Greater New Brunswick Day Care Council Helps Raise Children for More Than 40 Years

Each weekday, David Harris arrives at the Livingston Avenue Church of God around 6:15 a.m.

He heads right into the kitchen to begin cleaning and begin preparing the morning snacks and breakfast.

"Getting everyone off on the good foot, like my grandmother," he said.

By 6:30 a.m., his charges begin to stream in, some still asleep, as their parents leave for work. They are laid on couches to keep napping, sit at tables eating crackers and milk, or press their little hands to the glass of a large aquarium, watching the fish swim.

Harris is the executive director of the Greater New Brunswick Day Care Council, a day care center that has operated in the church since 1970.

It enrolls about 140 children, ranging from infants to 5 years of age.

The Beginning

A political science and English major, Harris said the day care came together in the late 1960's, following a talk that he had given at the Ministerial Alliance of Greater Middlesex. It was during a period in which the state was looking to expand day care, he said.

The church's minister at the time invited Harris to come down and see the space to discuss the possibility of a day-care program. 

"This space was beautiful, but what was more beautiful was his attitude," Harris said.

After the program obtained grant money and began to take shape, the church was willing to host the day care, but not run it, Harris said. And he found himself at the reins, after it was suggested that he run it until someone else could be brought in.

"That somebody was me," he said.

In 1971, he hired head teacher Mae J. Strong and, 40 years later, they are both still there, Strong in the classrooms, giving students snacks or supervising activities with them, Harris in the kitchen prepping food and doing paper work.

Like Harris, child care was not something Strong went to school for. She studied to be a chemist, but came from a family of 17 children.

"(I) always worked with children," she said.

Her legacy with the day care is reflected in the naming of its "Mae J. Strong Child Development Center" in the early 1990's.

The Clientele

At the time of the day care's founding, the attending children were predominantly African-American, Harris said. That has shifted, and the main clientele of the day care are now Latino children.

When every parent drops their child off in the morning, they must swipe a card through a credit card reader and check their child off a list. The card reader is part of the state's welfare reform program, Harris said, and directly monitors the data for state reporting.

The day care had to use the machines as of January, as a New Jersey childcare provider, and as a recipient of state funding, Harris said.

And if the swipes do not go through property, the day care is at risk of not receiving the proper funding for those children. As a result, a staffer must stay with the machines throughout the morning to watch each swipe to ensure it is successful.

In order to use the day care, as per state regulations, the parents must be working, and their income must meet a certain threshold near the poverty line. 

High school students may also use the day care, and do. About 12 teenage mothers currently have their children in its care, Harris said.

However, instead of holding a job, they must be enrolled in school and be in good standing with grades and attendance.

Harris said that a big part of what the day care does is encouraging these young mothers, who may wrestle with completing their education upon becoming pregnant.

"Our job is to make sure that we do not rub it in their face," he said. "That was the philosophy when I was growing up."

The opinion of "You made your bed, now lie in it," offers nothing, Harris said. While he has observed that many young mothers will not abandon their children, they do run into difficulties in pursuing jobs and education.

By failing to offer support and love to these people in their moment of vulnerability, a community is ensuring "A legacy of trouble," Harris said.

"In their hardest times we need to let them know...There is nothing you can do to make us stop loving you," Harris said.

Learning and Growing

According to Strong, many of the children who came into the day care speak Spanish as a primary language. However, being around English-speaking children helps build their bilingual skills quickly.

"Child care boosts a child's vocabulary considerably," she said.

The children learn each other's names, and the names of all the staff, even those that do not directly supervise them, Strong said.

They learn how to properly store toys and books, about healthy eating, and even growing - the older children had small plants in plastic planters, slowly sprouting.

Harris said the day care has pushed healthy eating for years, even before the anti-childhood obesity campaign of the last few years.

Children in the day care are given three full meals daily, with lean proteins, grains, fruits and vegetables, and low-fat milk, and two healthy snacks. The meals and snacks provide their full nutritional requirements each day, Harris said. 

For physical activity, they play outside on a playground located at the rear of the property.

When birthdays arrive, each child is given a gift, a cake, a special hat, and are sung to. Strong said the staff takes pictures of all children on their special day, taking special care to get a photo of children with their parents, to help them build good memories.

Strong remembered one student, now grown, who came back to visit before going off to Seton Hall University. She carried with her a scrap book, which contained the paper hats from her birthday celebrations at the day care, as well as five photos, one taken on each birthday there.

Strong said that the girl told her that she planned to tell the school that the scrapbook was her first book, and that was why she was so smart.

"I do remember some children because they have some wonderful stories," she said.

The Future

In 1990, the aging congregation of the church gave the property to the Greater New Brunswick Day Care Council, after working with them for 30 years.

Harris believes the act was less about religion than it was about "high moral values."

The congregation at the time was German Reformed, Harris said. Services are still held at the church, and the congregation of about 20 people is now African-American, he said.

At the time of the transfer, Harris said the church authorities told him that the day care staff "took better care of the property than we did."

So while the day care has a permanent home in the church, Harris said he will likely be a permanent fixture as well.

Currently, he works about 65 hours a week, even coming in for a few hours on the weekends to catch up on paperwork.

Harris said that his current level of activity would probably not transition well into retirement.

Strong expressed a similar sentiment.

Currently, the day care has volunteer foster grandmothers come in, elderly women whose primary role is to sit with the children, hug, comfort and talk with them.

If she decides to retire, Strong said she will return to the day care as a grandmother.

"(I'll) sit in a chair and wait for them to come for their hugs," she said.