Mayor de Blasio’s dramatic plan to expand pre-K relies primarily on community-based groups that have collectively been hit with thousands of health code violations since 2009, a Daily News investigation has found.
From 2009 through last year, the city issued 39,000 violations against 1,158 groups that run pre-K and day care. That includes more than 6,900 citations for “public health hazards” that the city considers “an imminent threat” to kids and 18,600 dubbed “critical.”
Nearly all of the groups have received at least one citation but 51 have racked up between 50 and 145 serious violations at a single address during that time — at least 10 a year every year for five years, according to a News analysis of city inspection data.
Sixteen of these groups with 50 or more violations now run pre-K for the city. Each year they were renewed; each year they racked up more citations, records show.
These groups have been cited for a long list of violations, including blocked fire exits, unsafe playgrounds and persistent vermin infestation.
Inspectors routinely find a litany of problems: Operators who failed to check criminal histories of employees. Toxic cleaning fluids that were stored in unlocked cabinets. Smoke detectors that don’t work.
One group now running pre-K for the city — a Brightside Academies school on E. 150th St. in the South Bronx — has been cited 100 times in the last five years. That’s nearly two citations every month for five years straight.
Health inspectors have returned repeatedly to find the same violations they’d cited months before. Last year they visited in January, then April, twice in October and two more times in December. They found 20 violations, including not reporting within 24 hours to the health department an allegation about an employee.
Last week, The News found a mammoth pile of garbage stacked at the school’s secondary entrance. Inside, the school was dingy, with scuffed furniture and drab classrooms. One room was crammed with eight cribs packed next to each other with barely any room between them.
The same building houses both infants and children up to 12 years old. The school — like all pre-K centers — is paid per child, so the more children enrolled, the more it takes in.
“It’s not safe in there,” said Breahna Watkins, 30, a day care teacher from the Bronx whose 3-year-old daughter attends day care at Brightside. Two sons, 6 and 9, and another daughter, 11, go there for after-school programs.
Watkins enrolled her children there in September but now says conditions are so poor, she plans to pull them out at the end of the school year.
To top it off, Watkins said the school has a draconian policy of charging $ 1 per child per minute for late pickups.
I don’t keep track of that. If someone sneezes, that might be a violation.
“You have to pay on the spot and if you can’t pay, you can’t come back,” she said. “It’s awful.”
The Pittsburgh-based Brightside chain operates 11 New York City facilities. A Brightside school on Webster Ave. in the Bronx has racked up 50 serious violations in the last five years. And at a Brightside school on White Plains Road, also in the Bronx, children were discovered alone in a classroom during an inspection, records show.
Brightside officials in the city referred The News to the company’s Pittsburgh headquarters. Officials there did not respond to a request for comment.
The News spoke with parents at several oft-cited pre-K spots. Some praised the schools, but others spoke of unhealthy and potentially dangerous conditions, including crowded classrooms, sewage backups and blocked fire exits.
None were aware of the health code violations at their child’s school, and all were surprised when told of the situation.
“That would be good to know,” said Chivonne Myers, 35, outside a pre-K with 51 violations where she had just dropped off her daughter. “That shouldn’t be hard to find.”
This is the landscape as de Blasio prepares to offer free pre-K to all 4-year-olds, expanding full-time pre-K seats from the current 20,000 to 53,000 come September.
As the mayor has made clear, the vast majority of those seats will not be run by the city but by community-based organizations.
On Friday he said the city is “going to guarantee the quality standard citywide” at all the community-based pre-K programs.
Devora Kaye, spokeswoman for the Education Department, said the city’s pre-K team will expand from 150 to 250, while the Buildings Department will add more inspectors. The health department added $ 900,000 to its budget and promises to hire 12 more inspectors.
“The quality and safety of these programs is our top priority, which is why we have dramatically increased the personnel and resources for inspections across multiple agencies,” Kaye said. “We will have more oversight and higher standards than ever before. We will ensure every location is ready to provide a healthy, safe and high-quality learning environment this September.”
The city now relies on 850 community groups and is reviewing applications to hire more. Some are mainstream do-gooders like Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army. Some are run by national chains like Brightside. Most are run by mom-and-pop outfits that operate only a single facility.
All of these pre-K centers are subjected to tremendous oversight, required to follow a long list of rules designed to keep New York’s children safe and healthy.
Rules require a specific ratio of teachers to children and allow only one child for every 30 square feet of space. Sinks must be child-level. Fire exits must be clear, smoke detectors in working order, staff regularly performing fire drills.
Staff must be tested for tuberculosis and given an overall clean bill of health. Operators are required to perform a criminal history check on all employees, including a fingerprint query.
Centers must fix hazardous conditions within 24 hours, and if they don’t, the city can shut them down.
No fewer than six separate agencies are in charge of ensuring pre-K is safe: state and city education departments, the city Administration for Children’s Services, and the buildings, fire and health departments.
At Little Red Riding Hood in Brooklyn, for example, health inspectors have issued 143 serious code violations since 2009 — one of the highest numbers in the city.
Director Ari Cesar defended the program, emphasizing that all problems have been resolved and insisting that if the school didn’t address problems immediately, the agency would turn out the lights.
“The Health Department doesn’t play,” Cesar said. “Our inspection information is posted online. Anyone who wants to look can find it. You found it.”
Actually, parents interviewed by The News at Little Red and other pre-K spots uniformly were unaware of the inspection data’s existence.
Finding the health code history of these places is no easy task.
Neither the Education Department nor ACS provides health violation information, and the health department’s findings are buried deep within the agency’s website.
On Friday the mayor’s office released the latest list of groups that will handle pre-K this fall, but made no reference to health code inspections. They provided “Helpful Links,” but not to the health department.
In fact, it’s difficult to find a pre-K spot’s health code history and impossible to know how that history compares citywide.
To shed light on health code violations at pre-K centers, The News asked the de Blasio administration for the data via the Freedom of Information Law. Three months later they complied with the request.
The data show 51 pre-K/day care operators in New York City have been hit with 50 or more serious violations dubbed by the health inspectors as either “critical” or “public health hazards” between 2009 through 2013.
Many of the pre-K facilities operate out of challenging locales. The Tender Years Childcare on busy Tremont Ave. in the Bronx — which racked up 65 violations — is run out of a ramshackle storefront.
“It’s not adequate,” said one Bronx dad (who wouldn’t give his name) after dropping off his daughter. “It looks like a fire hazard in there.”
Tender Years owner Ruben Tavarez said that he’s doing his best to run a top quality program but he needs more government funding. His website encourages parents to enroll for “FREE Universal Pre-K while seats are still available.”
“A lot of the things that they mention are corrected right on the spot,” said Tavarez, who has applied to be a pre-K provider and hasn’t heard back yet. “On paper the violations sound horrible but they’re not dangerous. They’re simple things.”
Under the rumbling above-ground J train in Bushwick, Footsteps Child Care has been hit with 51 serious code violations, including 20 last year.
Several of Footsteps’ violations were repeats. Inspectors cited them twice in 2011 for failing to adequately screen employees for criminal backgrounds, then issued the same violations twice more last year.
One parent who asked to remain anonymous said Footsteps has had sewage backups in the basement, recently became unbearable due to a dead animal inside a wall, and has suffered air conditioning breakdowns that forced the school to shut down.
“I’m on my way to work trying to leave my child in a safe place and you tell me I have to take my kid home because there’s no AC?” the parent said.
Tisha Meekins, 39, also recalled the rat incident but still had a generally favorable opinion of Footsteps. Told of the high number of violations, she said, “I was not aware of that.”
Footsteps’ Education Director Bonita West said, “I don’t keep track of that. If someone sneezes, that might be a violation.”
She blamed the bad smells on a broken toilet and a dead animal found in the wall, but emphasized both problems were addressed immediately.
At the Friends of Crown Heights pre-K on Prospect Place in Brooklyn, which has run up 41 violations from 2009 to 2013, director Daryl Davis says he does his best to keep the children safe.
He blamed carbon monoxide detector violations on a change in rules, while he attributed student-teacher ratio violations to teachers who call in sick. He said a sewage issue was due to flooding from backed up pipes. All of these problems, he emphasized, were fixed right away.
“We may have had violations, but when the inspectors come back, all the violations have been resolved,” he said. “I think the inspection process is good. It’s good to have them come in and say what is right and wrong. Sometimes there are things we didn’t see and we’ll fix them.”
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