Tragically, Seymour Lustman died the summer before the opening of the center and his wife, (the former Kathrine “Kitty” Ritman,) was named to succeed him, becoming the first woman head of college in Yale's history. Seymour Lustman was a faculty member in Yale’s Child Study Center and Department of Psychiatry and, Kitty Lustman was Director of the Yale Child Study Center Nursery School. Seymour Lustman, then head of Davenport College and his wife Kitty, to convene a group to establish a developmentally informed, high quality day care center at Yale. (Yale ’57) a long-time Yale administrator and assistant to then Yale President Kingman Brewster, several other members of the administration and Dr. Yale students Kurt Schmoke (Yale ’71) and Mary Pearl (Yale ’72) were supported by Henry "Sam" Chauncey, Jr. Following the weekend of protest, the firing of a Yale dining hall employee who missed work because she could not find daycare for her child contributed to the students’ growing interest in this cause. The provision of child care during the protest sparked in the students involved, the beginnings of an idea to create ongoing child care at Yale. Yale students involved in the social protest movement worked with the University’s administration to open Yale’s doors that weekend (which was mostly peaceful) and by establishing a soup kitchen, a medical clinic and offering childcare services for those protesting in New Haven. New Haven was at the center of political and social unrest as Yale faced a strike by its union employees and New Haven saw the Black Panther trials that resulted in a weekend of protest (May 1 and 2, 1970), as well as the fear of violence as the National Guard patrolled the city’s streets. The center originated in the social protests of the early 1970s at a time of growing attention to questions about social justice and fairness.
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The center has benefitted from drawing on the intellectual and professional consultation resources of the Yale Child Study Center and the infrastructure and personnel resources of Yale University. Annually, more than sixty students undertake classes and training under the guidance of the center’s highly experienced staff. It is a site for education studies and teacher training through courses, fellowships, and work-study programs for Yale students, and observers at the center from other Connecticut colleges.
The center also collaborates closely with the Education Studies Program in Yale College and the Yale Child Study Center to support the research and teaching missions of Yale. It is the only Yale-affiliated child care program that promotes accessibility and affordability through a sliding tuition scale.
The center is an internationally-recognized, nationally accredited, private, non-profit, model educational preschool program that is open to the children of students, staff, and faculty of Yale University, as well as to families from the wider New Haven community. For nearly a half-century, the Calvin Hill Day Care Center and its Kitty Lustman-Findling Kindergarten has been committed to the ideals of providing high-quality, developmentally informed, play-based progressive early childhood education that is accessible and affordable to the Yale and New Haven communities.