The Economic Opportunity Council of Suffolk, which has operated the child care program at the Montauk Playhouse for 17 years, has announced it will cease operations there effective May 3, and while East Hampton Town is already seeking bids from other providers, many Montauk families are left coping with uncertainty.
"We urge the town to take immediate action to prevent the closure of Montauk's only public daycare center," Mariah Miltier of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, who also sends a child to the facility, told the town board last Thursday. "This may include exploring funding options provided by the town, but it is imperative that we work together to ensure that we continue the operation of this invaluable resource for our community."
According to Adrian Fassett, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Council, the decision to end the service was primarily a financial one. "We operated for years losing money because we were committed, but it got to the point where we started to lose too much money," he told The Star last week, explaining that money brought in by its other location, in Patchogue, had been offsetting expenses in Montauk. "We lost a quarter-million dollars last year."
The facility serves infants, toddlers, and children as old as 6, which is the age at which New York State mandates children be formally enrolled in school. Mr. Fassett explained that enrollment was low at the center: "The break-even point for us would be what we call 40 'F.T.E.s,' or full-time enrollment of 40 kids every day a week, and we were averaging in the 20s. It's licensed for 59 kids, and we've never been anywhere close." By comparison, in Patchogue the organization cares for 95 to 105 children every day.
Staffing challenges also remained an issue, Mr. Fassett said, given long commutes for some employees and the need to pay others a higher-than-usual salary due to the high cost of living in the hamlet.
However, Kelly Bloss, an assistant teacher at the child care center, told the town board that she wanted "to make sure everybody appreciates that enrollment is a direct byproduct of the number of teachers available to safely care for children ages 2 months to 5 years. Montauk Child Care suffers from staff shortages due to the cost of living in the area. Staff churn is driven by the inability to affordably live here and the inability of sustaining daily commutes from as far west as Shirley. This challenge should sound familiar to the board."
Noting that the town provides funding to the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center in East Hampton, Ms. Bloss proposed that the town either contract with an independent third party, extend the Montauk School District to include the center, or take over the center and retain local staff to operate it. In the latter scenario, she suggested that Pilar Prado, the center's present director, be retained to operate it.
"The timeline must accommodate the realities of effecting a seamless transition well before the May 3 deadline," Ms. Bloss said. "There must be a contingency plan in place. . . . The parents are uneasy. The staff is uneasy."
Mr. Fassett said he told the town that "we would cooperate and work with them to leave all the equipment and supplies and transfer our staff over to them. We're trying to be amenable and hopefully we'll have a seamless transition. We have substantial equipment and supplies in the building."
Working parents like David Piacente, an owner of Naturally Good in Montauk whose son attends the child care center, told the town board that the child care center's potential closure was a surprise. Two of his employees are single moms who use the service.
"For my workers to not be able to have child care would require them not coming to work for me, which as you can see would be a tremendous problem. . . . The businesses can't operate without their workers, and that's part of our economy, too," Mr. Piacente said.
Fallon Nigro, a Montauk mother and real estate agent, also suggested that the best outcome would be the town taking on the center and adding its operating expenses to the annual budget, or simply contributing funding for it as the Whitmore Center receives, with an allocation of $182,640 in the town's 2024 budget.
Members of the town board, particularly Councilmen David Lys and Tom Flight, both of whom sent their children to the center, were sympathetic to the parents' plight, but one parent, anxious about the likelihood of finding a replacement vendor with fewer than three months until the center's potential shutdown, called the situation "a fundamental failure on the town's part."
Holding his young son in his arms, K.C. Boyle questioned whether there was "enough time to conduct a thorough and considerate R.F.P. process," and complained that the board knew of the center's potential closure as early as early December. "We're 60 days into that process without the staff knowing, without any of the parents knowing. That has tremendous repercussions on our personal lives and on our businesses." The parents "feel like we haven't been heard. And quite frankly, I think it's a fundamental failure on the town's part."
Mr. Flight, who was sworn in on Jan. 2, said that he had become aware of the situation on "day three or four" of his tenure on the board. "My initial reaction was to reach out to E.O.C. to understand what was driving their decision. We talked with them, we reviewed where the situation was at, and after discussions we decided we needed to go to [a request for proposals] to ensure we had some options for coverage come May 3." The Montauk center's staff was not informed "until we were absolutely certain that they were not willing to move forward with running the operation," he said of the E.O.C.
Proposals from child care providers are due to the town by 3 p.m. on Feb. 27.
As for involving Ms. Pilar in the request for proposal process, "there could be a potential conflict of interest there, if she were to be the operator," Mr. Flight said. "It's following government procedure to ensure that this is a blind bid as much as possible. The government is not showing any favoritism to any potential operator."
Maintaining quality affordable child care is "top priority" for the board, Mr. Lys said. "I promise you we will work hard to try to get some type of real quick, sturdy resolution to this."