By Peggy Carroll
By the end of the day on Tuesday, June 28, 2016, the last parent will pick up her child at the Collinsville Child Care Center.
The center staff then will move all its equipment and materials from the annex at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church.
And then, 46 years after it was started by young mothers looking for day care for their preschoolers,
the Center will close its doors..
Whether it is forever, or whether it is temporary, depends on whether it finds a new home.
The search is on.
While the 40 children now enrolled in Collinsville will be placed in other programs, there is concern about the loss of day care places for families with limited incomes. Collinsville fits that description.
It is a nationally accredited, federally subsidized operation providing care for children aged 2 ½ to 5 from working families.
Colllinsville and St. Peter’s have a long, shared history. For more than 40 years of its existence, Collinsville has leased 3,000 square feet in the 5000-square-foot annex space.
It is leaving because of a common landlord/tenant issue: A disagreement about rent. This one, however has gone public because of the institutions involved. And the fact that children are affected.
The church is the landlord; the tenant is the Greater Morristown YMCA, which manages the center.
And their differences revolve around money and what each can afford.
- The Rev. Janet Broderick of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church
The Rev. Janet Broderick, rector of St. Peter’s, said the church has been subsidizing the center by paying for its utilities and other expenses for the last three years.
“We can’t keep doing it along with all our other outreach programs,” she said in a statement on the issue.
She notes that the church supports an after-school program, a summer camp for 80 kids, a grocery program for more than 100 families, tutoring, and a program to provide baby supplies like formula and diapers to underprivileged parents. St. Peter’s also gives space for eight 12-step meetings.
According to church officials, an audit by its finance office showed that the church paid more than $25,000 in bills for utilities and general maintenance for the center in 2015 alone. “We just can’t underwrite this program to this extent,” Broderick said.
So the church proposed a rent increase for the next lease, one that would take into account the costs it was incurring. And she has said that the church alerted the Y to its concerns, from the higher-than-expected costs to parking.
Carol Armour, CEO and president of the Y, said the increase proposed by the church almost doubles the current rent, from $48,000 annually to $92,400.
And this, she said, the Y cannot afford.
Collinsville’s mission is to give children from low-income families the same quality care and education as those who can afford a tuition-based preschool.
Right now, as a federally funded facility, the center receives a $575 subsidy for each eligible child. Family contributions are on a sliding scale based on income. The Y itself says it also makes a significant financial contribution to make ends meet.
If there is one thing the two institutions agree about, it is that the church through four decades and the Y in recent years have given very generous support to the child center.
But both have also engaged in a bit of finger-pointing.
“We have tried to make arrangements with the Y which support both organizations and the Y has been unwilling to talk to us,” Broderick said.
“The word negotiation never came up,” Armour said.
Instead, Broderick said, the Y, sent a formal notice, three months before the end of its lease,
that it was vacating.
The situation was so unsettled that the child care center stopped accepting new applicants. (The facility can accommodate 45 youngsters). It did not want to provide what might be a short-term placement, Armour said.
Stirring the disagreements further was the fact that this is the second time the church has upped the rent – and Collinsville has moved out.
Everyone has been here before .
Beginning with Mothers.
A BIT OF HISTORY
The center had its beginnings in 1970 with a group of African-American parents, mostly single mothers, who wanted to work but had no one to care for their youngsters. So they banded together and opened a day care center in the old Collinsville School, once a part of the Morris Township school district.
Two years later, when the school was to be torn down, the mothers leased space from St. Peter’s.
And the parents, according to Karen Wasick, who was the center’s director for 24 years, worked to improve the program, getting it accredited and bringing in professional staff.
“They wanted their children to have a quality program,” Wasick said. “They were wonderful people and they were always on board for anything that would make the center better.”
The first major glitch in the arrangement came in 2010 when the church and the center had their first disagreement about rent and Collinsville went looking for a new space. It found one in the classrooms at the Jewish Federation of Greater Metrowest New Jersey in Whippany.
But there was a problem, Armour said. Many of the Collinsville parents lacked transportation and could not get to the new location. The census dropped. That’s when the United Way asked the Y to step in and help.
The Y had its own child care center, now called the Richard F. Blake Children’s Center (older parents may remember it as Y’s Owls), and had taken over management of others.
In addition to Collinsville, it operates Children on the Green (at the Morristown United Methodist Church); Ada Budrick in Boonton; and centers at Morristown Medical Center, and in Morris Plains (with the school district) and Allamuchy. The Y is certified by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, an organization that sets professional standards.
In all, its centers serve 650 children.
When it took over Collinsville, the Y resolved the location issue by agreeing to pay the higher rental at St. Peter’s and Collinsville returned in 2012.
There have been other points of friction in the relationship – from who pays for repairs and where do people park.
The Rev. Geoff Curtiss, who is an assisting priest at St. Peter’s, said, for example, there was a debate about who should repair a bathroom, which the church eventually did.
And one of St. Peter’s recently introduced programs – the North Porch Ministry –was criticized by state child care center inspectors. The program, which occupies a room in the St. Peter’s annex, distributes infant supplies to families that are displaced or have shortfalls in their budget.
State inspectors who came to visit said that because the program attracts a steady stream of strangers, it should not be operation while the child care center is in session.
LOOKING BACK
The closing has saddened the people who have been part of Collinsville – parents, teachers, and former board members.
Caren Frankel, who was on the Collinsville board and has been involved in the center for almost 30 years, expressed her regret via email. “We have always managed to survive obstacles set before us,” she wrote… and then wondered if this one was “insurmountable.”
Former director Karen Wasick, now living in North Carolina, looked back on all the years she had worked with the children and the parents, trying to help not only little ones, but their parents.
They even offered instruction in English for Spanish-speaking parents on Saturdays, she said.
There was a real feeling of family, she said.
Among those who are concerned is Adrian Bennett, who spent years at Collinsville not as a pre-schooler but as a high school student. With a grant from United Way, the center took on teen-aged boys as teacher assistants – a way to give them a job and steer them towards successful lives.
Bennett was part of the Teen Tot program from the end of eighth grade at Frelinghuysen Middle School through his years at Morristown High School. His mother had died and his father was not in his life. So, Wasick said, the parents and staff at Collinsville took a hand in raising him.
The boys were paid, but it was not the money that he remembers. “I learned about becoming an adult,” he said. And he was exposed at an early age to what became his career: Education.
“During those years, I met about 50 boys who were in the program,” he said. He does not know what they are doing today. “But we stayed out of trouble.”
He was a success story. He went on to Rutgers where he earned a bachelor’s and a masters degree. He is now a high school counselor in the Elizabeth public schools. And he is married and the father of two children.
In fact, Wasick says, she walked him down the aisle at his wedding.
THE FUTURE?
Carol Armour says that without a home, Collinsville must give up its state license. If it finds a new location, it must apply anew.
Meanwhile, 18 Collinsville children will go to the Blake Center, along with the teachers. Others will be placed in other day care centers in Morristown,
And she promises that she will continue the search for another location – even though its is a difficult task.
The Y has saved it before, she said. And it wants to save it again.
Stay tuned.
