Public Employee Press

Rally hits Bloomberg on childcare

AFSCME District Council 1707 is keeping the pressure on Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his Administration for Children's Services over the failures of the reorganization of the city's subsidized child-care system.

On Oct. 19, the union representing childcare workers rallied on the steps of City Hall against the problems with the city's EarlyLearn system. The campaign to publicize EarlyLearn's negative outcomes has received support from other unions, including DC 37, the Council of School Supervisors & Administrators, and City Council members. Like DC 37, DC 1707 is part of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

DC 1707 Executive Director Raglan George called on the City Council to investigate the program, in particular, the status of taxpayer dollars earmarked for new EarlyLearn programs that - two months after the program's official opening date - have been unable to open, because they still don't have the necessary licenses from the Health Dept.

"We have checked some of the sites where they gave money and they're not even open," George said. "This mayor claims to be the mayor of all New York, but it's a crime what he's doing to the children of working families."

The union's concerns about EarlyLearn have been strengthened by a new report from the city's Independent Budget Office highlighting several problems:

• availability of slots is shrinking for families not on public assistance;
• the system still relies on allocations from the City Council, fostering uncertainty about funding and undermining the goals of expanding and improving the availability of care, and
• reimbursement rates are insufficient to cover costs.

In addition to these ongoing concerns, 13 subsidized day-care and Head Start centers in Brooklyn and Queens were devastated by Sandy and remain closed, with little indication that they will ever reopen.

"It's a total mess," said City Council member Stephen Levin at the rally. "Programs that were awarded massive contracts haven't been able to get up to speed while programs that have been running successfully for decades are now out of business."