Public Employee Press

Unions fight day-care cuts

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

DC 37 activists and leaders joined an estimated 2,000 workers and parents May 6 to protest the mayor’s plan to eliminate kindergarten classes at city day-care centers.

The Administration for Children’s Services claims that it will save $15 million by moving classes for 3,200 5-year-olds to public schools. But critics maintain that the city will actually wind up spending $7 million more in busing and building-alteration costs as the influx of new kids worsens overcrowding in the schools.

The demonstrators marched up Broadway from South Ferry to City Hall Park, where union leaders, politicians and community activists denounced the administration’s plan as ill-conceived and charged that it would greatly inconvenience parents, lead to closing day-care centers and threaten union jobs.

District Council 1707, which, like DC 37, is affiliated with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, has been battling the plan since the Bloomberg administration announced it earlier this year. DC 1707 represents 6,000 day-care center and 3,000 Head Start workers, who also face cuts in the city budget.

The ACS plan would move all 5-year-olds from day-care kindergartens to kindergartens in public schools, cut pre-kindergarten funding and reduce Head Start programs by 3 percent.

“What the mayor is doing is reckless,” said Lee Saunders, assistant to AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, at the rally. “It is union busting.”

The protestors carried signs with such messages as “Stop Cutting Child Care,” and “Our Children Need Day Care.”

Shame on Bloomberg

“A society is judged on the basis of how you treat the youngest and the oldest,” said DC 37 Associate Director Oliver Gray, who called the cuts a callous attack on a vulnerable group — children. “This mayor should be ashamed of himself.”

City Council member Charles Barron also said the plan reflected poorly on the priorities of the Bloomberg administration, which he said gave millions of dollars in tax breaks for renovating sports stadiums while its budget would cut public services and lay off public employees.

“The mayor has no respect for communities such as ours. We need our day-care services!” said Veronica Montgomery-Costa, president of DC 37 and Board of Education Employees Local 372. She told the demonstrators that her mother was a day-care worker and her siblings used day-care services.

Other speakers included city Comptroller William Thompson Jr., state AFL-CIO President Denis Hughes, Professional Staff Congress President Barbara Bowen, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, and City Council members Helen Foster, Eric Gioia, Oliver Koppell, Domenic Recchia and Al Vann.

DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts told PEP that the city administration is “playing with the lives of city workers and their children and grandchildren. Many of our members and other working people throughout this city depend on these programs so they can keep their jobs.”