In the midst of the fight to save a Bushwick early childcare center, life for its kids has continued almost entirely normal.
A total of 69 children are enrolled in 3-K, pre-K, and Head Start programs at Grand St. Settlement’s Bushwick Family and Child Center, just shy of its maximum capacity of 70.
On Tuesday, dozens of parents were visiting their preschoolers for an annual Valentine’s Day family craft. In a 3-K classroom, students worked on art projects with the help of older adults from a senior center housed in the same building, 319 Stanhope St., part of an intergenerational program between the two facilities.
While life in the classroom continued on, Grand St.’s leaders were preparing for a meeting with their landlord and City Hall, hoping to find a way to stay open.
Last month, the city told four early childcare centers in Brooklyn — including Grand St. — that it would not be renewing their leases, blaming under-enrollment and “oversaturation” of similar facilities in the area.
After weeks of backlash, the mayor’s office agreed to meet with each center and its landlord to try to find a way forward. But the future is still uncertain.
Bushwick lease was long expired, landlord says, but a deal is still possible
The city initially told Grand St. it was ending the lease due to under-enrollment, even though the program was almost at capacity. The Department of Education had cited incorrect enrollment numbers at other facilities, including Nuestros Niños in Williamsburg, thanks to discrepancies in an online portal.
But on a Feb. 11 call, the city’s Department of Education said enrollment wasn’t the issue, said Carl Glenn, Grand St.’s deputy director of communications. Rather, it was the cost of the lease — signing a new, long-term lease would be “cost prohibitive.”
Negotiations will continue with the landlord, RD Management LLC, but Grand St. has limited time — its lease at 319 Stanhope St. ends in June, and the city’s Pre-K enrollment deadline is Feb. 28.
“I just wish we could take some time, really slow down, have real conversations, and make a real effort to save this center, versus what I think the administration is doing, which is just buying time,” said Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso during a Feb. 11 visit to Grand St.
Rick Birdoff, owner of RD Management LLC, told Brooklyn Paper the company “[wants] to make a deal with the city” and renew its lease for both Grand St. and the Riseboro Bushwick Ridgewood Older Adult Center. The lease expired in 2019, he said, and though the city has continued to pay since then, it’s not at market rate.
“Plus, under the new lease we’re working on, there’s a bunch of improvements I have to make to the building that are being required, so there’s money that I have to put into the building,” Birdoff explained.
Publicly-available records show that the Department of Citywide Administrative Services paid RD Management LLC just over $760,000 in Fiscal Year 2024 for contracts including both the childcare center and the senior center.
Birdoff said the city has generally “been OK” to negotiate with, and that he’s hopeful they can strike a deal.
Reached for comment, City Hall referred Brooklyn Paper to the Department of Education — which did not comment on the meetings or the assertion that the lease had expired in 2019. The agency’s press office shared a statement already shared by City Hall two days previously, and said it did not have further updates.
On Feb. 11, before Grand St. met with the city, Council Member Sandy Nurse criticized the Adams administration for cutting funding for free and low-cost childcare programs, rather than protecting them and finding other ways to slim down the city budget.
“What we’ve seen in every budget cycle I’ve participated in is a broad-stroke slash across the board,” for childcare funding, she said.
Additionally, she said, the city regularly ends up with a larger budget surplus than it had predicted — meaning more money was available than was spent.
“We really need better planning with the countable, realistic numbers that we know exist,” she said. “… and make better decisions that have, at the center, the families.”
‘You cannot find a center like this’
Ligia Maisanche’s twin daughters have been attending Grand St. for two years, since they entered 3-K, she told Brooklyn Paper as she sat at a low table in their classroom. Her daughters are now 5 years old, and headed to kindergarten next year.
Maisanche, a single mother, said finding a safe, affordable childcare center was “really hard,” but necessary — she had to keep working. Many childcare centers and schools are not open late or during the summer, leaving parents in a bind, but Grand St. immediately offered to enroll her children in summer and after school programs, she said.
“I feel confident, I know that they are safe,” she said. “I’m not afraid to go to work and leave them here, because leaving them with someone else to take care of them, you don’t know what’s happening.”
The teachers know Maisanche’s daughters well, she said, and give them individualized attention and assistance.
“You cannot find a center like this,” she said. “Most of the time, the school is open for them. And for me, it’s easy.”
Valerie Agostini, a Program Director at Grand St., said the families of Bushwick are often in need of a safe place for their children during the workday.
“This community is important to me, I live in this community,” she said. “Each person that we’ve worked with here means something more than just a participant. They become our family … so I plead with the mayor, and I plead with the community of New York City to stand up and be the voice of the children and the families and keep this program open.”
