General News
UFT: Day care influx to squeeze kindergartners
Jun 4, 2009 2:39 PM
UFT Vice President for Elementary Schools Karen Alford testified on May 28 at a state legislative hearing that the city’s plan to cut costs by shunting more than 3,200 low-income 5-year-olds from its community-based day care centers into kindergarten classrooms would have a “devastating” impact on children and parents.
Alford, who appeared at a joint hearing of the Assembly and Senate committees on education and on children and families at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, said she was there to speak “not only of educators who work in our already-overcrowded public schools and dread the thought of even greater class sizes,” but also on behalf of the children and parents who depend on public schools and day care centers to deliver quality early education and care.
The 300 day care centers funded by the Administration for Children’s Services, Alford said, provide a comprehensive educational program with certified teachers and “often are the only center-based child care programs available to New Yorkers in low-income communities.”
The city’s plan to save $15 million by diverting 5-year-olds from ACS centers into public school kindergarten, she said, will present “a new source of anxiety” for the low-income working parents that rely on the ACS day care centers.
“What about those who need care during non-traditional work hours? Will school-based programs provide care during the summer?” she asked. “These are the concrete questions faced by working families.”
The youngsters in question also have reason for anxiety, Alford added. “They will be taken from a familiar care setting and their education will be interrupted,” she said, noting that many of these children will need to be bused to schools and programs outside their neighborhoods.
Another problem with the city’s plan, Alford said, is that the schools to which ACS intends to move these children are already overcrowded.
“Parents, teachers, and officials at both DOE and ACS all know that school overcrowding makes it extremely difficult for New York’s children to get the education they deserve,” Alford said.
Alford called for a more comprehensive solution, not an approach that just shifts the problem elsewhere.
“Why does ACS need to move these children?” she said. “It is time for the city to stop shuffling money and children — and to find real solutions to the real problems facing our public schools and day care centers.”
