A Lack of Resources, but Not Complaints
By Amanda Harris, Investigations Team
Originally published in Newsday, 1999
DAY SEVEN
Last year, Tareyon Johnson, a mother of three with a high-school equivalency diploma, applied for work as a bus driver at the Learning 4 Life Day Care center in Hempstead.
Within three days, the center—which operated literally within the shadow of the Bureau of Early Childhood Service's regional office—had made Johnson the head teacher for a group of 4-year-olds. Despite her lack of training, Johnson said, she was soon single-handedly watching 30 school-aged children, double the limit imposed by state regulation.
"There was no way I could watch 30 kids at the same time," Johnson said in an interview. Johnson organized a talent show for the children, and one boy tried a back flip. He landed wrong and broke a bone in his toe, records show.
A few weeks later Demetrice Hawkins, the center's director, fired Johnson because she wasn't qualified to teach, records show. "I wasn't a teacher, I was a bus driver, but they were so short staffed," Johnson said. "It was a mess."
Learning 4 Life continually has struggled with a shortage of both staff and funds, according to state records.
The state's file shows a number of complaints, many substantiated, about overcrowding and supervision from 1997 through last year—complaints that resulted in no punitive action by BECS despite incidents in which a child lost part of a finger, a 2-year-old was left for hours in a badly soiled diaper, and Johnson said she was forced to go to work despite having two highly contagious conditions.
All told, records show that regulators received eight separate, anonymous complaints about Learning 4 Life in the past two years alleging violations of about 36 different rules.
State regulators have used most of their limited tools to try to improve the program—including dispatching experts from Albany to give special training—but with only limited success.
The Rev. E.L. Woodside Sr., the executive director of the day-care center, said his program is now very successful and about 25 children are on a waiting list. He said most of the complaints were made when the center was first opened and he was assembling a staff. "Now we have a staff that wants to be here," he said. He also disputed Johnson's claim she was left in charge of 30 children.
The center got its license on Dec. 11, 1995. In July, 1997, a mother complained to the state that the center's staff members hurt her 10-year-old son—hitting him, choking him and shoving him against a wall—and one day let him leave and walk 15 blocks home alone. Staff members told regulators that they had only been restraining the boy because he had been fighting with other children. They said one staff member followed the boy for a few blocks but couldn't stop him. State regulators determined the center did not supervise the boy properly.
A few months later, on a day when records show far too many children were present, a 2-year-old boy was wandering through the center and got his finger caught in a heavy wooden bathroom door. His finger was severed.
The adult in charge told a state inspector she found "the child sitting on the floor next to the upper part of his finger. She stated that the door did not slam and the child was not crying." Again the state found the center did not supervise the children properly.
A few months earlier, the boy's sister had to be taken from the center to the emergency room to have removed from her ear a piece of plastic that another child had stuck inside, according to records released to Newsday. They do not indicate that the state investigated the ear injury.
On Oct. 29, 1997, a BECS inspector found that "a 2-year-old child spent several hours in a diaper so badly soiled that much of the waste spilled out onto his back, stomach and legs. No one noticed the odor or the child's discomfort … an inadequate number of qualified staff is available."
The staff also didn't successfully conduct a fire drill. The director didn't know how to alert the fire detection company before pulling the fire alarm. Another staff member pulled the fire alarm but nothing happened. The director then rang a bell in an office to alert everyone, but the bell was almost inaudible.
Later that day, BECS officials immediately suspended the center's license because they decided the children were in imminent danger as a result of the fire alarm problem. State law permits the state to fine a center $250 for each day it violates regulations, but Edward Watkins, counsel to the agency, said officials decided not to fine Learning 4 Life. The center was shut for several days until the repairs were made.
Watkins said the agency wanted the center to spend its money on improving its fire protection system, not on paying money to the state. Woodside said he had to spend $17,000 to upgrade the fire protection system, which passed a county inspection in November, 1997. "If I didn't spend it, I was out of business," he said.
The state also sent a team of child-care experts from the New York State Child Care Coordinating Council in Albany to conduct specialized training for the center's staff. Memos show that the experts found many problems: infants spent long periods in their cribs watching a video, staff members spoke to children in "very controlling and demanding tones," and there was inadequate planning and a shortage of equipment. The team returned every month for six months, but the training ended in July, 1998, after tension escalated between staff and managers and the managers stopped allowing staff members to attend.
Meanwhile, the staff shortage continued. Johnson, hired in February, 1998, said that during the two months she worked there, the center was so desperate for adult supervisors that she was ordered to work when she had pinkeye and ringworm.
Records show that Johnson tried to call in sick with pinkeye, but Eva Woodside, the after-school director and the Rev. Woodside's wife, "told her to wear sunglasses and come in anyway." Johnson then told her that she had ringworm on her back. She said Eva Woodside again told her to work because "Who will know?" State regulators investigated Johnson's complaints but deemed them unsubstantiated after Hawkins and Eva Woodside denied they had occurred. Hawkins did not return phone calls; a call to Eva Woodside was returned by Rev. Woodside.
Rev. Woodside said Johnson's statement about taking care of 30 children by herself was untrue. "There's no validity to that," he said. "We don't do that here."
