Fight for Troubled Day-Care Center;

Seek Continuity for Kids
Fight for Troubled Day-Care Center


A Bronx city-funded day-care center scheduled for closure next month has a long history of financial improprieties, but staff and parents rallied last week asking the city not to punish the children for the sins of the center's board.

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow DON'T SCROOGE US: Children from two city-funded day-care centers attended a rally outside City Hall aimed at convincing Mayor Bloomberg to halt the centers' planned closings in January. Parents and staff say they have not been given convincing reasons why the centers need to be closed, interrupting the children's education in the middle of the school year. The home-based providers for Lucille Murray Day Care Center did not receive their paychecks on Dec. 7 and still had not been paid as this newspaper went to press.

The Teachers and aides at the center have had long-standing problems getting paid regularly. It has gotten so bad in recent years that the local check-cashing store no longer accepts checks from the city-funded center because too many have bounced. Last fall, the staff went three weeks without a paycheck, until the city stepped in to cover the payroll. And in 2005, some staff members had their pay docked in order to repay a $52,000 debt owed by the center due to the directors' financial mismanagement.

Say ACS Shares Blame

Lucille Murray is slated to be closed Jan. 11, but staff and parents say that the Administration for Children's Services is as responsible as the center's board and former director for the center's financial problems. They want the city to replace the board and keep the center open so that the children's education is not interrupted in the middle of the school year.

"It's been such a cover-up for so long," said Carol Brown, the family day-care coordinator who has worked there for 26 years. "But this center is a home for so many needy children. They shouldn't have to pay the price."

ACS officials say they are closing the center because of the past financial problems and because building repairs would cost the city $650,000. They promised that the children would be transferred to other sites or parents would be issued vouchers to find private child-care.

Long-time staff say the problems date back to the early 1990s, when Teachers in the Early Intervention program were not getting paid on time. As the center began to place more children into Special Education classes, one doctor refused to work with the center after she was asked to sign off on papers to designate children as needing special education funding when she believed they clearly were fit for regular education programs.

In 1996, the city sent an Inspector General to look into the center. The inquiry lasted about three years but none of the staff or board members were fired.

Citywide Overpayment

In June of 1998, day-care centers that sponsored home-based providers received a memo from the city stating that the providers had been overpaid 20 cents per child per day from October 1995 until June 1997. Most of the centers never repaid the funds, since the mistake was made by the city and they neither had extra money nor did they want to force the home-providers to come up with hundreds of dollars.

But Lucille Murray played it differently. Ms. Brown, who oversees the home-based providers, said that the center director, Claudie Bayardelle, took the 21-month amount owed out of each of the 15 providers' paychecks in July. Some had to be spread over two paychecks since one didn't cover the total amount. As a result, many of the providers earned barely more than a couple hundred dollars that month.

In 2000, board chair Arlene Kelly removed Ms. Bayardelle as director and told the staff that money dedicated to the Early Intervention and special education programs had been misspent.

Reversal of Fortune

But in 2001, the center's founder, Lucille Murray Wheatley, who had been living in Florida, removed Ms. Kelly as board chair and re-instated Ms. Bayardelle.

In 2005, Ms. Bayardelle met with five staff members who oversaw the Child and Adult Care Food Program, which ensures that that providers spend their food allowances on healthy food for the children. Staff members say that Ms. Bayardelle told them there had been an administrative review by ACS and that the center was in debt for $52,000. Staffers say they were told that they would no longer receive the $220 weekly stipend for overseeing the food program, although they would need to continue to monitor it. And they would need to contribute money from their regular paychecks until the debt was repaid.

For the first two weeks, staff members made the payments. Then, they called their union, which they said was not helpful. They also called the regional city Resource Center, but got no response. They kept carrying out their monitoring duties unpaid, but quit paying Ms. Bayardelle out of their paychecks. One of the staff members quit a month later.

Forced Her Out

Finally, in October 2006, ACS stepped in and staff members say Ms. Bayardelle was told she had to resign or the center would be closed. In November, an ACS official began coming to the center every pay-day to oversee the distribution of checks.

Still, the paycheck problems persist. The local check-cashing center on the corner of 143rd St. and 3rd Ave. has several times cut off employees from cashing their Lucille Murray checks, and this month reinstated the policy. "Every time we cash their checks we have problems," said one employee, who asked that her name not be used. "There's never enough money there, so the checks bounce and then we don't even get the fees."

ACS refused to comment on the past financial problems, citing legal issues. The case has been referred to the Department of Investigation. Ms. Bayardelle's number in New City, N.Y. is unlisted, and she could not be reached for comment. Penney Dosset-Gamble, the current board chair, was reached at her cell phone and promised to call back with a comment but never did.

Fear More Instability

Despite the problems, many parents and staff, who turned out for a rally at City Hall Dec. 5, say they want the center to remain open. Yvette Zamat, whose 5-year-old daughter attends Lucille Murray, will be facing the third closure of a day-care center if the Bronx facility shuts its doors. "I'm trying to stay off of public assistance," said Ms. Zamat, a single parent who works at a foster-care agency. "How do you expect a parent to make it if you keep closing down centers?"

She said that after her first center in Manhattan closed in 2004, she switched to Franklin Whalen in The Bronx. When ACS closed that center, she lost her job in the midst of trying to secure another placement for her daughter.

ACS officials said that they had found interim sponsors and spaces in other Bronx centers for 60 children so far, and were working on finding other slots. They say that Lucille Murray has 127 slots, though staff members and union officials put the number at 207. Citywide, there are thousands of children on the waiting list for city-subsidized child care, although the length of wait depends on the neighborhood.

A Rent-Saving Device

Union officials claim that the city is closing down as many "direct-lease" centers as it can in order to save money on rent. ACS has closed nine centers since 2005, and seven of them are direct-lease. Lucille Murray, is also direct-lease.

Most of the "direct-lease" centers were built by the city 35 years ago using Federal money. About 180 of them were built in predominantly low-income neighborhoods to provide child care and after-school care. Although the cost per square foot is lower than the "sponsor-leased" centers, usually located in churches or community organizations, they tend to be larger and therefore have higher total facility costs.

"There has clearly been fiscal finagling going on," said Sandy Socolar, a policy analyst for District Council 1707, which represents the Teachers. "But in all previous mayoral administrations, the solution has always been to transfer centers to a responsible board."

While ACS officials say that the cost of repairs makes keeping the center open under another board too expensive, the union contends that most of the cost of the repairs should be borne by the landlord, not the city.

More Repairs Needed

Earl Grant, a custodian who has worked at Lucille Murray for 15 years, says that the only repairs he believes are immediately needed are those to the leaking roof. Roof repairs are under the scope and financial responsibility of the landlord, and there were architects and contractors at the building in August to make bids on the roof repair project.

"If the staff did something wrong or if the board did something wrong, get rid of them," Mr. Grant said, "not the children." He also noted that there were no Department of Health violations as of an August inspection.

Staff members and parents said they would continue to lobby the city to keep the center open and to tell them what repairs were needed so that a compromise could be reached. "This is a program that has been working for the children," said DC 1707 Executive Director Raglan George. "The Office of Management and Budget is just trying to save money at any cost. We need the Mayor to come forward and fix this problem."