Place Onus on ACS: Resolutions Seek to Avert Day-Care Center Closings

By MICHELLE FRIEDMAN

The union leader representing rank-and-file city day-care workers June 17 expressed support for two City Council resolutions aimed at minimizing day-care center closings.

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang DECRIES BUREAUCRATIC SHUFFLE: Council Member Diane Reyna, who is sponsoring a bill to place a moratorium on the city's program for closing day-care centers that are significantly below capacity, called it a failed system that winds up denying child-care services to many families.

One of the items considered during a hearing of the Council's General Welfare Committee would place a moratorium on Project Full Enrollment, an Administration for Children's Services initiative that critics claim triggers the closing of some centers even while thousands of children remain on a waiting list for day-care services.

Requires Closing Protocol

The second would establish a protocol that ACS would have to follow before closing centers.

ACS currently has no written procedure for making decisions on closing centers.

"There should be no anxiety for parents to have safe, quality and affordable child-care," District Council 1707 Executive Director Raglan George said.

He added that the resolutions were "an excellent first step to announcing the will of working families who desperately need this care and the workers who have dedicated years of service to their communities."

"On the bright side," Mr. George continued, "there is a new movement to reactivate the Child-Care/Head Start Advisory Board Committee." He called this "a step in the right direction" for the 350 public day-care centers and 150 Head Start centers in the city.

Councilman Bill de Blasio of Brooklyn, who proposed the resolution calling for a public written protocol ACS must follow before closing centers, said he agreed with the intention of PFE to "see every seat used because there are so many children in need," but asserted that the current system needed to be made public before any centers were closed. Mr. de Blasio's resolution also seeks to regulate the amount of time a center is given to increase enrollment before it's forced to close.

'Bring Parents Into Process'

Mr. de Blasio finished his remarks by asking the Council to "please bring parents into this process in a coherent and meaningful way."

"ACS must commit to collaborating with day care centers, sponsoring boards, and parents to implement solutions that work for both ACS and communities which they serve," said Randi Herman, vice president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, which represents center Directors and other supervisors.

Councilwoman Diana Reyna, sponsor of the bill calling for a moratorium on PFE, called it a failed, outdated system that does nothing but tie parents up in a bureaucratic shuffle. "Families are of no fault, child-care is of no fault, yet the city wants to say they are not responsible," she said.

A spokeswoman for the ACS responded by saying that "ACS will continue to work with its Task Force, which is guiding us as we implement Project Full Enrollment."