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Child care update: An innovative solution hits a wall

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By DEBORAH E. LANS

CRARYVILLE–As birth rates and school enrollment decline in Columbia County, school closures have occurred and school consolidation becomes a greater possibility. At Taconic Hills Central School District, enrollment has virtually halved since 2002. In 2002, there were 1,885 K-12 students. In 2023-4 there were 981. Several years ago, the district’s Board of Education began to explore a strategy to address this reality as well as the urgent need for child care in the area. The idea was to re-purpose unused school space to provide child care. Today, funding the $230,000 in modifications that are needed to make the school’s unused space ready for a program is the main obstacle that stands between the idea and the reality. But the entire project has proved to be a challenge due to state regulations.

In 2024, Pattern for Progress issued a report called “Closed Schools, Open Minds.” The report chronicled the decline in the birth rate in the Hudson Valley (in Columbia County, from 595 in 2010 to 476 in 2021, with the under-five population declining from 3,082 to 2,352), the increase in home-schooling post-pandemic, and other factors that have led to a steady decline in school enrollment and a consequent closure of schools in the area. Since 2008, 39 schools in the Hudson Valley have closed. In the past 15 years, seven school buildings have closed in Columbia County alone: John L. Edwards Primary (Hudson, 2018); Martin H. Glynn (Valatie, 2018); Martin Van Buren (Kinderhook, 2015); Taconic Hills Middle (Craryville, 2013); Greenport Elementary (Greenport, 2009); Ockawamick (Claverack, 1999); and Roeliff Jansen (Hillsdale, 1999).

Some have been reopened in other capacities and plans to reuse others are underway.

The Taconic Hills effort aims at a different pathway, putting unused space to an alternative use that serves the community and at the same time bolsters the independent viability of the school district, so that a building need not close.

Some years ago, Bonnie Torchia and Rick Viebrock, now respectively the school board president and vice president, with their fellow board members, learned that a steady exodus of teachers was attributable, in part, to the lack of affordable child care in the community. Today, there are four licensed child care programs within the district boundaries with an overall capacity of 48 children, of which only 18 slots are for infants and toddlers. The school board was also, of course, aware of declining enrollment. The idea of reconfiguring unused school space to host a child care center was intriguing. It could address a community need and a key reason younger teachers were exiting the school. Their investigations led to the one school in the state where a child care center was operated – in Old Forge, a tiny town in Herkimer County.

An image of an infant/toddler classroom layout. Image contributed

When Lynnette Brunger joined the district as superintendent in September 2023, the investigations were underway, and she fully supported the effort. In the time since, the school has hired an architect and costed out the renovations needed to meet the state’s guidelines for child care facilities, and it has identified a group to run the child care program: Healthy Kids, a Poughkeepsie-based group that also runs the program in Old Forge.

Since Taconic Hills already has a pre-k program, and because the community’s greatest need is for care of infants and toddlers, Taconic Hills currently plans to open two classrooms: one for 18- to 24-month-olds and one for 24-to 36-month-olds — about 30 children in all. As Superintendent Brunger puts it, “As educators, we know that the years from 0 to 5 are the most critical, so this program will address a key area of need.” In the county as a whole, the greatest need is, likewise, for infant and toddler child care spots.

In addition, Ms. Torchia hopes that providing on-site childcare for the school’s younger teachers will help in both recruiting and retaining talent. A center in the school will also ease the transition of toddlers to the school’s pre-k program.

The school expects that the operating costs to Taconic Hills of the program will be covered by the fees paid to it by Healthy Kids. In turn, Taconic Hills teachers are likely to qualify for state subsidies to offset child care costs since, depending on family size, subsidies are available to families earning from $73,869.56 (for a 2-member family) to $91,250.63 (3-member family), $108,631.70 (4-member family) on up to $156,429.65 (10-member family).

The project would seem to be a no-brainer. After all, schools are designed for young people. Taconic Hills already runs a pre-k to 12 program, and it has food service, a nurse and a host of other child-centered services and amenities.

Instead, the conversion has proved to be challenging. The school is under the authority of the State Education Department (SED), whereas child care facilities are governed by the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS), and in many respects the regulations do not align. Thus, there are particular physical requirements for infant and toddler classrooms that differ from those of a public school classroom. OCFS regulations specify the number of sinks and number and height of toilets for the child care center (which must be separate from the school’s facilities), ingress and egress must be at grade, doors must separate the day care program from the rest of the school. If school services are used, it must be on a contractual basis. At bottom, the school and the child care center must be totally segregated from each other. School transportation cannot be utilized, recreation must be separate.

In all, Taconic Hills needs to spend $230,000 to renovate the space to OCFS specifications. Accessing funds has proven a Catch-22. Funds from Taconic Hills’ budget cannot be used for this purpose, as SED rules restrict the use of funds to the district’s education programs. Further, Taconic Hills cannot apply for grants available to child care providers, as it will function as a landlord to Healthy Kids and not a direct provider. But, Healthy Kids cannot apply for money for construction until it is operating the center at Taconic Hills. Although the district will need the approval of both SED and OCFS before the program can open, the two authorities each appear to function in silos and do not talk to each other.

‘As educators, we know that the years from 0 to 5 are the most critical, so this program will address a key area of need.’

Taconic Hills Superintendent Lynnette Brunger

So, to meet the $230,000 construction costs – which is currently the only significant obstacle to getting the child care program off the ground – Taconic Hills is forced to seek foundation and private funding, an effort that is currently underway. The school hopes to have a program running in 2026.

In her January 5 State of the State message, Governor Hochul proposed several measures to support child care, including a $110 million Childcare Construction Fund to build new and repair existing facilities. While the details of the proposed program are not known, the general description given by the governor suggests that the funds will not be available to repurpose space from, say, a school facility to a child care setting.

The governor’s proposals also include creating a “substitute pool” of child care providers, something for which advocates have been pressing. Currently, if a child care educator is absent, for example for illness (a given for adults working with children) a classroom or facility must be closed, as only specific individuals are permitted to be in the facility. The result is chaos for parents who have to scramble for care and a loss of revenue for the operator. A “substitute pool” would allow vetted individuals to step into the breach and keep the room in question operating.

But much as the governor has touted her child care measures, in 2024 she also vetoed laws that passed the state legislature with broad, bi-partisan support and that experts have been advocating for years as crucial. For example, one bill, passed unanimously in the state Senate and Assembly, would have addressed the eligibility rules for child care assistance. While the state has significantly increased eligibility levels, greatly benefiting the middle class, the rules still disqualify parents making less than the minimum wage. Thus, some home health aides, “gig” workers, and small business owners, for example, do not qualify for child care subsidies. The minimum earnings rule is not required by federal laws governing child care assistance, and most states do not impose such a requirement.

Similarly, in December the governor vetoed a bi-partisan bill that would have “decoupled” child care subsidies from the exact hours that parents are at work or school – a rule that not only burdens providers with record-keeping but also punishes them because they are not paid when parents vacation or a child is out sick, as they are not paid when a parent is not working or gaining education or when a child is absent, even though those events do not change the provider’s costs of operation. The coupling requirement in effect punishes providers for caring for subsidy-users and those users themselves; when a parent paying the full tuition chooses to leave her child at a center so she can grocery shop, the provider is not penalized. When a full-paying parent keeps his child at home for illness or leaves for a family vacation, the provider does not lose that revenue. The “de-coupling” law would have addressed this inequity — one of the reasons why child care facilities rarely achieve decent profit margins and therefore cannot pay their employees a living wage.

Finally, proposals to lift the wages of child care workers – a key to attracting and retaining workers – have not as yet gained governmental support.

For more information about the Taconic Hills program, contact the District Office at 518-325-2800.

To contact reporter Deborah Lans, email deborahlans@icloud.com.

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