As the city proceeds in closing 18 after-school programs run by the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) in Queens by September, critics worry that over 500 children will be left out in the cold, or rather the heat, as their parents scramble to find adequate afternoon childcare.
“How can the city expect children to basically run the streets to get home when there is [currently] a program that exists that can take them to a day care center safely?” asked G.L. Tyler, political director for District Council 1707, the union that represents employees at the ACS after-school programs set to close.
Some 5,000 children citywide will become ineligible for the new program - Out of School Time (O.S.T.) - as the city switches from after-school programs run by the ACS to ones run by the Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD).
Because the new programs will be housed directly within the schools, only 13 schools in Queens out of the 36 which previously had the programs, will have DYCD-run after-school sessions. In Queens, 513 children will be placed on waiting lists because there are 206 spaces, down from 719.
In total, 133 after-school programs, serving some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city and housed in neighborhood day-care centers, will close as the city makes the swap. Southeast Queens will be the hardest hit in the borough as four centers with 140 spaces close, and none of the nine schools served will hold O.T.S. programs.
School officials are now scrambling to find new funding to continue the programs, charging parents a $15 fee and eating the rest of the cost, or sitting back as the programs close.
Caretaker positions in the new program will be given to untrained teenagers, Tyler charged, and over 500 ACS employees, who are trained union members with benefits and pensions, will be sacked. Many of the employees have spent over 20 years working for the program, he said.
However, what worries him the most is how 5,000 kids will fare without after-school care.
“With child predators, bullies, drugs, the number of children being shot daily by accident seems to grow; this is not the time to let a program like that go,” Tyler said, describing how his own daughter, now 20, was escorted from her Bedford Stuyvesant school to an after-school program as a child.
Intended to streamline several programs, the after-school overhaul will phase out the ACS by 2007, as the DCYD begins to manage over 200 agencies that provide after-school childcare.
City officials have said that they have been discussing the switch for several years with child-care advocates, but for a year during the timeline of these discussions, the union representing the ACS employees refused to communicate with the city because of contract disputes.
“[The city was] doing this - in our point of view - in secret,” Tyler said.
After-school programs on the chopping block in Queens include: the Macedonia Child Development Center, the Better Community Life Day Care Center I, the Malcolm X Day Care Center, the Joseph DiMarco Child Care Center, the Afro-American Parents Day Care Center II, the Originals of Jamaica Day Care Center, the PAL Western Queens Nursery School, the Blanche Community Progress Center I, the Montessori Progressive Learning Center, the Charles Drew Early Learning Center, the National Sorority Phi Delta Center, the Concerned Parents of Jamaica Center, the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Center, the Omega Psi Phi Day Care Center, the Laurelton Springfield Day Care Center, the Sheldon Weaver Day Care Center, the Blanche Community Progress Center II and the Hammels Arverne Day Care Center.
Over 500 kids lose ACS after-school program
By Christina Santucci
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