HELP SAVE SUNFLOWER
On Friday, January 20th, our daycare was suddenly shut down with no notice. At the close of business, the owner's son informed staff that the daycare would be closed, effective immediately. Staff at the daycare were left without secure employment and families were left without daycare for the following week. In addition, staff had not been paid for more than a month prior and families are set to lose all payment they have made for coming months.
The families and staff are committed to keeping the daycare open so that our children can remain with the people who love them and have helped raise them, but we are getting little help from organizations we hoped would be on our side. Monday, January 23rd, The Department of Health delivered a letter to the premises giving us one week to vacate.
All families understand the stress and difficulty of finding affordable, quality childcare in this city. Many of us worked for months, waiting on list after list only to be told there was not enough space. Finding childcare cannot be done in a week. And the same is true for staff especially in this climate of unemployment. We have wonderful childcare providers that want to care for our children, and families that desperately need that care. We hope that our NYC Councilman Brad Lander, NYS Assemblyman Bobby Carroll and NYS Senator Kevin Parker along with the Department of Health can support us in our transition to a worker-run daycare.
We are asking that the Department of Health provide an extension to keep Sunflower open while our daycare staff secure the necessary paperwork to remain the caregivers and nurturers of our children.
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The staff of Sunflower Daycare have collectively lost nearly $14,000 in wages over the last month. Families want to help repay that money, but we have also lost thousands of dollars in daycare fees that will not be returned. So, we are turning to our friends, families and communities to ask for contributions - big or small - to help pay back the people that have cared for our children.
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