Now-Closed Day-Care Center Had a History of Problems

When state officials forced the closure of the Little Peoples Assn. in Carson last month, parents and staffers at the child-care center expressed surprise and dismay. But a review of state records reveals the center has been cited repeatedly by the state in recent years for infractions ranging from corporal punishment to poor building maintenance.

Richard Kennedy, the center’s operator, flatly dismisses criticism of the facility as overblown. And state Social Services officials, who handle licensing of child-care centers, describe Little Peoples Assn. as a problematic facility--but by no means among the worst.

But a harsher view is being expressed by the state Department of Education, which forced the center to close July 20 by abruptly withdrawing funding, citing health and safety problems.

Robert A. Cervantes, director of the Education Department’s child development division, said he had been unaware until recently that the center had been cited so often for license infractions by the Department of Social Services.

“My point is, had we known about it, then we could have taken a much harder look at it,” Cervantes said. Describing himself as “angry and frustrated,” he also acknowledged that the case may point up a lack of communication between Education officials who fund day-care centers and Social Service officials who license them.

Said Cervantes: “The communication was not as direct as it might have been.”

Little Peoples Assn. closed July 20 when the Department of Education abruptly terminated its $500,000-a-year contract.

The center, one of hundreds that receive state child development funds after qualifying for them in a competitive application process, was intended to provide schooling and day care for children ages 3 months to 4 years from low-income families.

The catalyst for its closing was an unannounced July 9 inspection by representatives of both the Social Services and Education departments.

Officials from the agencies reported such problems as unclean drinking water, soiled infant cots, splintered furniture and children playing with peeling paint on a door. And on that torrid July day, a lack of air conditioning pushed the inside temperature above the required 68-to-85-degree range to 90 degrees.

The closing provided dramatic fodder for news reports, with state police standing guard as frightened parents fetched their children from the center, housed in a storefront in a strip mall at 23013 S. Avalon Blvd.

An independent auditor may be brought in to review the center’s records, said Mario A. Muniz, field services administrator with the child development division.

It would not be the first time Kennedy has been audited. A jobs training program run by the center’s parent organization, Employment Readiness Support Center Inc., recently was scrutinized by federal investigators, but no charges were filed.

Education officials say they acted because of what they call serious deficiencies in the education program and a history of recurring problems--including corporal punishment--reflected in the Social Services files.

Corporal punishment is banned at state-licensed child-care centers.

Kennedy says he has checked all allegations of corporal punishment and has been unable to confirm any of them. He suggests the reports might have come from disgruntled parents. “There isn’t a pattern of corporal punishment here,” Kennedy said.

He also calls the state’s other complaints exaggerated, saying any problems at the center have been corrected. For instance, he said, the air conditioning--though it had been broken for about a year at the time of the inspection--is now working.

If conditions were really so bad, he said this week, “Why in the world would I still have a license in good standing?”

Social Services officials, however, say Kennedy’s license may yet be revoked. “We’re still reviewing the case,” said Sergio Ramirez, South Bay district manager for the Social Services community care licensing division.

Social Services evaluators visited Little Peoples Assn. more than two dozen times since 1984, according to public records on file at the Culver City office of the licensing division.

They investigated reports of corporal punishment on at least eight visits, issuing three citations, or reprimands.

A 1986 citation stemmed from six children’s accounts that they had been spanked with a ruler, records show. The local licensing office later urged that Little Peoples’ license not be renewed, Ramirez said.

However, the agency’s legal staff re-interviewed the children and concluded their accounts were not reliable, Ramirez said. So the center was simply told to institute staff training on discipline and to dismiss staff violating a child’s personal rights.

Records show that in June, 1990, an evaluator determined that children were being taken to the bathroom and spanked; the center was instructed to hold discipline workshops.

The center was cited again in 1991 for a spanking and was told to conduct more training on discipline, according to the file.

Ramirez said the corporal punishment citations involved “separate incidents with separate participants.”

The total number of complaints about the center in the past four years “may be on the upper end, but it is not unusual,” he said.

“There have been worse facilities, and there have been a lot of facilities that have been a lot better,” Ramirez said.

Two mothers said in recent interviews that their children described corporal punishment at the center.

Natalie Brooks of Carson said her 3-year-old daughter told her on the ride home one afternoon last fall: ‘Momma, I’m hurting. . . . (A teacher) pinched me and I had to sit in the corner.’ ”

After finding a bruise under the little girl’s arm, Brooks said, she reported the incident to the Social Services licensing office. An investigation did not prove a teacher pinched a child, Ramirez said.

Kennedy said that although he could not confirm the complaint, he suspended the teacher who allegedly did the pinching.

Susie Taylor of Los Angeles said she removed her two children from Little Peoples Assn. two years ago after someone told her that a teacher was hitting her son. But, she said, she never reported the incident to state officials.

“I wish I would have followed through more,” she said.

Many parents, faced with an acute shortage of low-cost child care, might be reluctant to complain about conditions, Taylor added. “(When) you know this is your only form of child care,” she said, “you don’t make waves.”

With the closing of Little Peoples Assn., Carson is left with only two subsidized child development centers, said Allen J. Kennett, director of Equipoise Resource and Referral of Compton, which assists parents in finding child care in the South Bay area.

The state arranged for 53 children from the closed center to enroll at one of those centers, Friendship Children’s Center at 23033 S. Avalon Blvd., just a few doors away in the same strip mall. Parents normally must wait three months to two years to enroll their children at Friendship.

For his part, Kennedy is questioning why the Education Department forced the shutdown while Social Services permitted him to keep operating after the July 9 inspection. He labels the Education Department’s actions “outrageous” and says he has decided not to follow through with his announcement last month that he would surrender his license voluntarily.

Long Beach attorney Kenneth T. Welch, whom Kennedy has consulted about the closing, described it as “kind of an example of government just walking all over the little guy.”

State criticisms stemming from the July 9 inspection, he said, “seem to be the type of things that can be readily fixed.” He said the investigation produced no new allegations of corporal punishment.

“I think they just sort of ran roughshod over a man. . . . It just doesn’t leave a good taste in your mouth,” Welch said.

But Education Department officials said they were reacting to a pattern of problems.

“We felt it was severe enough that we needed to get our kids out of there and into a safer environment,” Muniz said.

Asked if Social Services should have policed the center more carefully, Muniz said: “I think licensing made every effort to work with this organization in bringing it into compliance. . . . We made a conscious decision not to do business with this organization, regardless of what DSS decided to do.”