DAY-CARE WORKERS ARE ALSO ON THE FRONTLINE IN DRUG WAR

A 2-YEAR-OLD boy is clutching two packets of crack cocaine when an
alert child-care worker notices that something is wrong.

A teacher at Richmond Elementary School at Belgrade near Ann in Port
Richmond sees or senses something in the demeanor of a 5-year-old boy
who, it turns out, is carrying eight bags of heroin.

Police say that neither the toddler who brought crack cocaine to the
Porter Day Care Center at Broad and Belfield streets Friday nor the
5-year-old in the Port Richmond incident in October had ingested any
of the drugs that were found on them.

The day-care center and the school district have not released the
names of the workers who intervened.

But this would have been a very different story if those workers had
not been on the alert.

Darlene Davis, finance director at the Porter Day Care Center, said
the school has been advised by its lawyer not to comment on the incident.

"But I do believe we played a role in saving a child," she added.

You could search the city's criminal and social-services logs for
years without finding an incident in which a toddler carries drugs
into a kindergarten or day-care center, let alone two. Police
Inspector Aaron Horn couldn't remember another.

"I do recall the young boy who turned his dad in a few years ago for
trying to make him sell drugs," Horn said. "He even came to court to testify.

"But he was 10 years old. I can't recall a case with a child this young.

"It is alarming. But I don't see any trend here."

But there is an extensive record of other kinds of cases in which a
child's life was saved by the routine intervention of an alert
child-care worker.

"They are our eyes and ears," Ted Qualli, Department of Human
Services spokesman, told me yesterday. "We rely on them. The good
ones know what to look for.

"Teachers and child-care providers are required reporters under the
Child Protective Services Act. They work with these kids every day.
They notice things."

At least they do in the best day-care centers. But, as any working
parent will tell you, the best are expensive.

And with state and federal budget cutters looking to cut day-care
subsidies to poor, working families, many of those parents are being
left to choose cheaper alternatives.

"A place like Porter is the highest level," said Sharon Ward,
director of Children's Services for Philadelphia Citizens for
Children and Youth.

"They are accredited by a national accrediting agency. Things in a
household that affect the children are going to show up in a place like that.

"They spend the day with the kids and they see the parents twice a
day. That's the kind of centers we're working to get families access to."

But there are 1,200 Philadelphia families on waiting lists for
subsidized day care, Ward said. And with subsidies drying up on the
state and federal level, the waiting list is likely to grow.

In Washington, the Congress is in the process of reconciling House
and Senate budget bills that would cut day-care funding as early as
next week. Lawmakers in Harrisburg are considering a spending cap
that would lead to day-care funding cuts.

They claim the cuts will be so small we won't notice them.

Maybe.

But if families continue to lose access to high quality day care,
there's no telling what may go unnoticed.