By Jonathan Kay
A combined $188,000 in New York state grants should have about 250 Queens children in day care sooner than anticipated with new facilities set to open in Jackson Heights and Woodside within a year.
Efforts for the Jackson Heights facility began several years ago when state Assemblyman Ivan Lafayette (D-Jackson Heights) and the not-for-profit Jackson Heights Development Corp. began searching for an appropriate location, said Eric Jacobs, the corporation’s executive director.
They finalized the plan for a lot on the corner of 34th Avenue and Junction Boulevard last fall when the State Dormitory Authority granted them $1 million in construction funds. The facility is the first to be built under a new capital plan for state daycare, Lafayette said.
Since the fall the development corporation and Lafayette have worked closely with Queens Child Guidance Center, a group with nine mental health centers around Queens, which will run the 148-child day-care facility when it opens next spring.
“We have one of the youngest populations in the city, but we really don’t have a major, modern day-care facility,” Lafayette said. “You need someplace that not only babysits the children, but also provides a learning service for 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds. If you want to have children enter school prepared, you need quality daycare.”
Although the Queens Child Guidance Center has always specialized in mental health, the group’s executive director, Sandra Hagan, said the daycare facility complements the agency’s services well.
“If you address problems early, both educationally and emotionally, by the time children are ready to go to regular school they can enter a mainstream classroom instead of special education,” Hagan said.
The recent grant gave the center $88,000 for classroom facilities such as desks and chairs, Hagan said.
“We’re hoping to have a groundbreaking within the next few months and to be ready to accept children by late spring 2003,” Hagan said.
The facility in Woodside is scheduled to open with space for 30 children in September, but the recent grant endowing the center with an extra $100,000 will enable it to increase its number by 50 soon after, said Joan Lawless, executive director of Adventureland Child Care Inc., the organization in charge of the facility.
Unlike the Jackson Heights facility, the Woodside center was not relying on government funds and had no expectations regarding the grant.
“We’re very excited and pleasantly surprised by the grant,” Lawless said.
Lawless said the facility comes as a necessary first step toward filling the large demand for licensed day care in the Woodside community, especially among its large non-English speaking population.
Although there is no immediate solution to the shortage of day care, Lafayette said, the new facility will begin to address the issue.
“We hope this will at least make some progress into an enormous problem.”
