Following the Progress of ACS’ Project Full Enrollment

As I continue to follow the ongoing saga of ACS’ Project Full Enrollment initiative for NYC publicly funded child care centers, I am learning quite a bit. In an article in the most recent New York Non-Profit Press (NYNP) John Mattingly, Commissioner of ACS stated that it is not the intention of ACS to close centers but to make sure that centers are fully utilized. According to the Commissioner, ACS’ efforts are intended to help child care centers work through their under enrollment issues including changing ages served; called aging down or changing budgeted capacity.

ACS is currently calling in under enrolled centers to have them explain their plans for bringing themselves to full enrollment. For the past few weeks I have attended 5 of these meetings, at 66 John Street, with centers in Central Brooklyn. It’s clear that centers are at differing levels of understanding and commitment in fully complying with the mandate. Although ACS says that, prior to these individual meetings, it has conducted informational and technical assistance sessions, with all of the child care centers, some centers are still confused about their options and what ACS will approve. It is also my opinion that some of the ACS facilitators are more helpful than others.

However, most centers are in agreement that the HRA child care population is highly unstable. The primary reason is that there are a whole host of policies that frequently make participants ineligible for child care payments. There seems to be sort of a revolving door of eligibility as participants move from project to project or up date their documentation. Often when these participants are dropped from eligibility the centers are the last to know.

In my next segment I will try to explain, from my understanding, ACS baseline expectations for centers.