Chair Stevens Questions School-Age Child Care Licensing

Um how's the agency assessing providers who do not have school age child care licenses?

Because that's another question, especially for the new providers that's coming in that's gonna be in these places.

Um about uh when the RFP came out was just like, are we giving additional supports to DOHMH?

Because they are a huge part in this process that we kind of forget about.

And so I'm trying to understand, especially with these new programs coming in, how do we expect to get all these people cleared?

Because even if you were cleared at another site, you gotta do the process over.

And with the SAC requirements, I'm really concerned about folks being able to start and being able to get um up and going by what is August?

What is it?

September.

September.

Yep.

So thank you, Chair.

That's a great question.

Um, at the start of the RP planning process, we've been in full engagement with the OHMH and New York City Public Schools because there's a whole coordinated process that happens behind the scenes outside of the application process, which includes inspections, the facilities itself.

So we wanted to really focus on the more trouble spots areas and then on the application side work with those new and existing CBOs to ensure that they are fully understanding the process itself, that we have support and technical assistance that we can provide on our end as well.

What's been great is that there's only a small subset of these programs starting the fall that actually require a new license itself.

So we're uh right now we're looking at just over 200.

So that's a share.

And again, it's it's also you said 200, like it was like 10.

But it's it's but let's let's be clear 200 out of the total 900 plus programs we have.

We've done this in the past when we did the sonic expansion.

I and I was there and it was not smooth.

It was it was not smooth.

Smoother, and right and I was there, it was not smooth, and it was a mess.

And you're 100% correct on that.

And what's been great since then is that there actually is an online portal, right?

We had to go from paper-based to online since then.

So there's been a lot of progress.

And that is the process of what we do here at DYCD to make sure that we can make those troublesome spots as comfortable as possible, right?

I think this is an opportunity for us to really think about these processes across multiple agencies and how we're tracking them and ensuring that we are escalating as we speak right now.

We have these teams coordinating and meeting to discuss where um additional supports are going to be needed and really coordinating with public schools that identifying the classrooms so the OHMH can go out and do the inspections in a quick manner and engaging with CBOs that still need support in that process.

Is there a consensus plan if they are not able to get their SAC license and up and running?

Yes, there will be plans in place to do that.

So you have that plan already?

Okay, so you'll share that with me.

Yes.

All right, great.