Specifically the Washington Heights Child Care Center faced closing their doors last month. The center provided subsidized child care to poor and working families in financial struggle. Despite serving the low-income community and families in the neighborhood for 42 years, funding cuts from the city pushed the nonprofit provider into a corner. A month ago, the center faced decisions to either find more donations, appeal to the City Council for funds, raise parental fees, or even close. The deadline was September 28 to find additional funding or close its doors.
At the
eleventh hour, after hearing from the concerned neighborhood, the City Council
agreed to kick-in a last minute $400,000 to rescue the Washington Heights Child
Care Center. “Preventing this crucial institution from shutting down is a big
win for our community,” said state Sen. Adriano Espaillat, who represents the
neighborhood. Added City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, “The best way to
celebrate: Continue our commitment to invest in quality early education for the
working-class families of northern Manhattan.”
For a more read Washington Heights daycare center averts shutdown.
The Washington Heights Child Care Center is not the only child care
center struggling in these times.More than half of uptown child care centers
lost their government contracts this month to provide subsidized child care for
New York’s low-income families. Without the funding, 23 centers in Harlem,
Washington Heights and Inwood are in trouble and face decisions similar to
Washington Heights Child Care Center to find additional donations, funding, or
to close.
Part of Mayor Bloomberg’s early education reform, launched October 1st,
subsidized child care providers, such as those mentioned, had to reapply
for city money. With Bloomberg’s goal to standardize early childhood education,
he wanted to transform the system to bring quality early care and education to
NYC’s “neediest and youngest children.”
With these changing policies and funding-cuts, we can only imagine the
struggle of these child care providers. Yet the concern here is while the City
Council was able to swoop in at the last minute to rescue Washington Heights
Child Care Center, that funding ends in June. So what then?
With Bloomberg’s announcement three weeks ago to bring Educare to Brownsville Brooklyn, critics have sounded off on their opinions of the new direction of early child care and education in NYC. Susan Ochshorn,founder of ECE PolicyWorks, a consulting firm specializing in early care and education policy research, program development, and project management, put her two cents in on the transformation of early care and education in NYC. She cited words from pediatrician Elizabeth Isakson, co-director of Docs for Tots:
“Educare is an example of innovation. It will not fix the entire problem, but it is a model that has demonstrated results for some of the most vulnerable children in our country. Continuing to do what we have done for the past 40 years, in the same way, in the same places, is not going to fix the achievement gap. Innovation and experimentation are key to addressing the problems that children and families face.”
Read more at Charter Preschool: Coming Our Way
No comments:
Post a Comment