Albany Parents Fight to Save After-School Programs

Teleli Brito is a single mom who works part-time while going to school. But plans for continuing her coursework "are on hold right now," because the child care subsidy she receives from the state is on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's chopping block.

She is one of scores of Albany parents – parents of 178 children – who face losing state-subsidized child care, losses that threaten the Cedars, Tupelo and Chinese Language after-school programs at Albany's elementary schools.

Three hundred and seventy-eight children attend the after-school programs in question. About half the students who attend receive state subsidies, which means revenue for the programs could be slashed in two.

"If subsidized child care is eliminated, hundreds of families face really hard decisions about whether they can work, continue school, even whether they can stay here," Brito said.

Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposal for shoring up the state's $19 billion deficit includes eliminating the CalWorks welfare program and child care assistance, among myriad other cuts he outlined in May.

Parents of children in the Tupelo, Cedars and Chinese Language programs started organizing earlier this month to try to salvage the programs and influence state legislators to reverse Schwarzenegger's plans. They have sent 350 letters to Sacramento to plead with legislators to preserve after-school care, and they have appeared before the Albany Board of Education and the Albany City Council.

"Our focus is joining as a task force to come up with creative solutions to this problem, specifically as it affects Albany," Brito said. "We're planning a telephone blitz with everyone calling legislators, especially those on the budget conference committee."

The group plans to go to Sacramento on July 14 for an education day of action, which will follow the opening day of the annual California State Fair. The day of action has been dubbed the "State Unfair Day," Brito said.

The after-school programs are run by the Albany Children's Center, which in turn is managed by the Albany Unified School District.

Several people have told the school board and city council that the rich curriculum programming of the existing child care centers cannot easily be replicated.

"My children learn Spanish, do yoga, bake bread from wheat" in the Tupelo program at Marin Elementary School, said parent Kathryn Stambaugh, who plans to join the July trip to Sacramento. "We've got to tell legislators that we will pay more taxes for things that we value."

Parents involved in organizing efforts include those, like Stambaugh, who pay full fees at the centers.

"This impacts us all, all those of us who have children in the before- and after-school programs," said Eveline Shen, a parent whose children are not subsidized but who greatly values the Chinese Language after-school program. "The economy is so bad there is no safety net. So this is it. This is the last line for families who don't have a lot of resources."

This was the case for one woman who spoke before the Board of Education earlier this month.

"I was born here and grew up here. I went to Marin, Albany Middle and Albany High," a young mother named Jessica said. "I don't have family to help me out, I don't have a nanny. I don't have the ability to pay for private care."

Several single mothers said the teachers at the Cedars, Tupelo and Chinese Language programs are like second family.

Natalie Marx is an Albany mother in the midst of a successful transition out of welfare as a recent graduate of UC Berkeley with a promising job in a lab working on a cure for diabetes.

"As a welfare mom you can't always count on food stamps and you can't always count on state cash aid," she told the board. "But Maples, Cedars and four teachers there have been my rock."

Board of Education member Miriam Walden said the board is determined to save the programs somehow.

"We are going to put together a program, but it probably won't look exactly like this one."

She said it would be very difficult for the district's K-12 program – where students face crowded classrooms and loss of programs due to budget cuts – to pay for after-school programs.

"If we wanted to subsidize child care, we'd have to cut K-12 education services, so do we cut out kindergarten? You see, the choices get pretty ugly," she said. "They've pitted program against program."

With the governor's budget the only proposal out of Sacramento available by June 15, the date by which school districts had to set their budgets, the district had to make tentative decisions about the future of the Albany Children's Center programs. Several teachers and para-educators received notices they might lose their jobs in August.

"It's criminal what we have to do," said Albany Unified Superintendent Marla Stephenson about giving pink slips to teachers and para-educators in June even though the district hopes to maintain the programs. Labor law requires a 45-day notice to employees if they might lose their jobs.

"We need manna from heaven to come up with $500,000" to replace the state subsidies, Stephenson said. Short of that, she has entered negotiations with after-school staff and union representatives to talk about how to restructure the programs to save them.

She asked for help from the YMCA, another provider of after-school care in Albany, which agreed to take in all the Albany Children's Center students and hire all its teachers until a new arrangement is worked out.

Stephenson said, if the district absorbed the after-school program, it would put itself $500,000 in the red.

"That would put us in fiscal receivership and Albany would lose control" of authority over its own school district, she said. Some nearby districts, including Berkeley and Oakland, have been in receivership, which means the county gets to decide how districts spend money.