A Brooklyn day care owner whose license had been revoked by the state was allowed to open another program a few months later \u2014 only to have the second facility shuttered amid allegations of child abuse.<\/p>\n
The Eva Cr\u00e8che Day Care Center in Prospect Lefferts Gardens closed earlier this year after an employee recorded videos showing one worker grabbing and tossing a toddler and children napping and eating on the floor of a private residence that parents had not given permission for their kids to visit. The program was also over overenrolled.<\/p>\n
Public records obtained by parents at the now-defunct facility show that in 2020, the same owner had her license revoked at a day care she then ran in Crown Heights \u2014 that time for failing to let inspectors inside, and leaving too many kids with one worker.<\/p>\n
Five months later, she opened Eva Cr\u00e8che a mile away.<\/p>\n
The Eva Cr\u00e8che abuse allegations, and several other headline-grabbing<\/a> incidents<\/a> at local day cares in recent months, come as the city plans a major expansion of child care<\/a>. The city shut down one of the Manhattan locations of Bright Horizons, one of the largest child care providers, after an employee gave bleach to children<\/a> and another sealed a girl\u2019s mouth shut with packing tape. Authorities have charged<\/a> several workers from Bright Horizons and Eva Cr\u00e8che for endangering children.<\/p>\n Early education experts said these incidents \u2014 while outliers \u2014 underscore a broader challenge facing the city\u2019s child care expansion plan. New York City\u2019s 10,000 providers are overseen by a patchwork of state and city agencies, creating inequities across the system in terms of pay<\/a>, training and quality of care. In some cases, this can create environments where abuse happens, the experts said.<\/p>\n Parents at Eva Cr\u00e8che said the city agencies that were supposed to keep their kids safe failed to stop abuses.<\/p>\n The Mamdani administration said creating high-quality programs is a key tenet of the city\u2019s expansion plan and officials are working to create a more cohesive system for parents and providers. Health officials said the city has rigorous regulations, and the majority of programs are providing safe spaces for kids.<\/p>\n A second chance<\/p>\n Just a day after state officials revoked Shareece Duke\u2019s child care license at her day care Inspiring Minds in Crown Heights, city inspectors were touring another location where they would eventually allow Dukes to open a new facility.<\/p>\n In 2020, the state\u2019s Office of Children and Family Services cited Inspiring Minds for deliberately barring inspectors from coming inside. Once the inspectors were admitted, they found one teacher\u2019s assistant caring for six children younger than 2, records show. State regulations mandate a ratio of one caregiver for every two children younger than 2.<\/p>\n State officials revoked Dukes\u2019 license. But she was already in the process of obtaining a city license to open Eva Cr\u00e8che. That license was granted in 2021.<\/p>\n The attorney representing Dukes, the former owner of Eva Cr\u00e8che, didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Officials with the city\u2019s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which licenses child care centers, said providers who apply for a license undergo a tough review process and are subject to unannounced inspections once open.<\/p>\n City officials said prior license revocations are not always grounds to deny a new one and in Duke\u2019s case her prior violations were not enough to deny her a license because there was no immediate harm to kids.<\/p>\n Agency spokesperson William Fowler said the decision to grant Dukes a license was made under the previous administration but added, \u201cas soon as allegations of safety violations at Eva Cr\u00e8che were made, the department stepped in and is monitoring that the program remains closed with no children on site, and that the provider and staff do not attempt to open a new child care program.\u201d<\/p>\n He said the city is working with state officials to make sure they don\u2019t grant Dukes a license, either.<\/p>\n But parents whose children attended Eva Cr\u00e8che said the city should have never granted Dukes another license, and if they did, they should have put her under strict monitoring. Gothamist previously reported the center enrolled three times the number of kids allowed, kept kids in a basement that wasn\u2019t approved for children, and took toddlers off site to eat and nap in a private home not authorized by parents.<\/p>\n City inspection records show health inspectors failed to catch overenrollment at Eva Cr\u00e8che and never cited the location for caring for kids in an unauthorized basement. Records show inspectors were on site on the day parents said their children were taken to a private home. Eva Cr\u00e8che voluntarily shut its doors when parents began pulling their children out.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you are going to give a second chance, which I believe in second chances, why wasn’t [Dukes] properly inspected?\u201d said Cora Griffin, whose child attended Eva Creche. \u201c\u200aHow did they not see the basement? How did they not do a proper inspection of [Dukes] if there are already clear violations in the past?\u201d<\/p>\n Parents said they only found out Dukes had a prior closure after a parent filed a public records request through the Freedom of Information Law. Those records were shared with Gothamist.<\/p>\n Ensuring quality<\/p>\n New York City has some of the strongest standards<\/a> for child care programs and the state often ranks in the top tier for stringent oversight, child care experts say.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aYou can have whatever shiny laws you want on the books. You can pass whatever laws or city rules you want to pass. But if those laws are never enforced, then for practical purposes, they don’t exist,\u201d said Adam Birnbaum, whose son attended Eva Cr\u00e8che.<\/p>\n On the flip side, providers, have also complained that city inspections can be onerous and inspectors are often inconsistent in their interpretations of regulations, according to a report by the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School.<\/p>\n Corinne Schiff, deputy commissioner for environmental health at the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said the city\u2019s goal isn\u2019t to close every program that racks up violations, but rather help providers meet strict requirements. The agency oversees health and safety regulations for child care facilities.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aWe are in the business of cultivating safe environments for children and childcare, not to make it impossible for programs to operate or to close them down without good reason,\u201d she said. \u201cBut where we see that a program isn’t safely caring for children, we will close it down. We will require changes to be made.\u201d<\/p>\n Early childhood advocates said key steps toward preventing abuse and ensuring high-quality programs are ensuring better pay and training for workers.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you really want to extinguish bad behavior, you need highly qualified, well-supervised people,\u201d said Steve Barnett, \u200afounding director of Rutgers University’s National Institute for Early Education Research.<\/p>\n But he said it\u2019s also important to hold program leadership accountable. \u201cInstead of focusing alone on the individual that did the bad things, who is it that was responsible for supervising them?\u201d he added.<\/p>\n