New York, NY – An analysis from United Neighborhood Houses released to the Daily News shows the Bloomberg administration is determining which nonprofits should get childcare funding based largely on a zip code’s affluence.
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“In the absence of (budget) money, they are having to come up with these bizarre schemes,” said Nancy Wackstein, the advocacy group’s executive director.
Her organization said the cuts will mean the loss of 47,000 slots for children in childcare and after-school programs.
The Administration for Children’s Services, which funds subsidized daycare, created targeted and nontargeted zip codes based on income and other factors, officials said.
ACS Commissioner Ronald Richter noted that 82% of the money for childcare will be distributed in the areas his agency defined as targeted.
The agency will lose between 8,000 – 9,000 daycare seats in October, a spokesman said, and another 7,700 children who receive vouchers for services will lose funding.
The number of spots available to children in city-subsidized after-school programs could drop by nearly half — from 53,000 in July 2012 to about 29,000 in July 2013, her office said.
“These cuts they’re proposing would be devastating,” City Councilman Stephen Levin (D-Brooklyn) said. “I represent some zip codes that have a high income, but have pockets of poverty.”
Fortunately, the jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan are relatively affluent and don’t need this subsidy as much as lower income minority neighborhoods. Levin should be happy that he only has small pockets of poverty and stop complaining. At a time of limited resources, giving priority to those most in need makes sense, both from a policy and moral perspective.
11219 and 11211 will be first to be axed, Bloomberg hates us.
public schools are free and the waSTE IS IMMENSE its enough they get free public schools
Yet Bloomberg has time to go around trying to ban guns from everyone. Please get rid of this guy. Maybe he will try to get himself a fourth term. He is a dictator.
How much more are we going to suffer from this 3 term heartless creature? who has money for bike lanes, plazas, street dividers (Ft. Hamilton) appease all unions, MTA overtime schemes and other wastes and then let it out on the working middle class strangling them time & time again, tax, tax , and tax, raise everything permits, fees and cut services.
BTW Parents in the mentioned less affluent areas are mostly on public assistance and handouts and do nothing all day anyway let the take care of their children instead of hanging around doing nothing…
There are waiting lists literally years long for the almost nonexistent subsidized programs in the religious neighborhoods in Brooklyn — nothing to cut!
Moreover, to anyone who has seen the graduation rates in public schools in Brooklyn, there is no “choice” to send our children to private schools. Unless of course, you don’t love your children (G-d forbid). There are children from the most horrible neighborhoods and backgrounds being bused into our neighborhoods, educated on our tax dollars, while we struggle to pay for their tuition as well as that for decent educations for our children. Not justice.
What we need are 100% tax credits on tuition paid, and fair compensation in return for what we pay already. Don’t try and sell the idea of vouchers, that simply creates more ways for the government to get involved in something it has zero success with and more ways to increase our taxes to pay for some other kid’s education.
The problem is when the administrators stuff their pockets and the needy parents don’t benefit.