The Bronx Ink

Childcare centers, like BronxWorks, could be forced to make alterations to their programs come 2011. Photo: Zach Schonbrun

It was early in the afternoon, and the 15 preschool children in Room 4 at BronxWorks’s Learning Center had just finished naptime. Their instructor, Diane Semper, gathered the group in a semicircle on the navy blue rug in the back of the brightly lit classroom and began reading a picture book to the wide-eyed group of three-year-olds. It was about a Thanksgiving turkey being threatened by a fox.

Day care facilities, like this one in Highbridge, are facing their own impending threat as the city prepares to issue a proposal for re-evaluation of its funding of public childcare programs, a shakeup that could potentially alter how preschoolers are educated in the borough.

An outline of the plan drawn up in April titled “EarlyLearn NYC” is currently under revision by the Administration for Child Services (ACS) but is due to be finalized as a proposal by January. It will radically reformat the criteria for how public childcare facilities across the city receive funding and geographically organize their classrooms, and could reduce the overall number of contracts awarded to daycare providers. A new stipulation forcing directors to match an unspecified amount of funding for their programs is a special concern for centers in low-income neighborhoods.

A year after the city shuttered four daycare centers in the Bronx, including one in Highbridge, many program directors are unsure what the new measure will mean for their facilities.

“That’s a major, major issue that’s now on the boards,” said James Nathaniel, chief executive officer of the Highbridge Advisory Council, a non-profit  childhood education organization. “We don’t know what the future holds.”

Nathaniel’s organization is the largest community-based childcare provider in the Bronx, serving approximately 1,200 children in eight facilities throughout the district. But funding cutbacks in the last year have knocked away one classroom, slashed spending and dropped current teaching positions to the minimum student-teacher ratio.

Now, Nathaniel has another item to worry about: if the proposal goes through, he would need to reapply to continue running his agency, with no guarantee it will stay in his hands. Furthermore, the application for bidding for day care agencies will now be open to for-profit along with non-profit companies, adding to the competition for services and raising questions about where the overall system is headed.

“We’re not sure the level of quality the for-profits will adhere to for their programs,” said Andrea Anthony, executive director of the Daycare Council of New York, a federation that helps operate more than 300 public child care centers in the city. “Our programs are required to adhere to certain educational standards. That may not be the case with for-profits.”

The original proposal for “Early Learn” drafted on April 2 centered around three models for child-care services in New York City, according to its outline. No numbers have yet been released for how many children each model must support or how many programs could be cut entirely, though the outline indicated a decrease to 350 from the 570 contracts it currently holds with programs throughout the city.

An ACS spokesperson contended that the timing was necessary to allow for competitive bidding on contracts, some of which have been in place for nearly a decade. The city’s procurement policy board enforces how often proposals on services are issued, and, according to the spokesperson, the ACS was already overdue.

The move comes as New York City struggles to close a budget deficit of more than $60 million for ACS. In March, the city announced the closing of 15 daycare centers, for a savings of $9 million as part of the 2011 budget, as well as the plan to move five-year-olds into kindergarten classrooms and out of ACS’s hands. But the new budget is still $51 million less than the 2010 fiscal year budget, from $783 million to $732 million, according to a hearing on the budget.

The Independent Budget Office, a publicly funded agency that analyses and reviews New York City’s budget, determined it was the first time since 2005 that the city’s child-care budget dropped. Furthermore, an October report from the budget office stated that the Child Care Block Grant, a state funding source, will receive $12 million less money in 2011, meaning even less grant money for city centers.

The outline of the proposal received substantial criticism after its release, including rebuttals from the Day Care Council of New York, Inc., Head Start and the United Neighborhood Houses organization. All appeared before the City Council in May. Anthony said she is worried about converting to a childcare system that has not been tested.

“I’m really sorry to see it being released without more background or insight as far as how it will fare,” Anthony said.

Anthony also criticized the new requirement that providers match funding with money from outside sources. It’s unclear how big that match will have to be but Anthony said indications are it  will not be more than 10 percent. Still, that could be a challenge for facilities in low-income areas.

In his November 2010 financial plan, Mayor Bloomberg proposed saving $13 million by raising parent fees for children in subsidized child care to 17 percent from 12 percent, along with a minimum co-payment of $15 per week. That would not include money given to directors to help in their provider-match obligations.

“You can’t squeeze money from a rock,” Anthony said.

“The larger agencies with multiple locations and a large infrastructure are more set up to respond to this,” said Nancy Kolben, executive director of the Center for Children’s Initiatives, a non-profit organization focused on promoting early learning. “For others, it could be a real radical change.”

At BronxWorks, a borough-wide community organization based in Highbridge, administrators expect substantial cuts to the family childcare network, which encompasses more than 50 small, home-based daycare centers. Each network center, which typically is run by one person with only a handful of young pupils, is at risk of being eliminated if BronxWorks does not qualify for a minimum number of allowable network centers.

That would potentially force an additional 300 children to BronxWorks’s main classrooms, a surge it would not be able to handle.

“We don’t have the facilities,” said John Weed, assistant executive director of Bronx Works.

The United Neighborhood Housing organization, a New York community-based group that works with low-income families, believes the number of children served by public providers in the future will ultimately be cut back.

“Right now, [ACS is] serving about 27 percent of eligible children in New York City,” said Gregory Blender, the organization’s early childhood and education policy analyst. “We want that number to go higher and in fact what they’ve said publically is that under this the actual capacity will shrink.”

Weed said BronxWorks has managed to avoid funding cuts in the last year but, like Nathaniel’s program, survives with a minimum ratio of teachers to students allowable by the Department of Health, which regulates daycare providers.

Its main facility, along the Grand Concourse, teemed with youngsters in its four large preschool classrooms, all decorated in autumn colors, and it was clear that its director, Marcia Lawrence, had her hands full. The program recently added two free half-day programs with 18 students apiece, making BronxWorks a hectic but popular spot for local parents to send their kids.

In Highbridge alone there are only 18 main daycare facilities in place to serve a population of nearly 14,000 children under five years old. According to the 2000 Census, 37 percent live with a single mother and nearly 35 percent are not proficient in English.

“The impact of this (in the Bronx) could be quite substantial,” Kolben said, “whether you would see programs closing, programs combining, new partnerships. There are opportunities in this if the funding level is appropriate. That’s the real challenge: Is there the money to support this kind of change?”

The total funding for “EarlyLearn” was estimated at just under $617 million, according to the briefing presentation given after release of the outline in April.

In a precursor to the published outline that was acquired by the Bronx Ink, ACS cited numerous national studies in basing its “EarlyLearn” proposal on the principles of bringing more teachers into the classroom, improving curriculum, and enhancing collaboration with parents through more family support services — all ideals that could be outweighed by the stark financial realities the new proposal represents.

“We don’t want (children) to lose what little they have left,” Anthony said.

As their daycare director frets over potential shifting, the children at BronxWorks sit in blissful, cross-legged innocence as Semper wraps up her story. Tomorrow, they will draw turkeys using painted outlines of their tiny hands. And that is as far into the future as they care to look.

“These children really need a fighting chance,” Lawrence said. “If they don’t get it, I’m really scared about what could happen to them.”

Video by Shreeya Sinha

The line outside the food pantry at Highbridge Community Church forms three times every week, even in the biting cold.

The pantry, located at 1272 Ogden Ave., is open for just two hours a day, three times a week. Bundled in overcoats, most visitors take food home in shopping carts, though one woman on Wednesday loaded food into a rolling suitcase with a green and pink floral print.

The line is a familiar scene for Denise Richards, an administrator at the food pantry, who said that the number of people visiting the food pantry doubled in the past six months.

“I know a lot more people are unemployed; I’ve seen a lot more younger people coming in, people in their 20s, people my age, since a year ago until now,” said Richards, who is 26.

The scene outside the Highbridge food pantry reflects a stark reality. In some Bronx neighborhoods, more than one-third of the people report having difficulty getting enough to eat. New data also ranks the Bronx as the unhealthiest county in the state.

According to the results of a survey published last month by the Food Resource Action Center, 36.9 percent of respondents in Congressional District 16, which includes Morrisania, Highbridge and Mott Haven, reported difficulty in finding food over the past year. This translates to the nation’s highest hunger rate.

“By definition, hunger is that feeling or uneasiness and questioning about where your next meal is going to come from,” said Kate MacKenzie, director of policy and government relations for City Harvest, an organization that provides fresh fruits and vegetables to food banks.

The second study published on Wednesday by the University of Wisconsin School of Public Health found that the borough was the least healthiest county in the state. The Bronx has the second-highest mortality rate and the least availability of clinical care.

MacKenzie sees the two reports together painting a bleak picture for some Bronx residents.

“Poverty, hunger and health are interrelated,” she said.

City Harvest saw demand for emergency food increase by 17 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008 to the fourth quarter of 2009,  MacKenzie said. She also said that more than half of the affiliated food agencies in the Bronx have seen an increase in the number of visits by children over the same time period. The Food Resource Action Center study concluded that families with children were 1.6 times more likely to experience difficulty in finding food than those without children.

On Friday, New York State Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. announced a $200,000 grant for the Davidson Community Center. The money will defray the costs of running social programs, including a food pantry. Other pantries, like the one in Highbridge, still struggle for money.

Richards said that increased demand has stretched the food pantry’s resources to the point where it was forced to cut back hours and ration the amounts of food it distributed.

“Recently, we’ve had to shut down. We’ve had to close certain days due to lack of food,” Richards said. “We’ve had to adjust the number of food items someone can get.”

Bronx residents who face shortages at their primary food pantries can often make up the gap by moving around the area.

“The food does run out sometimes,” said Kenia Abreu, who is 39 years old and lives on Ogden Avenue. “That’s when I get prepared and look at the calendar and see what I can get from other pantries, because this is not the only pantry I come to. I go to other areas, as well.”

Abreu worked as a teacher’s aide until October 2009, when she was laid off. She relies on food pantries to help support her three children, aged 8, 6 and 4.

“It’s important for me, not only because I’m going for the economic situation, but also because the things they give here is healthy,” Abreu said. “We have the bread, which is something that we need for the kids. We have the cereal, the juices, the milk.”

William Clark, who lives on Summit Avenue, arrived at Highbridge Church at 3:50 p.m. on Wednesday, 10 minutes before the pantry opened. He was bundled in a blue coat, his hood pulled over his head and tightly around his face, to protect from a sharp wind. Clark lives with his son and daughter, and he was picking up enough food from the community center to last his family about one week. He didn’t make it inside until well after 5 p.m.

By Selamawit Gebrekidan and Dan Lieberman

Anthony "Nova" Jimenez's graffiti lines many walls on Nelson Ave. in Highbridge, Bronx. Photo by Selamawit Gebrekidan

On Nelson Ave. in the Highbridge section of the Bronx, one side of a rundown store bears the markings of a graffiti artist, who, in blue paint, signed this tribute one month ago:  “Nova loves Anna.”

Last Sunday, Nova – Anthony Jimenez, 30 – was arrested for the murder of Anna Radzimirski, 25, his girlfriend of four years, who was fatally shot in the head and chest, according to the police.

The night before, Jimenez and his friend Jordan Miles, 17, were playing video games in the cramped second floor apartment the couple shared at 1066 Woodycrest Ave., according to Miles. Just before midnight, Jimenez was on the phone with another friend trying to comfort the caller, as Radzimirski slept in the same room.

“He started talking about how things is going to be alright,” Miles remembered. “He said ‘God is great,’ over and over again, and then it got to the point that he was screaming.”

This woke Radzimirski, who complained to him about the noise and tried to calm him down, according to Miles.  She then spoke to a friend on the phone about how Jimenez was not the same person, and that she could “see it in his eyes,” Miles said.

Suddenly, Jimenez grabbed his silver gun, cocked it and shot Radzimirski in the head, according to Miles.

“After he shot her, my eyes were on the gun and my reflex was to grab it,” Miles said on Monday pulling down his sweatshirt to show his bandaged arm and bite marks. He said that he tackled Jimenez and they both tripped over the narrow stairs in the house to the first floor. The gun went off again and grazed Miles on his left arm. Finally prying the gun out of Jimenenz’s grip, Miles ran the two blocks to his basement apartment at 1149 Nelson Ave. and called the police.

Miles was taken to Lincoln Hospital on Saturday night after sustaining a gunshot wound on his left arm. Photo by Selamawit Gebrekidan

Neighbors had different accounts about the night. Hassan Toure, 19, who lives on the first floor, said he heard two shots in the apartment and another down the street. Two other tenants in the two-story apartment said they didn’t hear a single shot.

Toure said that the couple spent a lot of time together and dressed alike in large sweaters and polyester pants. He said that every day, the couple drove off with a heavyset man, who Toure said was Radzimirski’s father.  He would pick the couple up in a white van to take them to work, Toure said.

On Saturday night, Toure was frying plantains in his tiny kitchen on the first floor when he overheard the arguments through the thin walls. Thinking they were fighting over “small stuff,” because they were usually quiet, he ignored the noise and went on to watch a movie but soon heard two gun shots.

“I would never think that this would happen between those two because they were too sweet together,” he said.

According to neighbors, all seven tenants at the Woodycrest Ave. apartment recently moved in after the landlord parceled the single-story, one-family apartment into five separate units in November. Tenants on the second floor share a kitchen downstairs where numerous signs beg for silence and cleanliness. The couple moved in early December. Another neighbor, who asked for anonymity, said she remembered overhearing the couple fight many times.

Friends and neighbors said that Jimenez had a history of drug abuse with a predilection for PCP or “Angel Dust”– a habit they said his girlfriend shared.

Despite his repeated shouts of “God is great,” Miles said, Jimenez was not religious.

According to Toure, Jimenez liked to smoke in the small foyer by the front door. He also brought a lot of friends to the apartment which, Toure said, might have led to a burglary at the couple’s apartment a month and a half ago.

Jimenez was arraigned on Sunday for second degree murder, criminal possession of a weapon and second degree assault. He is now at Riker’s Island prison waiting for his first day in court scheduled for Friday.

On Tuesday, the second floor room was sealed by police and a dripping green paint on the door read “Slime Time.”