Bulletin Newspapers
Daycare funding dilemma intensifies:
Yoon threatens to block Mayor’s budget if BCYF cuts are not restored
April 23, 2009
By: Scott Wachtler and Joseph Mont
“When the economy tightens, we have to prioritize which jobs have the greatest effect on our daily lives,” Yoon said. “Few city employees have a greater impact on the lives of children and the needs of families than our pre-school and day care workers. These are union workers who accepted the Mayor’s wage freeze, and now the city is turning its back on their service. It is a matter of political will to save these positions.”
Yoon has threatened to reject the current budget proposed by Mayor Thomas Menino, and under review by the City Council, if the funding is not restored.
“It was apparent to me that a strategic decision was made at the mayoral level, behind closed doors, about the fate of BCYF centers across the city,” Yoon said. “The decision was to let them sink or swim. But it is the kids who suffer the most in the end. It is the kids who need the center the most who will suffer the most… In an economic downturn, this is the wrong time to be saying sink or swim.”
Prior to the cuts, the pre-school and childcare programs were partially funded through grants applied for by the Boston Centers for Youth and Family. The proposed cuts will force individual community center councils to apply for the grants themselves. Community centers will also need to rely on increased fees and private donations in order to keep the workers, who would no longer be city employees and who would lose their union membership and benefits.
Tobin said he wants answers to some very important questions about the cuts.
“The applications for the grants that run these programs haven’t been filed yet and the deadline is April 24,” he said. “If you are going to expect the site councils to run these programs, you’re not giving them a lot of time to apply for grants that the city has always applied for. If they are going to move the responsibility for funding to the site council, we need to make sure they’re prepared to handle it.”
Yoon said the community centers should not be left on their own to provide funding to keep the childcare workers.
“The city is moving to privatize an integral part of our community centers,” he said. “We cannot use a sink-or-swim strategy for programs that for many families are the only affordable option for their children.”
Tobin said he wants the hearing to address if it is really fair to have the site councils take on the mission of funding these programs.
The issue of what will become of workers in pre-school and childcare centers has hit home for Tobin. The Ohrenberger Center in his district is one of nine throughout Boston that will be affected by the cuts.
Earlier in the month, hundreds of parents mobilized with little notice to attend a meeting with BCYF executive director Daphne Griffin to discuss the cuts.
Parents rallied to save the jobs of two pre-school teachers with over 60 years of combined teaching experience � Pat Whall and Grace Guinnane.
“People need these programs,” he said. “The thing that struck me about the Ohrenberger meeting was just how many people showed up for Grace and Pat even though it came with little notice and at a tough time for working families. Plus, there were a lot of alums of that program there. Generations of kids have been taught by Grace and Pat.”
Along with the Ohrenberger Center in West Roxbury, other centers affected include: the Roslindale Community Center, Curtis Hall and the Hennigan (Jamaica Plain), the Jackson Mann (Allston), the Kent (Charlestown), and the Marshall, Murphy and Perkins (Dorchester).
For their part, city officials have said that they are looking for grant money and other funding mechanisms that will keep the targeted programs in service. Griffin made the case, in a recent interview with the Bulletin, that all other day care programs across the city are fully self-sufficient and do not rely on direct funding from the city.
Yoon said he does understand that reasoning, but not the abrupt way the cuts were handled.
“If the model is a true public/private partnership then, on the public side, we should be building the capacity of the centers that need it the most,” he said. “What I’m going to be calling on is that the city apply for these state grants, which we have always gotten, by this Friday, and then spend the next year finding the resources to provide technical assistance, capacity building and conducting organizational assessments so that by next year some of these centers reach high levels of self-sufficiency.
