Retooling Centers
ACS Encouraging Day-Care Shifts

By MEREDITH KOLODNER

A City Council hearing last week lowered the temperature in the debate about under-enrolled day-care centers in Brooklyn, and offered hope to union officials that the centers may remain open.

JOHN B. MATTINGLY: Need more toddler slots.

Administration for Children Services officials have long claimed that they were not planning to close 13 unionized centers targeted as under-enrolled, but since ACS pulled funding from the Irving Place Day Care Center last month, concerns have been widespread that others would face the same fate.

Need Exists

Union officials say the battle is far from over, but at a March 15 Council hearing, ACS officials suggested that its day-care centers were well-positioned to meet the increasing need for infant and toddler child-care. Some of the centers have lost older, school-age children who have increasingly enrolled in kindergarten programs in the public schools and only need a few hours of care in the afternoon. The commitment of Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Spitzer to expanding pre-kindergarten services may also be a way for the centers to serve more children.

LETITIA JAMES: 'Where's the outreach?'

"We are close to being able to release an update which will show that we have far fewer slots for infants and toddlers than we need," said ACS Commissioner John B. Mattingly, "and that that's an area in which ACS and its centers should be able to grow."

Mr. Mattingly also said that ACS, the Department of Education and the Mayor's Office have been working on a plan to integrate Head Start, which is a half-day program, with child care and universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) so that a parent could drop off their children at one site for a full eight hours.

'A Natural Fit'

"UPK is a natural in the centers," said Neal Tepel, the assistant to Executive Director Raglan George of District Council 1707, which represents about 8,000 workers in ACS-funded day-care centers, "because there are 3-year olds and 4-year-olds and they want to expand the 4-year-olds to all day and the centers are equipped for that."

An ACS spokeswoman said that the agency was exploring several avenues to address the vacancies. "One option which is being pursued is to work with child-care providers to expand and convert classrooms to serve infants and toddlers," said Sheila Stainback in an e-mail. She added that a 4-year-old is 10 times more likely to receive early care and education services than a 1-year-old, and that ACS was working to change that statistic.

But the hearing, which played out in front of an audience dotted with the blue and white hats of DC 1707, was not entirely without confrontation.

Mr. Mattingly noted that last November ACS informed the 13 under-enrolled centers, each of which had two empty classrooms, that they needed to increase their enrollment.

Centers on the Move?

"We told them we are giving you until March 1 to get those slots filled," he said, "or we will take them elsewhere. Not that we will close anybody but that we will take them elsewhere."

Council Member Letitia James, whose Brooklyn district includes two centers from which ACS pulled its funding in the past year, said that taking away slots, and therefore funding, put financial pressure on the centers to close.

"There has been no outreach," she said. "There's a large Muslim community in my district and a lot of the women cannot read and they need child-care services. You need to do home visits." She added that some families needed outreach in languages other than English.

Deputy Commissioner Melanie Hartzog passionately defended ACS's policy of pulling funding if the slots were not being used. She said that there were more than 300,000 children who were eligible for subsidized child care in the city, but that ACS only had the capacity to provide slots for 27 percent of those eligible.

"This is why we must make sure that every seat is filled, every day, every month," she told the Council Members.

Ms. Hartzog added that the under-enrollment at the 13 centers in Brooklyn represented 602 vacant slots worth $7.2 million annually.

Filling Vacancies

Taking a more conciliatory tone, she added, "I want to thank the Council for their work in Brooklyn. To date 281 additional children are being served by these [13] programs. That represents almost a 50-percent reduction in vacancies in Brooklyn over the past four months. That's thanks to our team and to the City Council's help."

Union officials responded positively to the hearing. "It sounded like they are looking to utilize the centers more," said Mr. Tepel. "I think the tone changed because of pressure from the communities and from the Council Members, and maybe we had a piece of this too."

Members of the Brooklyn Council delegation are meeting with Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs on March 27 to discuss the future of the centers.

Near the end of the hearing, General Welfare Committee Chair Bill de Blasio, called the Council, the Mayor and ACS "natural allies" on the issue of child care, but emphasized that the fate of the centers was not fully resolved.

"It would be disingenuous not to say we believe every seat will be filled and we believe every center will be saved," he said. "But if we're not headed in that direction, there's going to be issues between us. We hope that never happens and we think that in partnership we can avoid that."