day-care

Janet Lora is a single mother in Corona. Every weekday at 8 a.m., she drives her 5-year-old son, Freddy, to kindergarten at the Small World Day Care Center in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, before going to work as a medical secretary in Manhattan. Freddy, stays there until 5:30 p.m. when his mother comes back to pick him up.

“He’s been there since he was three,” said Lora. “He loves the other kids and the teachers there.”

On February 16, Lora got a letter from the city Administration for Child Services (ACS) telling her that starting next year, Freddy will not be able to attend kindergarten classes in his day care center. The letter advised her to try any public school in Queens instead. But when Lora went to her local school, she said she was told that it’s too crowded and that she needs to find another one.

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After 20 years of working for the city, Melvina Vandross doesn’t have a pension and hasn’t accumulated one day of paid vacation.

She’s one of more than 10,000 home-based child-care providers in the Bronx who contract with the Administration for Children’s Services to care for the children of low-income parents.

“The child-care system needs to be completely overhauled, from the way we’re paid to the respect we receive,” said Vandross.
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Click here for video reported and produced by Heather Appel, Zeyad Kasim and Nadia Zonis.