Child Care in Survival Mode

As I entered the Irving Place Child Development Center to meet the Executive Director Ms. Beverly Johnson, I didn’t know what to expect. I knew that ACS cancelled the center’s contract over a year ago and that the center was still in survival mode.

As I waited patiently in anticipation of the meeting, I decided to go the DOHMH website to see how the center was faring in license and regulatory compliance. I was pleasantly surprised to find that things were good. The center is licensed until next year and there are no open violations. When I finally met Ms. Johnson I understood why. The lady is smart and tough. As often happens with our grass roots organizations, the leaders have to be twice as agile, tenacious and resourceful as some of their counterparts in larger, better established and connected organizations.

Since losing her contract in 2007, Ms. Johnson, together with her staff and parents, have managed to keep their center open for over a year; primarily based on personal sacrifices, faith, commitment and just plain hard work. The center is well kept; the children are happy and bright and, the environment is nurturing. The hallways and classrooms are filled with beautiful colorful artwork ,and culturally relevant pictures and expressions.

Those of us who work with children know instantly when they are comfortable and at home in their surroundings. When we were taken on a tour of the building, in each classroom the children were spontaneous and eager to speak to us; they seemed particularly happy to see Ms. Johnson and talk with her. The Irving Place Child Development Center has also been able to meet the child care needs of new residents in the Clinton Hill community as the neighborhood is going through gentrification. The bright classrooms were filled with a mixture of Black, White and Hispanic children happily working and playing together.

SELF DETERMINATION
Ms. Johnson shared that as ACS prepared to terminate her contract, her license was also up for renewal and ACS was in the process of renewing her license through DOHMH. She said that although she submitted all of the necessary paperwork to ACS, they did not forward the papers to DOH as she expected they would. So, shortly after defunding the center was notified that their permit had also expired. Ms. Johnson successfully navigated the center through the process of renewing their license, including aging down the child population. Since losing the contract the program has also renewed its lease with the landlord and has managed to remain fully staffed. They also have a U-Pre-K contract for its four year olds.

Another main source of funding for the Irving Place Child Development Center is parent vouchers. The subsidy eligible parents in the center requested and were granted ACS vouchers to pay for their child care. Many of those parents remained with the center. This arrangement is very similar to the one being proposed under Project Full Enrollment. The center is however currently facing major financial challenges and the verdict is still out as to whether they will survive. We should look closely at these challenges as a preview of what will happen to many other programs facing ACS’ chopping block.

LEASES AND FACILITIES
There is a looming issue regarding the child care facilities that house publicly funded child care programs. It is almost impossible for programs to inherit the leases and operating cost associated with maintaining the direct lease facilities. Even if, as is the case of Irving Place CDC, the landlord is willing to work with the tenant to continue the lease, the operating costs are prohibitive without major renovations.

Although the direct lease facilities were built to meet the space requirement needs of the children and the community, they were not built in a cost effective manner so that private groups can afford the overhead of utilities, real estate taxes, water and sewage and similar expenses. Utility bills alone in these monstrosities can run ten thousand dollars ($10,000.) a month or higher. In order for programs to remain in these buildings as private tenants they will need to renovate the facilities to provide decentralized heating /cooling units and electrical circuits so that they can localize and control the use of their utilities. This is a huge issue for child care program operators because the profit margins are very low for child care services, making loan products for such things as renovations virtually non-existent. They will need grants from either the city or state for this work to be done.

As ACS unwinds its commitment to these huge buildings, many of the programs will be evicted and the buildings will be torn down as the owners move on to more lucrative deals for their properties. As an example, The David Bradley Child Care Center that was on Franklin Avenue in Brooklyn has been completely demolished.

FUTURE STEPS
Generally in New York City there is a critical shortage of buildings, very few are built for the express purpose of providing child care that can easily meet the regulatory requirements for child care facilities. The net effect is that over the next several years we will have even fewer facilities around to serve the needs of child care programs; whether public or private. Although the city wants to, and maybe needs to relieve its self of the burden of maintaining these large buildings, it is short sighted to push programs into trying to maintain them without any help or technical assistance.

Although the Irving Place Child Development Center has done a fantastic job in continuing to provide crucial child care services for the children and families in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn they have been abandoned to die a slow death unless they receive financial help with their building and utilities. I guess the real question is why are we and our elected officials so willing to let this happen?

BOC Gala 6-13-08

I spent a lovely Friday the 13th of June, by attending the fabulous 2008 luncheon awards ceremony held by the Business Outreach Center (BOC) Network. The affair was held at the Battery Gardens in Battery Park. The restaurant was surrounded by water with a bird’s eye view of the Statue of Liberty. The BOC Board of Directors, BOC staff, and the restaurant staff were most gracious and made all of us feel welcome and comfortable. In all, BOC honored 13 successful entrepreneurs that have used its services or loan products to start or grow their businesses.

The honorees represent a snapshot of the rich diversity of our city. The one thing that each of them has in common is their entrepreneurial spirit and the fact that they received business and financial support from BOC.

Congratulations are in order to:
K.Y. Chow, an Asian American who is the founder and President of Grand Meridian (GM) Printing Inc.,
Ms. Okwa Okon, a native of Nigeria and the owner of Guse, Inc. which produces novelty buttons and personalized gift items,
Ms. Zhanna Shimunova a native of Uzbekistan, who is the proud owner of a successful enterprise, “Austin Fancy Cuts” hair salon,
Mr. Murat Uyaroglu, the owner of the Prospect Perk Café located in Prospect Heights and a native of Turkey,
And Mr. Courtney Washington who is Jamaican American and the proud owner of CW fashion in Fort-Greene Brooklyn.

Awards were also given to Miguel Centeno, Vice President of Aetna Strategic Market Development and New York State Assemblyman MarkWeprin for their strong support of entrepreneurship and small business development in New York State.

Other notables present at the event included NYC Councilmember John Liu; NYS Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and Carl Hum, President and CEO of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.

Of course my favorite awardees were the seven recipients of the CHILD CARE BUSINESS AWARDS. These individuals participated in the BOC Child Care Business Development Project and were selected from among 503 participants in the project. These awards were presented by our own Letisha Wadsworth who is a BOC board member
The seven recipients were:
Ingrid Arevalo, Chiquilandia;
Laura Ceballos, The Blue Sky Group Family Day Care;
Sheila Fryar-Ashley, Little Busy Bodies;
Hattie Griffin, Snuggle Bears Family Day Care;
Barbara Mescheck, Mother Bee’s Daycare;
Desiree Stewart, Fingerprints Christian Learning Center;
Joan Hallet, My Babies Footprints Academy.
The event was a smashing success. ‘Way to go Leslie Winter (Board Chair) and Nancy Carin (Executive Director)! I’m looking forward to next year.

For more information about the Business Outreach Center Network go to www.bocnet.org.

Blog for 6/5/08

With the roll out of U-Pre-K programs for 4 year old children, through the Department of Education, some parents are opting to put their children in public school earlier. As a result, many child care businesses in NYC are considering serving younger ages of children. Programs that are currently serving children from 2.0 to 6 years of age may plan to amend their licenses to serve infants and toddlers from 6 months to 2.0 years old.

In order to amend licenses to age down their programs, child care businesses are required to have appropriate facilities, which might require some renovations to existing facilities, and center staff is required to receive training specifically tailored to work with infants and toddlers. In addition to working with the DOH to get full information about regulations, another good source of help is the infant/toddler resource and training programs run by the NYC Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R) programs.