The facilities set to close—Lucille Murray Child Development Center in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx and Children’s Liberation Day Care Center in Manhattan’s East Village—will join a total of 15 other ACS centers that have shut down since 2004, according to an analysis of the ACS Contracted Child Care Program Directory by District Council 1707, a union representing many childcare workers.
“We must not allow city day centers providing educational and support services for young children to be closed,” DC 1707 executive director Raglan George Jr. said in a statement last week.
City-funded day care centers are shut down for various reasons, from financial mismanagement and disrepair, the reason ACS says it’s closing Lucille Murray – to building renovation and conversion, which is what’s happening at Children’s Liberation. But according to the union’s research, the most common reason for closing was “under-enrollment,” when centers are not operating at full capacity. A total of nine centers did not serve enough children to meet their ACS-contracted targets, and were therefore not financially or programmatically feasible.
ACS spokeswoman Sheila Stainback says her agency does not close centers for under-enrollment alone, however, and there are often other factors at play. “If a program cannot attain full enrollment, possible outcomes can include a reduction of slots and budget, or conversion of slots to serve younger age groups,” Stainback said.
Under-enrolled centers that were shut down are among the most expensive facilities to maintain, as they operated under direct leases between the city and landlord, says child care policy consultant Suzanne Reisman. Not only do direct lease centers traditionally allocate more space per child than centers leased by day care organizations themselves, but their cost per square foot is also significantly higher. “These [closings] aren’t rash decisions made just to save $2,” Reisman said.
It hasn't been a hasty decision at Children’s Liberation – determining the center’s fate has taken years. It’s a unique case in that the center is part of a complicated struggle over the future of its building, the P.S. 122 community and arts center on First Avenue and East 9th Street. But it’s similar to others in that Children’s Liberation’s closure would seem to leave a void in local services. According to Paul Wilson, parent of a child at the center and a member of the sponsoring board of directors, if the program closes this summer as planned, there will be no publicly-funded child care centers in a sizable swath of Manhattan (14th Street south to Houston Street, Fifth Avenue east to Avenue C).
ACS welcomes Children’s Liberation moving to a new location, Wilson said, “But where are we going to get 7,300 square feet and a play yard for $5,500 a month? That’s renovated and ready to move into? Anyway, this is our rightful home.” There is one aspect of the center that ACS would like to duplicate, according to Stainback – the leasing structure of having the day care center, not ACS, contract with the landlord.
Some advocates remain puzzled by the low enrollment figures claimed by ACS. They point out that the agency itself acknowledges only serving less than one-third of the estimated 275,000 children under 6 from low-income families. “The reality is that in every district there are always going to be pockets of poverty,” says Sandy Socolar, senior policy analyst at DC 1707. While centers are closing, there remain a large number of children who could benefit from their services, which are offered on a sliding scale related to the family's income.
