The subsidy for Syracuse University’s child care center has been increased in response to graduate student and faculty concerns about the accessibility of university day care programs for their young children.

The fiscal year 2011 budget, which was passed by the Board of Trustees on March 11, will increase this year’s $100,000 subsidy to $500,000 in an effort to improve access to day care for graduate students and faculty.

“The university administration sees child care for graduate students as a very important priority — both to meet the basic family needs of current graduate students and to remain an attractive place for new graduate students,” said Kevin Quinn, the senior vice president of public affairs, in an e-mail.

A committee is in the process of being assembled to determine the best use of the funds, Quinn said. The subsidization of child care included in the budget may be used to solve space issues with the SU Early Education and Child Care Center and the Bernice M. Wright Child Development Laboratory School located on South Campus, he said.

The center, which is operated by the university, is presently at full capacity with 60 children enrolled.

“We don’t have any more space,” said Joan Supiro, the director of the SU Early Education and Child Care Center.

Because the university’s child care is at capacity, faculty and graduate student said they have had concerns about getting into the day care program.

“It took me a year to get in,” said Lynn Brann, a professor in nutrition sciences who currently has a child in day care at the SU Early Education and Child Care Center. “Some people have to wait even longer.”

If it has been this difficult for faculty to get access to child care, then most graduate and doctorate students must be having difficulty as well, Brann said.

Paul Preczewski, a doctorate student in psychology and the chair of the Child Care Committee in the Graduate Student Organization, said demand for SU child care has grown in recent years as a result of less child care in the city and because there are more children from university employees and students.

“I think what has increased the demand at SU is, frankly, that the centers that we have are so good that everyone wants their children in them,” said Preczewski, who is also a father.

But that demand has not been met with an increased capacity at the day care, he said.

“It is certainly a concern for graduate students that there are not more day care spots available,” he said. But it is “a community wide problem as well as a Syracuse University problem.”

The passage of the budget that includes the subsidy aims to change the lack of access to day care, which Evan Weissman, president of the Graduate Student Organization and a father, said was needed.

The GSO, under Weissman, had previously advocated for the effort to improve day care services.

“The GSO supports the efforts already underway that will improve child care at SU, including…the proposed dedication of new resources to child care initiatives,” said a statement sent to the Board of Trustees on March 11.

Weissman also said he would like the university to be more flexible with child care. He said graduate students should be able to drop off children for a brief period of time while they have classes.

“In terms of flexibility, I do think we need flexible options that would accommodate a wide variety of scheduling needs,” he said in an e-mail.

Cost of university day care had also been a concern, Preczewski said, but was addressed when the university decided to freeze the cost, also part of the fiscal year 2011 budget.

The estimated total cost of attendance for graduate students for the 2010-11 school year is $39,850, according to the Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships’ website. The cost of day care for a family of two parents that are full-time graduate students and an infant is $133 per week, according to the SU Early Education and Child Care Center’s Web site.

“It’s remarkable that they did because I know the cost of child care has gone up,” Preczewski said. “Yet for us it has remained the same, and I think that’s in response to the economic crisis that hit all of us.”