EXCERPTS
City of Toronto officials and supporters of Progress Day Care are blaming each other for the financial state of the Scarborough child-care facility, even as they work to keep it open.
Parents of the 90 children at the Glamorgan Avenue building learned Thursday, June 9, that the non-profit day care, which owes $100,000, could close down the following day.
At a rally Sunday, staff pledged to remain at their jobs for a few days more, deferring their pay, while the board meets with city staff to find a solution.
"We're in this profession for the kids, right?" said Maria Wishniowska, one of the 25 employees and president of Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 2484 which represents them. Robert Fletcher, treasurer of the board of directors, said the day care was the victim of "chronic long-term underfunding" and suggested it could not absorb the addition of harmonized sales tax or the latest two-per-cent employee pay raise to its costs.
"You owe a lot of people and the money just runs out," he said, noting the non-profit pays rent at the high-rise building it occupies off Kennedy Road and Progress Avenue.
A smaller second location, which has 21 spaces for infants and toddlers, stopped its admissions in March and has seven children left. It was due to close in any case in a week or two, Fletcher said.
In a statement Monday, June 13, the city said staff from Toronto Children's Services will meet board members starting Tuesday "to examine potential operational efficiencies" and, if the board decides to close, will help affected families find child care elsewhere.
That will be difficult for parents such as Monick Bullens, who has two children at Progress and anticipates having "to travel to god-knows-where" to get a space. Her children will miss the familiar faces, and a lot of parents in the "high-risk" Glamorgan community may have to leave their jobs without subsidized child care close to home, she said.
For now, the staff is willing to continue, said Bullens.
"They're just being hopeful, like us."
Staff and parents invited Mayor Rob Ford and Scarborough-Agincourt Councillor Norm Kelly to the rally, where union members suggested the city needed to give stronger support to non-profit day cares in similar positions. At one point, Wishniowska urged everyone in the crowd to call Kelly's office and leave a message.
"There's a real risk of this happening over and over again," Fred Hahn, provincial president of CUPE, said afterwards.
Kelly, who did not attend the rally, said he doesn't blame parents for being angry and upset at the sudden closure announcement, but they should hold the board accountable, not the city.
"I think they're setting up the city as a fall guy," he said.
Kelly said the city caught wind of financial problems at Progress a few months ago, but when city staff approached the board to offer help, "they were ignored. They were stiff-armed by the board" on a request to have the city look at the day care's books, though the board said they would close their smaller operation on Kennedy.
The children at Progress get subsidized to 97 per cent of the costs of caring for them, among the highest rate in the city, Kelly said, arguing the city has been generous and has increased subsidies over past few years.
In a statement Monday the city - maintaining it has given more than $1.3 million to Progress Child Care in 2010 in low-income family subsidies and wage subsidies for staff - said the board agreed to an audit but the city only "learned about the severity of the financial situation at Progress last Thursday."
Prior to that, the city "had offered operational guidance and advice" but "these offers were declined by the board," the statement said.
Fletcher responded the board has nothing to hide and Kelly "has no clue" about the centre's attempts to co-operate with the city. He had previously brought city staff copies of bank statements and other information, but could not give them everything they wanted, he said.
"They wanted a detailed plan of how we were going to get out of (the financial predicament)."
It is not true the city offered to help and was refused, Fletcher said. "It's the very opposite. The city withheld help."
- reprinted from Inside Toronto