Month after month in "Euclid Street Journal" we have shared bits and pieces of our lives as a community. We have told about our hopes, dreams, and successes. Sometimes we have also shared our sorrows. This month we share with you our grief and disappointment at the closing of our child development center at the end of February (for a history of the center see the April, 1981 "Euclid Street Journal").
Our first pilot program in daycare opened in November, 1976, in one of our households, with eight children from our neighborhood. In November, 1977, we opened a larger center in the basement of a low-income housing project owned by HUD. The goal of the center was to provide affordable child-care to low-income, working people as well as offering school preparation.
During the next three years, demand for service was greater than we could provide, and we slowly expanded to try to meet that growing need. By the spring of 1980 we had to make a decision whether to continue to run a smaller, church-related center that would rely heavily on Sojourners for direction and staffing or to organize a larger neighborhood center of which Sojourners would be a smaller contributing part. This second option would mean pulling together a coalition within the neighborhood to take responsibility for the center.
After much discussion we chose the latter course, and in the summer of 1980, gathered a Board of Directors of four parents, four neighborhood leaders, and four members of Sojourners. Our choice also meant that we had to expand the number of children in the program and obtain a substantial amount of funding from outside sources.
At first everything went well. The Board was enthused, the tenant association in the apartment building offered its support, and it seemed like we would finally be able to whittle down our list of families waiting to enroll their children when a space became available.
Then hard times began to hit us very personally. Last spring many parents lost their job-training funds, and CETA jobs were abolished. Even those not on government programs began feeling the economic crunch, and many could no longer keep steady employment, which made less demand for childcare and declining enrollment. Even the modest fee we were charging became too much for parents to pay. The government began cutting back on the only government funding we were receiving.
The tenant association of our building made up a slide show of the center and presented it to HUD with a request for reduction in our rent so that childcare could continue to be provided in the complex. The official response was that in a building owned by HUD we needed to be able to pay fair market prices to operate our privately subsidized center for low-income people.
The Board we had called together to run the center was not really able to take control, carry the vision, and do the necessary work in the midst of their busy lives. We realized that despite our efforts to the contrary, we had created a Board where the responsibility for the center still rested primarily with Sojourners. We were not prepared to take on the major responsibility for the new center.
During the fall we worked on different options to keep the center solvent, but none was enough to do the task. At the January Board meeting the decision was made to close the Sojourner Truth Child Development Center on February 28, 1982.
The parents, staff, and Board have been doing a lot of grieving together. Many of us have been asking ourselves what we could have done differently. Those of us who have worked on the staff for a number of years struggle with a real sense of personal failure. As we sat in the last Board meeting, Donna, one of the parent members, asked, "Do you think maybe you could run a smaller program somewhere? I've waited a year for Dominique to be old enough to come to the center and be part of the program, and now it is closing." At the parents' meeting the next night, Thell and Marie asked, "What if we were able to rent an apartment somewhere and continue the program? It has been so important for Anthony."
The parents also asked if we could have our traditional "graduation" in February before the center closed since we wouldn't be able to in August. It seemed very important to them that their children "graduate" from the center formally--maybe because many of them have not been able to attend many of their own graduations. Bob Lawrence, a former parent and Board member, came by expressing anger at HUD for not being more helpful in the process. "The problem is," he said, "HUD doesn't see you as white folks. They see you as being black, just like us, because of what you are doing. They don't want you here any more than they want us here!"
Much of the grieving we are doing as a staff centers on these relationships with families. Without the center our relationships will not be the same. Those on the center staff from both the community and neighborhood are faced with unemployment and the insecurity that it fosters. And it's just hard to face the fact that we will no longer be walking into that familiar place and greeting those familiar people and watching those children grow.
What have we learned from all this? Sometimes you can't beat either the system or your own failings, and you just have to let things die before it seems like it is their time. We don't have to apologize so much for being a predominantly white church in a black neighborhood, and some of the guilt we were feeling about carrying on a small church-run ministry center in the spring of 1980 was unwarranted. We need to be able to share ministry with our neighbors, but only when they desire to share the responsibility of it too. And we must continually re-define who we are as a church in this neighborhood and what it is that we are being asked to do here.
As a postscript, I want to add that we have made a decision to "go back to our beginnings" and run a small program out of one of our houses for some of the children from our center. It feels good not to be losing touch completely.
Barb Tamialis had previously served as director of the Sojourner Truth Child Development Center at the time this article appeared.
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