By Anna Gustafson
For Jamaica resident Erica Miller, the city’s proposal to move thousands of kindergarten students from day care centers to public schools this fall is going to make life a lot harder — and much more expensive.
The city Administration for Children’s Services plans to move about 3,500 children in ACS subsidized day care centers to public schools for kindergarten next fall, a move city officials say will save them about $15 million.
The decision has left Miller, a single mother, to register her 5−year−old daughter at several public schools in an attempt to find a program that would keep her child until she could pick her up after work. The only school that would accept the student for next fall was PS 223 in Jamaica, which does not have an extended kindergarten program. Many of the other schools cited overcrowding as the reason for the student’s rejection, Miller said.
Now the Jamaica woman will either need to pick her daughter up from school at 2:30 p.m. or pay for a baby−sitter to watch after her while she works in the afternoons. If her daughter, A’vyonce, had been able to go to the current kindergarten program at the Jamaica day care center she now attends, Miller would have been able to pick her up when the center closes at 6 p.m.
To make matters worse, Miller is also looking for a job because ACS is slated to eliminate her teaching position at Amistad Early Childhood Education Center in Jamaica.
“It is very stressful,” Miller said. “She has to go to kindergarten, but I work, so what do I do? I’ll end up paying money for a baby−sitter. And I’m afraid about her going into the public schools. The public schools are too overcrowded.”
Hundreds of parents, legislators and community activists rallied May 6 at City Hall against the city’s decision to eliminate the kindergarten programs at ACS programs, saying it will burden already overcrowded schools.
Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and City Council members Elizabeth Crowley (D−Middle Village), Julissa Ferreras (D−East Elmhurst), Helen Sears (D−Jackson Heights), David Weprin (D−Hollis) and Leroy Comrie (D−St. Albans) attended the rally.
“There’s a need for the kindergarten at the day cares,” said Dan Andrews, a spokesman for Marshall. “It allows many parents the ability to hold down a job.”
“The borough president is certainly hopeful this won’t happen, and the budget process isn’t over yet,” Andrews added. “But we’re at the point where we’re having rallies about this and letting the opposition to this be evident.”
The Council could still vote to fund the 3,500 kindergarten slots in the budget.
Jamaica resident Mabel Everett, president of District Council 1707 Local 205, the union representing day care workers in the city, said the decision to move the students could leave parents with little choice as to where their children will attend kindergarten.
“Parents are being asked to register students in two or three different schools to ensure they can find a place to go,” Everett said. “If the only place the city can find for your child to go to school is in the Bronx, even if you live in Queens, and you can’t take it, that’s on you. The city says that’s your problem.”
The ACS said it must eliminate the subsidized slots in order to address a $62 million deficit in their child care budget.
“We certainly understand parents are upset, but unfortunately we couldn’t support” the day care kindergarten programs, said ACS Director of Communications Sharman Stein.
Reach reporter Anna Gustafson by e−mail at agustafson@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718−229−0300, Ext. 174.
