Dirk Vinlove knew the wait for childcare at UAF was a long one. He just didn't expect to be in it for a year and a half.

After hearing through the grapevine about the wait to get kids into the Bunnell House, UAF's daycare facility, Vinlove, 38, put his boy on the list in 2004, a year before his son was even old enough to stay there. In the meanwhile, the two stayed and played at a faculty house next door, separated from the daycare by only a fence.

"I just stared longingly at it, saying ‘Please, let me in,'" Vinlove said.

Vinlove, a pre-nursing major, isn't the only UAF parent to face fences to childcare. The Bunnell House only accepts 30 kids at a time who are 30 months old and potty trained.

Run by the Tanana Valley Campus, the Bunnell House operates a student lab childcare that runs on a $200,000 annual budget. It received the Fairbanks North Star Borough's highest childcare award in 2003.

On a recent morning, children played with toys and listened to "Hokey Pokey" upstairs as a teacher prepared them French Toast. Downstairs, three older kids stamped Chinese symbols on red paper for the Chinese New Year. Another three kids meticulously constructed a two-story house using magnetic squares and triangles.

But space at the daycare is tight. Fifty families are on the waiting list to get in, the Bunnell House says.

Consultants from Brailsford & Dunlavey of Washington, D.C., complained in 2004 that UAF's childcare had "limited capacity" and was "not customer-service focused." UAF should provide more space and funding for daycare as well as open the doors to younger ages, they advised.

Paige Vonder Haar, director of the Bunnell House, said they would love to offer more daycare, but they lack the space and resources. Plans have been in the works to expand the facility since before she was hired in 2001, but a lack of money has left them on hold, she said.

If they could expand, though, Vonder Harr said a new building should be built so they could take care of younger and older kids. Night hours would also be great, though she lacks the staff, she said.

UAF has requested $5 million from the state to assess additions and improvements to various student facilities, including the Bunnell House, but the funds are absent in the governor's budget. That's a cut that happens every year, Vonder Haar said.

Chancellor Steve Jones said childcare isn't anywhere on his cabinet's agenda. Fighting for the university's record legislative funding request, as well as finding money to tackle further museum construction and energy cost overruns, are his priorities instead, he said.

"It's not on the backburner, it's on the side-burner," Jones said.

Still, Jones said he recognized that finding suitable, cheap childcare is "a big factor in affecting quality of life for working parents."

UAF houses 74 families with children, a majority of which are students, said Belinda Norris, coordinator for family and faculty housing. Just less than half of faculty members have children, a recent Faculty Senate survey found.

Among faculty with children, 52 percent of men and 77 percent of women think the university should make on-campus childcare a priority, the survey says.

Only 22 percent of faculty use childcare, the survey, released in November, shows. Instead, many faculty members with kids are in an on-going search for quality daycare and employ a wide-range of options, including using family members and off-campus services, the survey shows.

The results may indicate that faculty childcare may have moved beyond just being a UAF issue, said Sine Anahita, an assistant professor in sociology and member of the Faculty Senate's Committee on the Status of Women.

"I think that it's a community issue," she said. "In a sense, it's an issue that's bigger than the university."

Denise Thorsen, an electrical and computer engineering assistant professor, said UAF's childcare has never been a viable option for her. When Thorsen first moved to Fairbanks and lived in faculty housing, her daughter was too young for the Bunnell House. Now that she lives off-campus, Thorsen said she and her partner, also a teacher, shape their schedules around their 6-year-old's schedule.

There are times, though, that Thorsen wishes UAF had childcare for her, she said. When her daughter gets sick, Thorsen said she often has to bring her to UAF and leave her in her office, she said. UAF should offer emergency babysitting for those instances, she said.

"That would be highly desirable," Thorsen said.

With on-campus services lacking, some have proposed starting a voucher program instead. ASUAF approved funding for such a pilot program in 2004 to give up to $500 to students with children and financial need.

The project was supposed to be overseen by a new childcare committee composed of student government and UAF administrative officials. However, when the project's lead supporter left the senate, the program fell apart due to the shear amount of work required, said ASUAF President Joe Blanchard.

"The money had to go through so many channels if it was going to work," Blanchard said. "And it was just like, okay, we're doing this and we're doing that, on top of all the other projects and school work, and it got buried."

No money was ever dispersed. Even if it had worked, the voucher would have helped only five families, Blanchard said.

For Vinlove, though, childcare is no longer a worry. After three semesters of using babysitters, Vinlove finally got his son into the Bunnell House.

Vinlove said he's happy with the Bunnell House. The staff seems stable and Vander Haar, the director, is "wonderful," he said.

On their first day, Vinlove said staff at the house told him they recognized him and his son as the two they always saw playing behind the fence.

"Yeah, now we're on the other side," he told them.