The Early Learn NYC concept paper dramatically alters how child care and early childhood education services are delivered to New York City’s lower income families. In fact, the requirement of enrolling parents who can afford out of pocket Early Childhood Education expenses indicates a move toward serving a more affluent sector of the city. Current ACS-funded programs need to ask whether, in the future, a specified percentage of slots will be allocated for market rate families. It would bring clarity if the concept paper provided the rationale for including unsubsidized households into a service designed to give lower income parents the ability to go to school or work, knowing their infant,toddler or preschooler is in a safe, clean, mentally and physically stimulating environment.
The paper reveals a concern for greater capacity of each funded program through the exclusion of family day care and group family day care providers who are unable to merge into a network; contract awards as high as $20 million for serving 2,000 children and having the resources and staff expertise to serve infants, special needs and English language learners at one center. These requirements assume that a center will be funded such that it can pay appropriate salaries for specialty educators. Further, are there existing NYC-based programs that can manage $20 million operations?
New York City’s need for subsidized child care is substantiated when one looks at the percentage of households receiving some form of income support assistance by community districts and the percentage of the population who is five years of age and younger. There are community districts wherein 30 – 40% of residents are such recipients. So, then, why does it occur that some programs are consistently under-enrolled? Some professionals explain that the certification process is taking too long. If this is true then, the Full Enrollment Initiative must include provisions to quicken the process. Without a clear study of the enrollment/certification throughput, the pre-enrollment activities that centers and networks perform will result in backlog.
Early Learn NYC is a competitive model. There will be at least 50 fewer programs serving NYC. On the other hand those who are awarded will learn to diversify their funding base; serve children of differing talents; initiate aggressive cooperative and individual marketing campaigns and activate sponsoring boards to engage in strategic planning and resource development.
Labels: ACS, Bloomberg, childcare, infants
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Publicly-Funded Can Stand Some E-Government
For at least three years, New York City's publicly funded child care providers have been on pins and needles about their existence. They're accused of not collecting parent fees, being under-enrolled and/or not hiring certified teachers quickly. Let's face it, if you were certified by the NYS Education Department, would you prefer being compensated the 40 odd thousand dollars running a public school classroom or $20 - $30,000 a nonprofit childcare center can afford? If you loved the work environment and the great one-on-one with parents, you'd do what many existing childcare center employees do: stay there and enroll in college. It takes four years to get a baccalaureate and two more for a graduate degree. True, recruiting retired teachers is another solution.
If it's true centers aren't collecting the parent fee, enforce the reality that the uncollected parent fee is their lost operating budget. If a center's budget is, for example, $100,000 and $25,000 is in parent fees, then to cover annual costs that money needs to be collected.
What's disturbing in this electronic age is under-enrollment. Enrollment is based on families being certified eligible for public childcare and the public being aware that publicly-funded childcare--home-based and center-based--is available throughout NYC. Certification involves different forms being completed by parents or guardians accompanied by certain documents. The material is sent to the Resource Areas for processing. Childcare providers and families say that the Resource Areas take several weeks--sometimes months--to recertify families. In the meantime, families' previous certification expires; then, they can't afford the market fee and the center can't afford to serve the family without payment. Enrollment drops because time lapsed in families' recertification.
Administrtion for Children's Services (ACS) instituted an online 'recert' process that permits centers to do the work online and transmit the application electronically. The hitch is application review is still performed by the Resource Area staff; therefore, weeks pass before a decision is made.
Maybe ACS needs to sidle up to DoITT to devise the means to connect recertification and new applications with various online, backdoor databases. This means as a family or childcare provider inputs the data into the system, it's being compared with Department of Labor, Social Security Administration and/or Human Resource Administration data on the same family. In nanoseconds an 'approve,' 'disapprove,' or 'more information needed' message would appear. Isn't this what the Department of Labor does to process unemployment benefit applications? Why should New York's children and families not get the same benefit of accurate, electronic processing?
The other factor in under-enrollment, public awareness, can be resolved through public service announcements through traditional and social media. Why doesn't New York City have PSAs on satellite radio, Internet radio, WNYE, WNYC, the daily papers and Web sites catering to moms? Transit advertising during the summer would work wonders.
Hmmm, Let me contact ACS and DoITT for their thoughts.
Labels: childcare, media, New York City, social media, technology
NYC Admin for Children Services Has Centers at Each Other's Throats
A November 2007 letter from ACS Commissioner Robert Mattingly says all center- and family-based providers have until April 30, 2008 to be enrolled to license capacity—no excuses. Publicly funded childcare services all over the city face closing, sponsor board merging or sharing space with other centers if they can’t meet the goal. This situation is similar to the closings and mergers experienced by public high schools. ACS Office of Child Care and Head Start keeps centers abreast of enrollment status by sending monthly counts. Childcare is a major employer in NYC. Closings affect thousands of low- and moderate-income families and childcare staff.
Here in the Gowanus community, it has become a competitive situation. Centers use various tactics to meet the goal. Some centers with infant care instruct new families to move their preschoolers from their current care providers to theirs in order to get service for their babies. “This is disruptive for the preschoolers and reduces our numbers,” states an unnamed local center worker. Some providers resort to low rating other centers and suggesting the possibility of religious instruction at certain publicly funded centers. The fact is ACS-funded programs can’t provide such instruction. Communities experiencing gentrification have racism and classism rearing their heads. Centers that have operated for decades in a community now are questioned about their innovation and ability to care for children from more affluent families.
Bethel Baptist Day Care Center, a 35-year-old community institution, made changes in teaching staff and, now, boasts of NYS certified teachers and assistant teachers who passed the NYS Assistant Teacher examination. “We focus on continuous quality improvement in teaching, nutrition, sanitation, safety and recreation,” says Carlene Smith, Bethel’s education director. “Our staff distributes flyers throughout the area to families, local schools and community centers. We’re proud of their commitment.” Rather than take the low road, Bethel Baptist Day Care Center gets prospects from current and past families.
Rising above competitiveness, all centers agree that the new requirement for single parents to petition for child support and reduced staffing within ACS Resource Areas are major obstacles. Day Care Council of NYC has publicly raised these issues in recent months. Centers like Bethel will hold open houses and extend a year-round invitation to spend the day in classrooms to judge quality for yourself.
Labels: Brooklyn, childcare, children, gentrification, Gowanus, racism
