Dozens of families are scrambling to find child care after learning a preschool program in Hartford is closing its doors.
As they’re figuring out what to do, many are questioning why they have to do it in the first place.
The city says part of the reason they’re pulling some of the funding for the Community Renewal Team’s School Readiness Program is because the organization ranked 16th out of 18 in the city for its performance.
But Monday at a meeting about the closure of the center, parents who say they depend on the affordable child care they get from CRT said they’re unprepared for this kind of change, and don’t know what they’ll do next.
Four-year-old Taylor spends her summer like most kids, playing and having fun. But a meeting Monday to discuss her day care’s shutdown left her mother anything but happy.
“I haven't even had a chance to process this information that's been given to me. I literally don't know where I'm going to move from here,” Natalie Morris told NBC Connecticut.
Morris is one of several parents who showed up at an emergency meeting at the CRT Center on Grace Street a day after learning their year-round child care at the facility will end next month because of a city funding cut eliminating roughly half of CRT’s School Readiness Program slots.
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“This is too much on us. It is. It's too much without us even being a part of the process to put our input in and then you make such a drastic decision,” Morris said.
The city says it has limited funding for early childhood programs and is opting to transfer funding now at CRT to other providers in the city. CRT said the city hasn’t offered them a meaningful explanation of why.
“It is the city that made this decision. It's the city that forced our hand here. We did not want this to happen,” stressed Jason Black, communications director for CRT.
Hayley Greenlee’s son has been at CRT for about a year and a half. She says he loves the care he gets here and challenges the idea that CRT is falling short.
“I can only speak for my CRT, and I know that he's never had a better education than what he has here,” Greenlee said.
Like others here, she says she’s still waiting for information about another place she can afford to send her son after August.
“I'm a single mom. I do everything by myself. So 400 a week at a different facility, it’s not going happen. They didn't have answers for us. This was a waste of time,” Greenlee said.
In a statement, Kim Oliver, the city’s director of the Department of Children, Families, Youth, and Recreation, wrote:
“Hartford receives approximately 1,300 School Readiness Program slots from the State for the School Readiness Program, which are allocated to a variety of community partners through an application process that measures and reviews providers’ performance. The decision to allocate slots to providers is made by the Mayor’s Cabinet for Young Children, 11 members representing parents, philanthropy, early childhood education, higher education, health care, Hartford Public Library, Hartford Public Schools, and the City of Hartford. During this year’s allocation of slots, multiple providers had slots reduced, including CRT, and slot allocations were reviewed and approved by the State of Connecticut’s Office of Early Childhood. In response to the reduction in slots, CRT chose to close one of their centers and our staff has been planning to transition affected families to new providers. When it comes to our kids, we have to have high standards and demand the very best, and we remain committed to working with all our providers to ensure we’re delivering high quality programming for Hartford children and families.”
The city stressed that no children are actually losing their spots, they are being reassigned.
The Grace Street center is set to close August 27. The city says they will be in touch with impacted families to discuss alternatives.
