Council Member Leroy Comrie, Advocates, Speak Out Against Cuts ...

As budget negotiations continue to take place in the City Council, Mayor Bloomberg has proposed major cuts to child care services across the city. The cuts proposed by the administration will decrease day care and after school funding, which is meant to raise educational standards, increase family support programs and strengthen professional development for teachers, leaving 6,500 children across the city without a place to go. These proposed cuts will devastate working families due to the lack of sufficient after-school and day care slots.

The rally took place outside of the Jamaica branch of the Committee For Early Childhood Development (CFECD) Center, one of the programs slated to be cut. The branch opened 46 years ago, and the Committee has provided an award winning pre-kindergarten program that serves over 200 children with many other needy families on a waiting list. Next year, based on the funding levels the administration has proposed, only 85 children will be able to participate in the program.

?The programs provided by CFECD and other organizations are life saving for many families across Queens? said Council Member Leroy Comrie. ?These cuts further prove how out of touch this administration is with New Yorkers who are trying to provide the best opportunities for their children. As budget negotiations continue, my colleagues and I in the Council will work to try and restore as much of the funding as possible. for childcare and after school programs.

These organizations have also been forced to jump through several hoops in order to obtain funding. The Request for Proposal process, created by the administration, is confusing, arbitrary, and is purposefully designed to make it harder for organizations like CFECD to continue their programs. In these difficult times, the city should not be making it harder for people whose job it is to help families and individuals that are most in need.?

State Senator Shirley Huntley: ?Child Care Services have been a critical starting place for low income families and single parents in the Southeast Queens communities for more than 40 years. The loss of over 1,000 child care slots in Southeast Queens will result in the devastation of single & low income parents availability to work. Unemployment for parent and staff of the centers will certainly increase the already high foreclose rate that is plaguing Southeast Queens.More so than the loss of homes and jobs is the loss of an early quality educational start for the young innocent children who attend these centers.? The foundation of early childhood education has proven that children who have attended early childhood centers are better prepared upon entering elementary school which results in? a higher rate of graduation from high school. Now is NOT the time to remove child services in Southeast Queens and relocate these services to other areas!?

Council Member Ruben Wills: ?Early Learn will dramatically reduce critical investment into early childhood development for over 6500 of the most vulnerable New Yorkers, our children. Tough budget decisions lie ahead but it should not be at the sacrifice of essential support for working families nor should our children pay the price.?

Mojisola Bafunso (Executive Director of CFECD): If the purpose of the EarlyLearn NYC program is to improve the quality of early childhood education in New York City, NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) ACCREDITED programs must be a priority.

Funding for these programs are based on a formula used by the Administration for Children?s Services (ACS) that assesses the area where the program is located via zip code, while factoring in the Demonstrated Level of Quantity and Quality of Successful Relevant Experience (20%), Demonstrated Level of Organizational Capability (40%), and Quality of Proposed Approach (40%). While the administration has said this formula allows them to focus funds on areas with the highest needs, zip codes do not accurately reflect the areas of the city with families that require the most support, almost ensuring disproportionate cuts.

This year, 55 programs across the city have been closed with 19 new providers set to replace them. While the new providers will be housed in the same locations, many of them do not have the requisite experience necessary to help the children. With Southeast Queens? high immigrant population, CFECD has supervisors that speak the many different languages spoken by people who come to the area from all over the world. If the facility is closed, the culture and institutional knowledge that has made CFECD so successful will be lost.

To make matters more frustrating, even with the funds the administration has allocated, the facilities that will remain open across the city will be unable to serve the same amount of children they currently provide for. In Councilman Comrie?s district, 701 less children will be able to participate in these programs next year, under the current proposal.

The press conference will feature children that use the facility and they will express how it has improved the quality of their life. Elected officials will speak out against the cuts and will continue to work to find the necessary funds to keep the programs going.

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