcoran noticed a pile of trash outside his car window while on his way to work, according to a faculty member. Shortly afterward, the NCCC started receiving bad omens.
Chris Kottke: Around that time, the center was getting ready for this renovation, so they had been using the garage as storage. They moved all the stuff that was in storage in the garage out to the curb for trash pickup, and at that time—this is my understanding from what President Corcoran told me when I was discussing the center with him—he drove past the center and saw all this trash out on the curb and became upset about it and called facilities and said, “What’s this building with all this trash out front?” And they were like, “Oh, that’s the child care center. We’re not operating out of it.” And he got all upset about it. So that put the center on his radar in a negative way, and basically from that point on, he’s been trying to get rid of the center.
FF: That’s Chris Kottke, an outgoing professor at New College of Florida. He says the NCCC was a big reason why he wanted to work at New College in the first place. After becoming a faculty member, he enrolled his kids in the day care and became an active participant as a board member of the non-profit. Here he is describing the aftermath of Corcoran’s trash sighting.
CK: The lease for the center came up in June, and it’s structured such that, if nobody makes any changes, it just automatically renews for another year. And they didn’t take any action prior to June, so the lease automatically renewed. People felt like, “Well, okay; maybe we’re good for another year, then.”
Then, later this summer, after the lease had been renewed, the administration sent the center a notice that they needed to clear out and vacate the space by August 1. We pointed out that we had a valid lease—they didn’t have the means of doing this—so me and some other board members took meetings with the administration and the general counsel David Brickhouse, and David Brickhouse advanced this theory that the entire organization of the center and the relationship with the college violated the Florida ethics statute because New College employees were acting as directors for the center—that it was a violation of conflict of interest, even though acting on the Board of Directors—that’s a voluntary position, and that’s uncompensated. People acting on the board don’t have any kind of material interest in the center. They just help to operate it.
So we had to get lawyers involved. The center retained a lawyer, and we took a meeting with David Brickhouse, and we explained that we didn’t think that it violated the statutes, and we were prepared to go to court if that was what it took. Eventually, they stood down and let the lease go on for the rest of the year.
And then they—maybe about a month ago now—sent notice to the center that they wouldn’t be renewing the lease. Meanwhile, the center had been trying to find another space out of which to operate but was not successful in that endeavor, so it’s going to shut down.
FF: Even though it was Corcoran’s line of sight that apparently triggered the expulsion of the NCCC, the president never visited the day care, according to NCCC Director Saran DeVaughn.
Saran DeVaughn
Saran DeVaughn: I’m sorry that the president felt that way. I’m also sorry that the president never came to talk to me or came to say anything to me. The rumors that are going around the college—this person knows this, and this person knows that, and I, the owner of the childhood center, know nothing. I have never spoken to him. I’ve never seen him.
FF: Even though the NCCC managed to get one more year at the college, the effects of a hostile administration still managed to damage their financial stability.
SD: They came back and very abruptly said, “You guys have to get out by August,” and I told them, “No. We’re not doing that. I have 34 students and families in here, and we’re not just leaving. We have a lease that is signed that’s continuous from June to June. We’ll leave in June. You’re going to have to go through the whole legal process to evict us and kick us out if you want us to leave before then because I’m not just displacing these families and these children.” But what ended up happening is we still ended up losing 15 families, so now we’re in a $30,000 deficit because nobody will come into this place because we’re not going to be here after a year.
FF: DeVaughn was heartbroken by the NCCC’s end.
SD: This just broke my heart. This place is or was a blessing for me, my staff and a lot of families.
FF: New College of Florida failed to answer Old School Catalyst’s questions by the time of recording. While no comment has been made about the NCCC house’s future, the houses owned by New College to its east have already been demolished. The college’s 2024 master plan also calls for its demolition in order to make way for student housing.
The college has also not commented on whether or not it will offer an alternative to the NCCC for its faculty. With this loss, New College has now become the only Florida public university not to offer child care benefits to its faculty.
This is Florence Fahringer, reporting for the Old School Catalyst.
To read more from the Old School Catalyst, go to oldschoolcatalyst.com.
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