Fifty children in yellow t-shirts from the Originals of Jamaica Day Care Center trekked across the Brooklyn Bridge toward City Hall this morning. They clutched colorful balloons from District Council 1707, a union for social services employees, and around their necks hung signs that read, “Parents and Children Need Daycare.”
Alongside them marched 1,500 protestors, including educators, daycare workers, parents and other daycare children. District Council 1707 organized the rally in response to the city’s planned citywide closure of 16 childcare centers.
“How could you deprive a child of a basic human right?” said Nina Beskire, 40, a single mother. “If the day care shuts down, my son and I are going to be in trouble because I’ll have to quit my job to stay home with him.”
Beskire’s 3-year-old son attends the Originals of Jamaica from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. five days a week. She said it’s affordable because it’s one of the city’s subsidized childcare centers. Eligible parents pay a weekly fee of $5 to $150 based on income. But because of proposed budget cuts by the Administration for Children’s Services, the day care will either be privatized or close its doors.
The Administration for Children’s Services said that all displaced children will be rerouted to other day care centers, but Linda Bissoondath, a teacher at the Helen Owen Carey Child Development Center in Park Slope, said that is unrealistic.
“We have 120 kids ages 2 to 5 from low-income families,” said Bissoondath at the rally. “The only other center around is at capacity and the others are private. We can turn into a private center but these families can’t afford to pay $150 a week.”
City officials said that most of the centers slated to close are in gentrifying neighborhoods such as Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Prospect Heights and Park Slope, that no longer require as many slots for low-income families. The 16 childcare centers currently hold 1,212 slots – with 1,100 children and 320 staff. The slots lost would represent five percent of the city’s total slots for subsidized day care. There are 324 other centers in the city.
These centers are all run by nonprofit organizations that receive contracts from the city. Many of those leases expired three years ago and would cost the city $17 million to renew them. Because of the rising cost, the administration has cut over 3,000 slots over the past six years. In the past four years, several kindergarten classrooms and after-school programs have also disappeared. This year’s budget cut will shut down an additional 31 classrooms.
“The reduction of early childhood programs is now a legacy of this administration,” said Raglan George Jr., the executive director of District Council 1707. “Since in office the Mayor has closed 30 centers and we’re out here today to dramatize how we feel about this.”
“We’re going to ramble today!” George hollered at the crowd in City Hall Park to rile them up.
The last time he led a rally was six years ago when the union’s day care workers went on strike for city contracts – and got them.
“The money’s there, we just have to grab it,” said GL Tyler, District Council 1707’s political director, who helped organize the event. “City council needs to fight for it. They did it once, they can do it again.”
Charles Rosa, the director of Leake and Watts Nursery School in the Bronx, said he was relieved that his day care wasn’t selected to close, but there’s still a fight to be fought.
“The Mayor is not negotiating in good faith for contracts,” said Rosa. “The city has a habit of letting contracts expire.”
That is why every four to six years daycare workers rally again for contracts. The only thing that seems to change are the children.
“Not much has changed over the years with the way the administration handles day care contracts,” Rosa said. “In four more years you’ll see us back here for another rally.”