Child Care's New Day

In July 2011, the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) will launch EarlyLearn NYC, a new program designed to raise the quality of early childhood education in the city.

According to ACS, “We are moving forward in our vision to integrate services and provide consistent quality throughout the City, and in doing so, we are maximizing our resources, building a more sustainable system, and strengthening outcomes for our City's youngest children."

Although the stated goal is improved quality, these changes could spell disaster for local child care providers, who fear that the new requirements will squeeze out small centers that cannot afford to hire professional grant writers to meet the new criteria.

Director Frances Feyla Barclift of Little Sun People, Inc., reports that she is, “seriously concerned about our continued ability to operate.” Already underfunded, the center—and other community-based operators like it—could be taken over by larger agencies that have the resources to compete for the city’s new grants. Because these larger agencies are not locally run, such a change would represent a tremendous blow to local businesses and their ability to meet the needs of the community.

In the meantime, the new requirements are already reducing capacity. Zadie Davis, Executive Director of the Tabernacle Day Care Center,  explains that the new emphasis on lowering child-teacher ratios has meant cutting back the number of children enrolled. As a result, the already-long waiting list has grown. 

“The need for daycare is very high, especially in terms of infants and toddlers,” noted Davis.

Furthermore, the new guidelines come with significant overall cuts in funding. While some of the Mayor’s initial proposed cuts have since been restored, the city still stands to lose up to 7,000 child care slots, and Bedford Stuyvesant would be particularly hard hit.

Barclift received a letter from the city last month with a list of about twenty children who would be cut from her program. This was followed by another letter claiming that some of those cuts had been reversed

“It’s like being in limbo because you really don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Barclift. “It’s just rumor after rumor.”

According to ACS, the new program, which begins accepting applications from providers this spring, will prioritize those centers serving children in low-income communities.

Specific goals include improved teacher-child ratios, professional development for staff, and “research-validated curricula.” In addition, providers are required to provide a minimum of eight hours per day of care. (Many already do so.) EarlyLearn NYC emphasizes the value of socioeconomic diversity, citing research that shows its educational benefits. However, it is not clear how this will be achieved, or how the desire for diversity will be balanced with the needs of low-income working families.

The mayor’s revised budget would also eliminate 16,000 slots in after-school programs and make significant cuts to child health clinics, newborn home visits, and other badly needed services, according to the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York City.

In response to these proposed cuts, the Emergency Coalition to Save Child Care, consisting of several dozen community-based organizations representing thousands of New Yorkers, has organized a campaign to demand that funding for early education be restored. Both ACS and the Coalition point out that such investment leads to economic growth in the long run.

CORRECTION 6/17/11: A previous version of this story stated that EarlyLearn NYC will be launched in July 2011. In fact, the request for proposals was released in May 2011, proposals are due in August 2011, and the new contracts will go into effect in July 2012.