As the Hudson County Schools of Technology’s (HCST) Community Resource Center is set to close at the end of the month, employees from the also soon to be defunct HCST Childcare Center spoke out about their impending closure.
By Dan Israel/Hudson County View
At last week’s Hudson County Board of Commissioners meeting, Diane Marie Bello, an early childhood education teacher at County Prep High School for over 13 years, said the HCST Childcare Center at the high school is crucial for “understanding the young minds that represent our future,” was set to also close on June 30.
“With the recent news that the childcare center will be closing at the end of this month, I’m deeply saddened that both my current and incoming students will lose the opportunity to experience such an impactful program,” Bello said.
“This decision would not only disappoint students, but also the many families who rely on the center each day. I speak not only as an educator, but as a parent.”
According to Bello, her three-year-old daughter has attended the daycare program at the childcare center, also known as Bella Babies Daycare, since she was six months old, as she feels it is a safe and reliable option considering limited pre-k options.
“The convenience, care, and hospitality provided by the staff have always reassured me that my child is safe, supported, and genuinely cared for,” Bello added.
“The childcare center originally began as a program supporting teen moms through HCST’s Career Academy, but it’s just evolved into so much more. Today is serves and supports teachers, staff, students, and families while continuing to positively impact the educational community.”
Bello said her classes are given a unique experience to work directly with children ranging from three months to five years old, allowing County Prep students to discover which age groups they connect with and determine if they want to pursue careers in education, childcare, or related fields in the future.
In addition, she added that the Childcare Center and her classes work hand-in-hand together during seasonal events and activities that people look forward to each year.
“The children and students engage in meaningful, fun-filled experiences that promote motor skills, cognitive growth, and physical development,” Bello asserted.
“My students, alongside the center staff, create and implement engaging lessons that allow the children to experience a nurturing and educational environment from an early age.”
Bello concluded by punctuating the uniqueness of HCST’s Childcare Center.
“Programs like this are very rare,” Bello said.
Responding to questions from Commissioner Al Cifelli (D-9), Bello said she currently has 60 students in the program with 13 children in the daycare, prompting some criticisms from Commissioner Bill O’Dea (D-2).
“This is what happens when people don’t think proactively, but they think reactively,” O’Dea declared.
“Here’s the reality of it, because my grandson went there … I think the center is great. But what we’re told is, there’s only 13 children there so the economics don’t work. And my counter to that was, we don’t plan well.”
He further stated that County Plaza is nearby and if the program was extended to parents working for the county government, as was the previous case with Hudson County Sheriff’s officers, that they might have enough children in the daycare to make the program financially solvent.
Bello confirmed she had about 40 children in the daycare at its height, to which O’Dea noted there were other options to keep the program alive like vouchers for low-income families and their children instead of closing the facility.
“My point is, these are things, if we had given time, we should have been able to sit down and come up with alternatives to just shutting things down,” O’Dea added.
Board Chair Anthony Romano (D-5) offered County Executive Craig Guy the opportunity to chime in, to which he said the county has prepared a memo laying out answers to many of the questions commissioners had at the meeting.
That includes the facts surrounding when the School Board of Estimate looked at when making decisions to approve the closure of the CRC and the childcare center.
One speaker, an educator in the program, Jasmine McTague, was there with her students who also tried to address the HCST school board but were stopped before they could all vocalize their concerns.
After confirming that county employees pay for the daycare services, O’Dea again levied that the HCST administration could have analyzed how much it would have taken to break even with additional enrollment and secured those children’s spots at the facility to bring in additional funding.
He stipulated it’s too late now, but this could have been prevented.
“I don’t know what it costs to operate. I’ll gladly sit down with you and we can start to figure out what we pay administrators hundreds of thousands of dollars at a school to do… So I think maybe thinking a little outside the box, somebody could have put a model together to figure out how,” noted O’Dea.
Instead of closing the childcare center, O’Dea wished that the issue was raised a year ago regarding the need to increase enrollment to subsidize the facility.
“We failed you, we because we’re part of government. But those individuals that are the administrators at that facility, whoever they were a year or so ago, every year should have been monitoring how much do we pay here, how much revenue do we generate?” he asserted.
“They failed you, and they failed all the students that were there. And if they’re still in that facility, they should be gone. They should get laid off or let go before individuals like those at the Childcare Center.”
Meanwhile, County Prep junior Martha Henriquez told the board she should be allowed to finish the child development major she began at HCST even amid program cuts.
This enraged Commissioner Bob Baselice (D-8), since he has a daughter at High Tech High School and was assured that when you start a major, you will always be able to finish it.
“They want to stop people coming in the front end, that’s fine. But they should really allow people to finish their major.”
Baselice, who sits on the HCST School Board of Estimate, noted they didn’t receive any of this information, but there are means to mitigate the impacts of the situation.
“Don’t make me look like a fool because I’m on the Board of Estimate and then at the end of the day, we’re being told that the Board of Estimate approved everything,” Baselice said.
“I’m not that guy. At the end of the day, I’m fair. And I think there are ways that we can get around some of this. This program is like a win-win.”
Commissioner Kenny Kopacz (D-1) said that the Education Committee will convene soon on this matter, including with any interested commissioners who aren’t on the committee.
O’Dea added that he would like to put forth a resolution before the end of the month, when the daycare is set to close alongside the CRC on June 30, to call for the childcare center to remain open for 90 more days so the county can work with the school management as well as staff there to develop a plan to make the facility cost-neutral.
He said that he wanted it on the agenda at the next meeting because he feels the county can resolve this in less than three months.
