Four hundred day care directors and 7,000 teachers, responsible for over 50,000 low- and middle-income children in 350 day care centers throughout the city, are fired up. They have been without a contract for three years and now they are sending an angry message to Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“Mayor Bloomberg, stop ignoring us! Three years without a contract is shameful!” says the union that represents the day care directors and supervisors, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators (CSA), whose contract expired in March 2001. Now, that message is being heard around the city with the help of CSA’s full-fledged media campaign.

CSA says its “public awareness campaign” is designed to “shine the spotlight on Mayor Bloomberg’s apathy towards city-funded day care” with radio spots on six New York-area radio stations, columns by CSA President Jill Levy appearing in nine community-based newspapers, including The Amsterdam News, and several Hispanic and Chinese community papers.

In addition to being without a contract for three years, teachers in the city-funded day care centers have not had a raise in four years. And, while they have held rallies and even declared a one-day strike in protest, there has been little progress. Now, once again, they are making their dissatisfaction public. In February, DC 1707, the union that represents city-funded day care teachers, held another in a string of rallies in front of City Hall in hopes of bringing the city back to the bargaining table.

“The mayor says there is over $1 billion surplus in the budget, but all he has given the pre-school children is the back of his hand,” said Michael Green, head of the District Council 1707 Day Care and Head Start division.

The teachers contract expired on December 31, 2000. Green said the teachers deserve “the same 4-4-1 pay increase that all the other city-funded employees gained in the 2001 round of contracts.” He added: “These are dedicated, hardworking employees educating thousands of children and infants in the more than 350 publicly funded day-care centers throughout the city. The operation of these centers is critical to every community in New York, providing child care services to thousands of working families.”

City Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. and award-winning Brooklyn author Nelly Rosario have also lent their stature and voices to the day care workers’ fight for economic justice. Both can be heard in the CSA radio ads, in both English and Spanish, demanding a contract for the day care workers.

Thompson, who has made no bones about his feelings about this issue in the past, said: “Day care centers are anchors of their communities. They give parents the chance to make a better life for their families, and studies show their children perform better in school.”

Thompson criticized Mayor Bloomberg for his apparent indifference to the poor and middle-income families who depend on the city-funded day care centers, as they juggle jobs and family responsibilities, with the need to know that their children are in good hands. He added that the mayor is “putting profits before people” and insisted that the mayor learn to respect working people in this city.

In addition to the radio ads, day care directors and assistant directors and parents have launched a letter-writing campaign, sending hundreds of letters and postcards to City Hall.

“Day care should be the cornerstone of our educational system,” said CSA’s Levy. “Research shows that early childhood education makes a significant difference in how a child develops and learns later in life. Day care also provides the city with an economic advantage by giving parents a place to take their children while they work or attend school.”

Both CSA’s Levy and DC 1707’s Green want to know why the mayor has so far refused to acknowledge the valuable role their members play in the economic health of the city. Levy, who said Bloomberg has never even acknowledged the expired contract issue or agreed to negotiate in any form, wants to know why “the mayor has chosen to turn his back on some of the city’s neediest families by ignoring the valuable lifeline on which they depend.”