Supporters planned strategies this week as a June 30 deadline for closure looms for the daycare.
Now the fight moves to Trenton for the parents, friends and staff of Teddy Bear Academy daycare.
Teddy Bear’s supporters gathered in the library of Marlton Middle School this week to discuss strategies for gaining the support of state legislators to advance recently introduced legislation that would allow Teddy Bear Academy and daycares like it across the state to remain in operation.
The daycare, opened in 2014 by the Evesham Township School District in an unused wing of Marlton Middle, has been ordered to close by June 30 due to a combination of rulings from an administrative law judge and the state commissioner of education.
Effectively, Teddy Bear was found to violate state law by providing childcare services outside of regular school hours for children who were not yet of school age or who may have lived outside of the ETSD’s sending area.
Since its inception, TBA has operated throughout the year before and after the ETSD’s normal school hours for kids as young as 6 weeks of age, regardless of their residence.
The program provides additional revenue for a district that is already facing the estimated loss of about $9 million in state aid monies by 2024–2025 school year.
Officials said the program served upward of 80 children before last year’s legal rulings, but that number has dropped down to about 55 children currently due to the program originally facing a possible 30-day shutdown timeframe last September.
However, legislation recently introduced by state Sen. Dawn Addiego and Eighth Legislative District Assemblymen Joe Howarth and Ryan Peters (all of whom represent Evesham Township at the state level) would effectively allow for school districts in the state to operate daycare programs such as Teddy Bear Academy.
With that, Howarth spoke to TBA supporters at Marlton Middle this week about what they could do to help advance the legislation, known as bill A-4864 in the Assembly and bill S-3330 in the Senate.
First, Howarth instructed supporters to lobby for the bills to be posted for a hearing and vote by calling or emailing Gabriela Mosquera, chairwoman of the Women and Children’s Committee in the Assembly, and Teresa Ruiz, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee.
Before the full Assembly and full Senate can vote on the bills, and before the bills can be signed into law by Gov. Murphy, they must first be advanced in Mosquera’s and Ruiz’s committees respectively.
And as Howarth noted, the committees have many bills before them at one time.
“They’ve got tons of bills, and they get lost in there,” Howarth said. “Unless you’re able to get that bill moved up and create a little noise about it, they kind of stay there in a little dead land forever.”
Howarth also suggested supporters reach out to reach out to Sixth Legislative District Representative Louis Greenwald, who has served as majority leader in the Assembly since 2012.
“He’s very instrumental in seeing what goes up to the majority office, and the majority office then takes a look at things,” Howarth said.
In addition, Howarth said supporters of TBA could reach out to legislators who represent districts where there are other school districts with daycare programs in danger similar to Teddy Bear Academy, such as Toms River, Barnegat and Piscataway.
Evesham resident Rosemary Bernardi, a former member of the ETSD Board of Education who once served on the board with Howarth, is coordinating those and other similar efforts.
Bernardi is also leading efforts to reach out to the boards of education in those districts, as well as their municipal governments, to see if they would join in the lobbying of their state representatives, in addition to passing resolutions in support of the legislation.
“Any action that you do, as Joe said, is good press,” Bernardi told supporters at this week’s meeting.
Leah Perlmutter, who serves as the childcare director for the ETSD and has led Teddy Bear Academy since its creation, also thanked supporters for their efforts, including her staff who may lose their jobs at the end of this school year.
“They come in every day and put their fears aside to do everything they need to do to make sure all these children at Teddy Bear are learning and taken care of in a safe, fun environment.”
Perlmutter also offered her thanks to the families that have continued to enroll their children in the program, in addition to sharing understanding to the families who moved their children due to the questions surrounded the program’s future.
“These things get me and get into my heart, and it just makes me want to fight even more,” Perlmutter said. “It makes me sad at the same time, but I’m just going to turn all that into trying really hard to do everything we can possibly do to make this right.”
Fourth Legislative District Assemblywoman Mosquera can be contacted at (856) 232–6700 or at aswmosquera@njleg.org.
Twenty-ninth Legislative District representative Ruiz can be contacted at (973) 484–1000 or at senruiz@njleg.org.
Greenwald can be contacted at (856) 435–1247 or at asmgreenwald@njleg.org.
Those with additional legislative questions can contact Howarth at (609) 654–1498.
To join of follow the efforts of other local supporters, email SavetheTBA@gmail.com, follow the group on Twitter @SavetheTba or search for “Savethetba” on Facebook.
