15 Day-Care Centers And 320 Jobs Face Budget Ax

RAGLAN GEORGE: ‘Just a ploy to close centers.’ Fifteen Administration for Children’s Services day-care centers would be closed in July under the agency’s first provisional budget plan, which could lead to the loss of 320 jobs.

“What we found is that we could consolidate centers and save money by closing some sites and find spots for the children in other nearby centers,” chief ACS spokeswoman Sharman Stein said in a phone interview. “Part of the reason we chose these centers is because nearby, there’s other sites with ample capacity.”

The closings would realize $9 million in savings for the cash-strapped agency, and largely target Brooklyn, with 10 centers on the chopping block. Three others are in Queens and the final two are in Manhattan.

Union Decries ‘Onslaught’

“It’s just another ploy to close centers,” said District Council 1707 Executive Director Raglan George Jr., who represents day-care workers. “Since Mayor Bloomberg has been in office, he’s eliminated 22 centers and he’s just continuing his onslaught of closing.”

The 15 centers are all on sites directly leased by ACS, which costs the agency more money than its sponsored sites. “These leases were expensive; they run from between $150,000 to $450,000 a year,” Ms. Stein said. ACS oversees 339 day-care centers, 115 of which are direct leases.

“When this system was set up 20 years ago, the city contracted for the space directly,” she continued. “The prices are rising and they’re expensive; it’s a prime driver of costs in the system.” The price of each lease, along with the condition and utilization of each building and the capacity of nearby centers were considered with each closing.

Mr. George contended that there were parents looking to get their children into the underutilized centers, but cutbacks at ACS’s central offices had limited their efforts.

‘No One to Place Kids’

“The [ACS workers represented by] DC 37 Local 371, who help place these children in centers, were terminated by the city, so now they don’t have anybody to place the children,” he said. “Parents are the dupes in the whole thing because most of them don’t know how to fight back against this administration.”

His union is planning demonstrations and lobbying to try to force changes in the budget proposals. “We’re going to develop a pushback by parents, speak out and let the city know exactly what this [administration’s] attempting to do,” he said. “We’ll get legislators involved in every district. We’ll do whatever we have to do.”

Mr. George also rejected ACS’s proposal that any children who cannot be placed in a nearby center be given vouchers to find a private center. “They give them vouchers and say go to some unqualified program to take care of your child,” he said, adding that his members were subjected to more thorough vetting by the city.

Ms. Stein defended ACS’s actions by saying they saved budget dollars without denying children day-care services. “It’s a tough decision to make, but we did it mindful of how can we save costs and continue to serve the children and set the system up to be financially stable going forward,” she said. “We need to set the system up to be stable so that we’re not constantly doing this.”

The centers being cut are mostly in more-gentrified neighborhoods, such as Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Rockaway Beach, Fort Greene and the Lower East Side, where rents are higher and it is more difficult to market services because of the nearby competition.