SAN ANTONIO - For Erika Wells, bringing her 5-year-old son to her evening UTSA classes is part of the routine. 

While UTSA has day care during business hours at its main campus, child care downtown and after-hours is not available. Paying for both school and day care sometimes leaves her wondering if the effort will pay off.

"It has its challenges but I also say, I'm not going to allow me having a child be my barrier. Every semester I have to think ahead. Like ok, so and so is watching him this semester," she said. 　

But now, a nearby church has stepped in to bridge the gap. They're working with the university to launch an after-school program at La Trinidad this spring. Parents will pay about $20 a day in child care fees.

"We talked about having this partnership where the downtown students to could take their children there in the evening and we could have an enrichment program. That was affordable where we knew they could be safe. There was a quality of child care," said Juliette Montemayor, at student at UTSA and member of the group Students Raising Children. 

It took three years for the group to garner enough support to seal the deal. They hope it sparks a conversation about the needs of working student-parents.

"This isn't a UTSA Downtown campus issue. This is a Texas issue. This is a national issue. About 4.8 million of the 16 million college students are parents. Over 70 percent of them are women," said Montemayor.

Right now these students are grateful for the community working to help its own.

"A lot of the students that we are helping are MSW student," she said. Social work students, she says, who will be ready to pay it forward.