By Suzanne Ma
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER EAST SIDE — As the city deals with its latest round of budget cuts, a pair of subsidized day-care programs in Manhattan are set to close, displacing hundreds of children currently under the care of the Administration for Children’s Services.
The Puerto Rican Council Day Care Center on the Lower East Side and the Harbor Morningside Children Day Care Center in Morningside Heights are among 16 programs throughout the city slated to be axed.
The programs are housed in leased properties, where rents have risen to as much as $400,000 a year — an amount ACS claims it can no longer afford. The agency, which investigates issues of child abuse, refers children to the day-care centers it helps fund across the city.
But workers at the Puerto Rican Council Day Care Center say the move will destroy a community that's been taking care of neighborhood children for 40 years.
"We couldn't believe it," said Consuela Rebong, education director at the Suffolk St. day-care center. "Our teachers wept.”
Rebong explained that many of the instructors once attended the day-care program themselves as children and later returned to the community as working adults.
Currently, there are nearly 100 children enrolled in the program, 86 of whom have been referred to the center by ACS.
"We have been here for so many years, so many generations" said Roberto Napoleon, chairman of the board of directors at the Puerto Rican Council Day Care Center. "I feel so sorry for the children. We just want to know why this is happening to us."
"The state and federal governments have been backing away and not keeping up with the rising costs of child care," said spokeswoman Sharman Stein.
"The city has been stepping up and paying the difference. In this difficult economic climate, the city cannot maintain the system the way it is."
Stein noted that the cuts would save the city $16 million by 2012 and will relocate 750 children from their current day-care programs to neighboring subsidized day-care centers.
"Nobody is losing a spot,” she said. “We are [just] consolidating the system.”
