Outcry grows over drastic daycare cuts

Around 1,000 parents, childcare advocates and union members descended on City Hall Tuesday, December 9 for a press conference in protest of a city plan to cut funding at 14 city daycare centers.
Facing a $62 million budget deficit, and unable to cover that shortfall for the first time in its history, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) will cut funding at the city’s chronically under-enrolled childcare centers, none of which are in Queens.
Citywide, however, the ACS will end funding for five-year-olds attending Universal Pre-K or kindergarten programs at daycare centers, in an effort to encourage children to attend Department of Education-funded public school programs.
While 21 programs were identified as having severe under-enrollment at current, 12-month and 3-year averages, ACS worked with the centers to verify enrollment and eligibility information, thereby reducing the number of programs that would experience cuts to 14.
All 14 programs were under-enrolled by at least a classroom’s worth, or 15 students, and will lose a corresponding amount of ACS funding. All cuts, including the suspension of funding for five-year-olds, will take effect in September 2009 and were enacted due to the rising costs of providing care devoid of state and federal funds to match.
“I want to be clear about this,” ACS Commissioner John B. Mattingly said in a statement, “we have to make these significant budget cuts but we are committed to doing so without having to turn away even one child now receiving child care.”
While ACS has no intention of forcing any daycare centers to close and every intention of maintaining service for all of the city’s 100,000 children who currently attend childcare, their cuts will affect the centers’ overhead and potentially translate into staff cuts, explained ACS Communications Director Sharman Stein. Stein noted, however, that instead of scaling back their operations, centers would have the option of merging with nearby facilities or finding private-pay families.
But District Council 1707, an umbrella organization representing local daycare employee unions, argues that such slashing of funds will surely amount to the closure of centers, necessitate hundreds of lay-offs and eliminate critical classroom space.
The group says public schools, notably those in Queens, are extremely overcrowded and cannot handle the influx of 3,500 five-year-olds who currently attend daycare.
Besides, many of the centers labeled as “under-enrolled” have been stigmatized due to attendance glitches and the fact that kids younger than 2.6-years-old are not recorded automatically, said District Council 1707 spokesperson Neal Tepal.
But the ACS claims to have offered ample opportunities for providers to voice concerns, through meetings with provider agencies, City Council hearings and forums with the daycare centers themselves. The agency maintains that it has childrens’, and parents’, best interests in mind.
“If we didn’t take these steps, we would have to cut funding for 7,500 children,” Stein explained. “That is the choice - we are doing this to save childcare.”