Schools
Harbor Child Care Looking to Lease Willis Avenue School
Day care non-profit seeking to expand/ move from current Herricks location.
With the closure of the set for the end of the 2011-12 school year, the Mineola School District is looking to and has received from interested parties, one of which is the Herricks-based .
As the largest non-profit child care center in Nassau County, Harbor Day has six locations with over 800 students and 200 employees between part and full-time status.
“We have seen your premises here, we are highly interested in moving people here, doing something with this school district, we think you have a nice set up for us,” Harbor Day President Martin Leventhal said during a presentation at the February 16 meeting of the Mineola Board of Education. A total of 400 students in 17 classrooms are housed at the Herricks location, ranging in ages from infant to school-age.
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“We really love this facility,” Herricks center director Tamara Pelosi said. “I would say that we love the bathrooms in the classrooms, we don’t have that luxury there.”
Since many districts find it simpler to outsource their universal pre-K program, many districts choose a third-party provider such as Harbor Day, giving them the state funding (about $2,700 per child). Harbor Day Care also operates universal pre-K programs for both the Herricks and New Hyde Park-Garden City Park school districts at the , with 55 students from each district attending.
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Harbor Day has operated the program for Herricks for the past 4 years and New Hyde Park-Garden City Park for the past five.
Owner/ founder Jill Rooney began Harbor Day in 1972, running the business out of her home before becoming a non-profit the following year with 73 children “because I wanted to help underserved children.”
The student population across all the Harbor Day centers are also diverse according to Rooney, who reported that the center has children subsidized by department of education, homeless, and from single and teenaged moms in addition to coming from a range of cultural backgrounds. Many of the students at the Herricks Community Center are from Mineola, Rooney said, as the center picks up from Jackson Avenue and the middle school.
She said that Harbor Day has a “value-centered” approach to education with a curriculum that is researched-based called “High Scope Educational Curriculum” with a focus on the “strength and interest of the child.” Parents are also notified of their child’s progress twice a year.
The center also includes special needs children in every class along with intervention services. Children are also required to visit seniors and vets as part of efforts to give back to the community as well as arts program in the curriculum.
“You just have to have a mindset and an interest and a love for children to have them blossom the way they do at our school,” Rooney said. “We would relish the opportunity to be here and be part of your community.”
Rooney stated that it was her intent to try to build a community setting for the setting similar to situations that exist in California, where adult education is offered beside care for spectrum children and obesity education, among other initiatives, including morning activities, sports programs and other offerings that are geared towards families.
“What the parents tell us is that they never have time to do activities with the children,” she said. “You don’t have a full-day child care program in Mineola like ours.”
Harbor Day would either bring the center currently at Herricks to Willis Avenue or build a new one from the Mineola community, but Rooney said she would like to put together a community advisory committee “to see what is needed here.”
When questioned about the start times, Rooney said that the center opens at 6:45 a.m. “when we’re near a hospital, the nurses like us to open at 6:30 or 6:45 so they can make the seven to three shift.” Harbor Day also has opened on Saturdays based on community need.
While parents typically bring their children to the center and pick them up, Harbor Day does utilize buses for its school-age program and breakfast club where students receive breakfast, get their homework checked are taken to school, and brought back and then picked up by parents. For parents who are of lower-income, the center would pick the children up from their homes. By New York State law the center cannot pick up infants less than one year without a parent. There are also aides always present on the buses or vans.
“Part of our current dilemma is some school times are starting later for our working parents,” Mineola Superintendent Dr. Michael Nagler said.
According to board trustee Terence Hale, Harbor Day submitted an outline of starting with four or five rooms and possibly going to nine or 10 by the end of the year and all 19 classrooms the following year if they were available.
“Where would that leave our district kids? Will all of our Mineola kids be able to be involved in this?” Hale asked.
While Rooney assured that Harbor Day could handle the applicants, Dr. Nagler said that “it’s very difficult... to plan for this because there’s going to be some startup time, we understand that and see how it goes from there.”
Harbor is also under contract at the Herricks Community Center until June 2013.
“But between now and then, we don’t know how many kids in this community will avail themselves and our program in Herricks,” Rooney said. “We might have to keep some of it there and some here.”
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