Day care centers, pre-schools vie for enrollments: Betsy Ross Day Care Center takes top honor in survey.

The Betsy Ross Day Care Center in Lakewood, with a licensed capacity to accommodate 302 children, tops this week's List of Los Angeles County's 25 largest day care centers.

However, taken as a whole, the Pinecrest Schools, with branches all over the San Fernando and Antelope valleys, has the capacity for 1,769 children.

Philip Dye, co-owner of the Northridge-based Pinecrest Schools Northridge Inc., is quick to point out that the term day care center is a misnomer with regard to his schools. He prefers the term pre-school because, he stated, a pre-school differs substantially from a day care center.

Day care center is an umbrella term that is used by the state of California for licensing purposes and is composed of both day care centers and pre-schools.

According to Dye, pre-school operations strive to be more academically oriented than day care centers.

"Our teachers are trained in teaching a pre-kindergarten curriculum that includes basic academic skills like writing names and learning the alphabet," stated Dye. "That is the advantage that a child has in attending a pre-school -- he gets better preparation, academically."

The oldest of the Pinecrest schools, situated in Van Nuys, was established in 1951. The most recent was built in Palmdale in 1990.

Dye said that his chain is growing because of parents' increased awareness of childrens' early education needs. He said that parents have become more concerned with their children making the transition into elementary school and one way of easing that transition is to get some pre-kindergarten academic preparation.

Pinecrest also gains an edge in being part of a large corporate structure, Dye said. "Basically the advantage comes from the larger budget that a corporate structure allows. Our schools can afford Spanish teachers, for example," he said.

A number of the day care centers on The List are affiliated with local school districts. Although they are solely day care centers, they also claim to academically benefit the children who attend them.

Tola Adeseun, director of the Inglewood Child Development Center, said her center focuses on a pre-kindergarten readiness program that is educationally oriented. Her school, which is part of the Inglewood Unified School District, works closely with elementary school principals so they are prepared to give children the academic boost they need to succeed in school.

Barbara Hinds, director of the Betsy Ross Day Care Center, echoed Adeseun's views about the benefits of attending public day care centers such as the one she runs in Lakewood.

"There are several advantages to attending a day care center affiliated with a school district," she said. "The most obvious is that we have excellent communication with the local schools and an established curriculum that prepares children for later years of schooling."

She also boasted of excellent facilities and staff that is often drawn from the public schools. Hinds herself is a former public school teacher.

Hinds stated that programs like the one she runs are more common than they were a few decades ago and that they will continue to grow. She said demand is rising with the growth of double-income households.

"This center has grown as fewer parents in the area can afford to stay home with their children," she said. "Most of the demand for us comes from the low-income families in the area. That has allowed our Head Start program to grow significantly."