Two New York lawmakers are calling for Gov. Cuomo to sign a bill that would require child care facilities to get letter grades like restaurants after a state senate report revealed that group day cares in New York City were cited for violations nearly 20,000 times since 2013.
State Sens. Jeff Klein and Tony Klein said Thursday that it needs to be easier for parents to find important information about day care centers and any times they’ve faced violations.
“For many parents this information is difficult to find, and as is clear from our undercover video investigation, many day cares will lie or deceive would-be-customers into believing they have no violations,” said Klein. “By providing parents with a streamlined report card at the door of day cares we can ensure that parents are able to make smart, informed decisions about where they send their children everyday.”
The inquiry found that more than half of the programs among the worst 10 offenders failed to conduct background criminal checks on staffers over the last year.
Undercover videos also revealed that some day care workers claimed their centers had no past violations and that there was no way to look up violation histories. Another now-shuttered day care in Brooklyn was cited for mixing children as old as 10 with toddlers.
The report found that day cares in Brooklyn had the most violations of the city’s five boroughs. The borough also had the most violations per program with more than 11 each.
The worst offender, meanwhile, was in Manhattan. My Little Language School had 74 violations between October of 2015 and the end of last month, including a dozen so-called “critical” violations.
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My Little Language School said that they were unfairly targeted by inspectors who wrote “excessive fines in an attempt to intentionally fine the school out of business.”
“My Little Language was successful in appealing the violations and ultimately 70 percent of the violations were dismissed,” the center said.
