More than 80 children, most of them pre-school age, took over City Council Chambers Monday morning (photo courtesy Roxy Woloszyn) as Exhibit No. 1 for renewing the 2003 Child Care Facilities Fund, which supporters credit with helping more than 400 providers care for 14,000 children. The $5 million given to the fund by the city 2003 is expected to run out in mid-2009, and organizations like the Nonprofit Finance Fund and the Public Citizens for Children and Youth are arguing for another $5 million in an increasingly competitive funding environment.
Advocates argue that the original $5 million leveraged another $9 million, including a $5 million match from the William Penn Foundation for child-care programs throughout the region. The principle behind the fund is to help providers pay for basic improvements, from leaky roofs to rusty slides to busted fences. Without these improvements, some providers have difficulty getting licenses and, in turn, are ineligible for grant money, said Shelly Yanoff, executive director of Public Citizens for Children and Youth. "This is almost an invisible support," Yanoff said, "but it's very visible when you think about it, to children and families in neighborhoods in every area of the city."
For City Council members in attendance, the need is clear, but will also be among many hard choices they have to make in the 2009 fiscal budget, to be presented by Nutter on Thursday (the timing of Monday's event was no coincidence).
"Continued support of the Child Care Facilities Fund, we believe, is a worthwhile investment," Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown said. The kids sat cross-legged on the floor of Council Chambers and sang songs, then broke up into groups afterward and visited individidual council members.
"I got hugs from kids -- you can't get better lobbying than that," Council member Bill Greenlee said, saying that the fund would receive "extreme priority" in the budget process. Councilman Curtis Jones Jr. gets the hard sell in the photo at left provided by PCCY.
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