Schaumburg day care protests likely budget cuts

After waiting years for the money to get their Schaumburg day care center open, Children's Home and Aid officials are frustrated by the threat that state budget cuts are already imperiling its service to low-income families.

A community meeting and rally at the center was held Friday to protest the threatened cuts and warn clients about possible consequences.

But Schaumburg Mayor Al Larson, a principal player in efforts to win its construction funding, warned against panicking about threats of a "doomsday budget."

While sympathetic to the concerns of Children's Home and Aid, Larson was also skeptical that legislators will be blind to the impact of human services cuts.

"It would be a big disappointment to not have the money to operate the facility, but you can't predict what the legislature is going to do," Larson said.

Even Children's Home and Aid officials conceded that the "moving target" of the threatened cuts in Springfield made it difficult to know exactly what they were protesting.

But Nancy Ronquillo, president and CEO of Children's Home and Aid, said the most severe version of the cuts she'd heard would make funding available to only the poorest of the poor - about 15 percent of the center's clientele.

Such a small number of clients would be able to be served in just two classrooms - making almost wasteful the years-long effort to move out of Our Savior's United Methodist Church into the higher capacity center that was built next door.

Though the state funding frozen by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich in 2003 was ultimately replaced by a private loan, the center must still raise $990,000 to pay off that loan. That's besides a $500,000 grant that would be lost if the rest of the money isn't raised by Sept. 1, Ronquillo said.

Children's Home and Aid is supportive of Gov. Pat Quinn's proposed income-tax increase, Ronquillo said.

She said her organization has proved it's effective to get financially strapped parents back to work and school by providing child care to them.

Ronquillo said that when it comes to such human services, society either pays now or pays later.