Work starts on child development center

Wearing little white hard hats, four preschool-age children gleefully hoisted lumps of dirt in the air with small golden shovels as Los Angeles Mission College broke ground Monday on a 27,000-square-foot child development center that will cost $9.1 million.

About half the money will come from the $2.2-billion in bond money approved by voters in 2001 and 2003 and used by the Los Angeles Community College District to fund about 110 projects completed to date.

Under a temporary white tent, a crowd of about 100 gathered on the northeast corner of the Sylmar campus to hail the beginning of a project they said has been at least a decade in the making.

“When I came on board, I was promised a building. That’s why I took the job,” said Monica Moreno, director of the child development center.

“I was threatening to take the kids and dig a hole,” she said. “Somebody’s got to fill it, if that’s what it takes. This is a testament that dreams really do come true for us at Mission College.”

Although all nine campuses in the district have child development programs, most of them operate in bungalows or portions of old buildings, officials said. At Mission, the program has so far been housed in a temporary building. Its new two-story facility will be the fifth in the district to be built with bond money.

The groundbreaking was held about a week before the March 6 elections in which four of the district’s seven trustees are up for election.

Challengers have accused the incumbents of wasting bond money through badly managed construction projects. The Mission College child development center is one of more than 30 projects underway in the district.

Incumbent Sylvia Scott-Hayes, who is being challenged in the election, attended the groundbreaking and said the center and other construction projects allow the district to be “on par with other universities.”

The state put up about $4.5 million, and the district will use about $4.6 million in bond money for the project. Construction is to begin March 12.

“Without those bond measures, we wouldn’t have this,” said Mission College President Ernest Moreno, who called this an “exciting time” for the college.

About 1,200 of the 7,600 students at Mission College are majoring in child development, said Janice Silver, vice chairwoman of child development at Mission. The new center, which is to be completed in April 2008, will have room for 96 children.

“This will be the ‘community’ in community college,” Silver said.

tami.abdollah@latimes.com