After a year-long battle with the Ross Valley School District (RVSD), the Fairfax-San Anselmo Children’s Center (FSACC), which has provided subsidized child care in Marin County since the early 70’s, faces eviction. The FSACC facility was condemned as unfit to host a child care facility in 2022, and they now hope to find a new location for the center.

Husband and wife Stan and Ethel Seiderman founded the FSACC in Fairfax in 1973. According to the FSACC website, “Ethel’s vision was for a place where middle-and low-income families could receive affordable child care and other desperately needed services that would allow adults to further their education and attend jobs while their children were being cared for in a healthy environment.”

During the Summer of 2022, the FSACC’s original lease ended. When they tried to renew it, an inspection by the City of San Anselmo revealed the structure to be in violation of several health and safety codes. This deemed the center unfit to host a childcare facility. 

Some held the misconception that the RVSD would make the investments needed to bring the center up to regulation. However, the renovations were estimated to cost upwards of 10 million dollars, an irrational price point given the RVSD’s budget.

The FSACC is currently managed by Executive Director Heidi Tomsky and Program Director Erik Schweninger, alongside board members who are elected biennially. Tomsky took the position of Executive Director of the FSACC in 2007, but first worked at the center as a teenager in 1977. 

“The district has decided that they don’t want the liability of leasing this location to a childcare program… Our dream and vision has always been to stay here and renovate this Deer Park property, and we are still hanging on to hope that that might be possible… It’s sad to think that we may not be providing these services in the Ross Valley area anymore,” Tomsky said.

Jose Anchordoqui, an educator at Archie Williams, began working as a summer program teacher at the FSACC in 2002. 

“Working at the children’s center was my first opportunity out in the workforce, besides blue-collar work with my dad. I became a summer program teacher… I worked there for about 15 straight summers,” Anchordoqui said. 

Many members of the FSACC community have criticized the RVSD’s inability to properly maintain the facilities, despite multiple requests for cleanups and help around the FSACC campus. 

“For years and years, the Children’s Center has hosted monthly cleanups and men’s groups on Sundays. [The men’s group] has cleaned gutters, put up new gutters, and they’ve even put up new playgrounds. The program director Erik Schweninger has been organizing these for years because [RVSD] isn’t doing anything about it,” Anchordoqui said.

During a recent board meeting, the FSACC requested that their lease be extended to Dec. 31, but didn’t receive approval. Although the RVSD has previously allowed extensions on the lease, they will no longer grant further ones.

“I’m absolutely saddened by it all, because you’re talking about a 50-year-old program, one of the only ones that offers subsidized child care to low-income families in Marin. 42 years at that site, you are talking about generations and generations,” Anchordoqui said. 

The FSACC’s student body is extremely diverse, as many children who have recently immigrated to Marin County begin their education there.

“Kids who had gone there their whole life, who to them [the FSACC was] their second home after coming to this country, [the FSACC] was their place of success, that was their safe space,” said Anchordoqui. “…It’s not just a program that offers child care, it is a community and cultural center because kids from all over the world come there, what can replace that?”

Many graduates of the FSACC program go on to become students at Archie Williams, including freshman Bart Hernandez. 

“I actually went there my whole life as a kid up until middle school, and [the FSACC] has been a pretty big part of my life,” Bart said. “I spent a lot of my life there and in that community, and to find out that it’s going to be gone is heartbreaking.”

Anchordoqui finds that the FSACC doesn’t only help families in need of childcare, it promotes community and security. 

“There are so many educators who have come out of [the FSACC] because the center gave them a love for teaching and they grew from that and went into neighboring districts, or [to Archie Williams] like myself,” Anchordoqui said. “All the kids —who are mostly Latino— who I had [as students at the FSACC] get to come and see me as a Latino educator —and representation matters— where else do they get to see that? That is being taken away.”

Regardless of the efforts made by the FSACC and its community, FSACC does not know if it will be able to continue its child care services. The center currently asks for donations via GoFundMe, and hopes to amass the funding needed to renovate or possibly purchase the property.

This story was originally published on The Pitch on September 22, 2023.