By Jeff Lipton
Kahn, 25, of Oceanside, holds a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology and has worked at the center at 112 Wahl Avenue for two and a half years, with little reward other than the satisfaction she has received spending time with the children.
I adore them. They are wonderful, she said. But it's tough because I live at home with my parents. If I move out, it will be impossible and would be tough to make ends meet. I need to get a new car but I can't afford to pay for it now.
The day care industry is in jeopardy of losing dedicated teachers such as Kahn because they are on the lowest rung of wage-earners in the county. And a proposal by Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi to strip salary enhancement funds from them as part of his ambitious four-year plan to cut a massive deficit may open the gates for a mass exodus of qualified and devoted teachers. The salary enhancement funds, which have been included in the county budget since 1989 to lure qualified teachers to child care centers, increase a starting salary from $16,000 to about $21,000 for a teacher and $13,000 to $16,000 for an assistant teacher.
About 483 teachers and 629 assistant teachers working in the 118 day care centers in the county receive enhancement funds. About 11,000 families would be impacted, including 170 who live in the Five Towns and send their children to day care at Peter J. DeSibio or the Five Towns Community Center on Lawrence Avenue in Inwood or Little Angel Day Care on Sheridan Boulevard, also in Inwood.
A proposal to eliminate all of the salary enhancement funds from day care workers would result in a savings of about $3.8 million a year, which day care officials said is a drop in the bucket in a four-year plan that is attempting to find savings of more than $300 million, mainly through work force reductions.
It's absurd, absolutely absurd, said Jan Barbieri, executive director of Child Care Council of Nassau Inc., headquartered in Franklin Square. I told Tom Suozzi to consider this to be the demise of child care as we know it in Nassau County.
She added that cuts of any kind to child care in the county are unacceptable.
The money is important, said Bernice Levin, executive director of Peter J. DeSibio center, It helps us to hire quality teachers. And it is critical to attract quality teachers to day care, when the emotional and social development of children begins to take shape, she said.
Jonathan Davis, executive director of the Five Towns Community Center, is worried that there will be some exodus of qualified teachers in day care, many of whom will look to join the ranks of much higher paying positions in the public schools. This, day care experts fear, will force some of the child care centers to close, stranding many needy parents who greatly depend on day care services. Many of the parents are low-income and receive assistance to send their children to day care based on a sliding scale fee.
The signal being sent to day care providers is that day care is often a low priority in the county, they said. Davis is used to shots being taken at day care. About three years ago, he lost all of his young day care workers when the former county executive slashed $2.5 million in salary enhancement funds. Right now, we don't have any young workers, he said.
And as of Jan. 11 this year, the Five Towns Community Center was forced to drop one of its day care programs that has been in operation for more than three decades because it was operating with a $7,500-a-month deficit.
Levin, Davis and Barbieri were among a large number of day care providers who attended a meeting of the County Legislature on Monday, March 25, attempting to persuade lawmakers not to cut any more day care funds. They came prepared with a post card campaign, swamping legislators with 15,000 and the county executive with another 15,000, urging against any cuts in child care.
In addition, Barbieri met with Suozzi's staff last week and emphasized her point that any cuts made to child care is unacceptable. It would be a mass exodus, she said. We will not be able to keep teachers. It would be impossible to find qualified staff and centers would be forced to close and there will be fewer slots for children. It will have a tremendous trickle-down effect. If centers are forced to close, jobs will be lost, including bus drivers, and the bookkeepers and all businesses that do business with these centers will lose out as well.
She said day care gets picked on because it is not unionized and there is no labor support behind the industry.
There's no money in it for any young person who is a college graduate and a professional, Barbieri said. They have two choices: They can live at home with their parents or there must be a second wage-earner. This is going to erode the base of qualified teachers.
Kahn agrees. She has no choice but to hold on for a little while longer. But it's just a matter of time before she searches for a better-paying job. I think a lot of teachers at my center are looking for different work, said Kahn, who graduated after four years at SUNY Stony Brook and wants to pursue a Master's Degree. The quality of workers at the center will really decrease.
Right now I love what I'm doing, she said. I love the age group I'm working with. I would like to stay here, but not if my salary goes down.
