State Senator John Liu joined parents, teachers and children from the Rainbow Child Development Center at its Flushing location on Thursday, June 15, for a rally calling on the city’s Department of Education to not close any of its locations.
The Rainbow Child Development Centers in Flushing, Fresh Meadows, Little Neck and Long Island City serve a total of 400 preschool children across Queens.
The threat of closure by the Department of Education (DOE) stems from an investigation they opened into Rainbow shortly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The investigation came about after a payment dispute between the development center and some parents in regards to an after school program. Despite the anonymous complaints, Rainbow was never granted the opportunity to respond to these accusations.
According to the investigators’ report, the preschool was requiring parents to enroll in the fee-based after school program in order to be enrolled in the free pre-K program. However, no more than half of the kids are actually enrolled in the after school program, seemingly contradicting this claim.
Additionally, Rainbow claims that it is not up to them to determine who enrolls in their pre-K program, but rather it is DOE. It is only after children are enrolled that Rainbow will offer the afters chool program. Children not enrolled in the universal pre-K program are not offered the after school program.
According to Rainbow, there had been very little communication between them and DOE since the investigation began until last May. It was then that investigators suddenly recommended DOE cease its relationship with the development center. They accused the investigation of being false and unfair. Parents who had their kids enrolled in Rainbow began to receive notices this month that they would need to enroll their children into other schools, to which they never even applied.
“Hundreds of families rely on these schools,” Liu said. “The DOE not only starved…
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