As if childcare options weren’t already bleakly scarce, hundreds of families across the city are now racing to find alternatives in the wake of five beloved daycare facilities announcing their closures this week.
According to The Daily News, the New York City Department of Education has chosen not to renew the leases of four early childhood care centers in Brooklyn, and another in Queens, despite a recently proposed $110 million fund to upgrade and build new daycares from Governor Kathy Kochul.
The Brooklyn facilities include Nuestros Ninos on South 4th Street in Williamsburg, Friends of Crown Heights at Prospect Avenue and Utica Avenue, the Fort Greene Council at Fulton Street and Grand Avenue, and Grand Street Settlement on Stanhope Street and Wyckoff Avenue in Bushwick (where Hochul stood and announced her fund just two weeks before the center was informed its lease had been effectively revoked). Without intervention, the All My Children Daycare and Nursery School in South Jamaica, Queens will also shut its doors by the end of this year.
The DOE reportedly cited low enrollment as the reason for shutting down the daycares, but the directors of those programs claim there are plenty of families utilizing their services and facilities. Grand Street Settlement CEO Robert Cordero told Gothamist the city had its numbers wrong; that Grand Street was not only fully enrolled but had a waitlist for new kids. Nuestros Ninos Executive Director Ingrid Matias Chungata is similarly unsure of how the city came up with its figures. “We are 96 children in the building. Right now, we’re just at 76 percent of enrollment,” Chungata said in a statement to CBS.
Though the city has pledged to relocate all of the children impacted, the closures could displace or disrupt crucial services for almost 300 kids in total.
Nuestros Ninos will hold a rally and press conference outside of its Williamsburg location (where it has served as a community-wide resource for more than 50 years) at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 24. As their lease approaches the end of its term on June 30, the daycare is also leading an outreach campaign, encouraging local families and residents to contact their local officials.
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