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The Administration for Children’s Services has announced that starting September it will roll out the next phase of “Project Full Enrollment” by implementing a new Day Care Center funding formula.

The new funding formula will be based on enrollment and attendance. Currently, the City’s Administration for Children’s Services pays the entirety of day care centers’ operating costs for staff and facilities, regardless of whether full-capacity is reached.

ACS claims the initiative will serve as incentive to achieve and maintain full enrollment, but some elected officials and parents, along with the union for day care workers, AFSCME - District Council 1707, have come out in opposition.

“The plan to change efficient fully-funded day care to a pay-per-child system will have devastating effects on communities and should not go forward,” DC 1707 Executive Director Raglan George Jr. said. “We ask the Mayor to stop the implementation of this disastrous de-funding plan and call on ACS to work collaboratively with day care centers, public officials, community organizations and unions to fully enroll these programs.”

The union is urging ACS to address enrollment issues rather than adjust the funding model. But ACS said rampant under-enrollment has cost it $40 million.

“For too long we have struggled to use our limited dollars to make subsidized child care available to as many children as possible while the City has been paying for vacant seats,” ACS Commissioner John Mattingly said.

Neal Tepel, assistant to the executive director for District Council 1707, said full-funding is necessary.

“Like Head Start and UPK, there is no way that day care centers can survive unless they are fully funded to cover their fixed costs for staff and facilities,” Tepel said.
The announcement has come on the heels of a record number of closures and consolidations; ACS has shut down or downsized 17 centers since 2004. ACS also plans to continue reducing funding for those centers with a past enrollment record of 85 percent or less.

Earlier this year, 10 centers in Queens received letters from ACS warning them that budgets would be cut if their numbers didn’t increase. Jamaica’s National Sorority Phi Delta and Rockaway’s Bethel Mission Loving Day’s – with enrollments coming in at 71 and 51 percent respectively – were among the 135 centers citywide to receive letters.

In testimony before the City Council General Welfare Committee, Mattingly said ACS would commit $2 million toward assisting centers with marketing and recruitment. In addition, ACS intends to streamline operations at ACS child care Resource Areas and simplify application materials.
“We want to help these centers be filled to capacity,” Mattingly said. “It’s our job to help them, and we will do so – but, as we’ve outlined, it’s up to the centers to step up and do the work that’s required to make sure there’s a child in every single available seat.”

Mattingly also addressed the multiple closures.
“If a facility does find that it cannot stay open due to under-enrollment or other issues, ACS will make sure those children who attended that center have other options nearby,” he said.

But Tepel questions the quality of these alternatives.
“In many cases when a center is eliminated, children attending that program are not provided the equivalent educational experience in another center,” Tepel said. “ACS will offer a voucher for child care which is not the same as providing an enriched educational experience in a day care center.”