Today, Community Family Development is the largest nonprofit day care center in Dutchess County with an enrollment of just under 180 children, a staff of approximately 40, and an annual budget of nearly 1.3 million dollars. The Center is licensed by the New York State Office of Children and Family Services.
The organization as we know it today grew out of the 1995 merger of two independent Day Care Centers which had been operating, literally, across the street from each other for more than 25 years. The Community Day Care Center, founded in 1967, was a project of the First Baptist Church; while Poughkeepsie Family Development and Day Care Center was formed in 1970 as a joint venture of the Dutchess County Child Development Committee led by Jeanne Wagner, the Neighborhood Service Organization, Operation Head Start and, a bit later, of the City of Poughkeepsie’s Model Cities Program. The former center was located at 260 Mill Street in the educational wing of the First Baptist Church while the latter used classroom and office space at the First Congregational Church just across the street at 269 Mill. Although both Centers provided quality Day Care services to young children and their working parents, their approaches to that mission were somewhat different.
Community Day Care came into being when a group of working mothers attending First Baptist asked the Church to start a day care center. First Baptist members felt that its mission to be a “downtown Church” that served the needs of the surrounding community would be well served by such a center and an excellent use of its relatively new and somewhat under-utilized educational wing built in 1957. Ruth Delory was the first director of Community Day Care Center and under her leadership it grew to become a full-service, licensed day care facility with 59 children and 14 staff. The Center was incorporated in 1971 and became fully independent of First Baptist, although maintaining a cordial and mutually supportive relationship and continuing the utilization of the Church’s classrooms and offices.
The consortium of agencies that came together to plan and develop what would eventually become Poughkeepsie Family Development and Day Care Center formed a steering committee charged with developing a proposal that they could all support. The result was a visionary, for its’ time, plan for a day care center that would accept all the children in the same family between the ages of 3 months and 14 years. In addition, it would provide services to the entire family…everything from, assistance in securing work, to necessary social services, even tuition aid for the day care program itself. Much of this aspect of the operation was guided, when the Center opened, by a full time Staff Social Worker, Hilda Bohmer, whose services were available to all enrolled families. Ms. Bohmer had earlier been a member of the steering committee that helped frame the organization of a multi-functional family services center. In 1971, the City’s Common Council voted to approve the Center and the New York State Department of Social Services offered financial assistance. Community Family Development and Day Care Center incorporated and began operations at First Congregational Church in January of the following year, under the leadership of its first director, Alexander Pokrey.
The two centers operated more or less independently until the early 1990’s, when funding for day care and other social services was becoming more and more difficult to obtain. Indeed, both centers were told by one of their principal funding entities, the United Way of Dutchess County, that they could not continue to support two separate organizations providing relatively similar services and in such proximity to each other. They indicated that another arrangement, such as a sharing of resources or even a merger, would be a necessary condition of continued funding. Eventually funding was obtained for a feasibility study to determine what more cost-effective alternatives might exist. Joyce Ghee and Joan Spence conducted the study, considering a wide range of inputs from the funding agencies…United Way, the Dutchess County Social Services, and the Poughkeepsie Model Cities Agency…as well as from the centers’ clients and other stakeholders. Their recommendations were debated by both organizations for many months. Ultimately, the Boards of the two centers agreed to merge into a new entity, to be known as Community Family Development, and reached agreement on the terms of the merger and the structure of the new organization. The merger was completed in February of 1995 and the center as we know it today came into being.
Thanks to the hard work of the next two extremely talented and dedicated Executive Directors…Linda Sella, and Linda Simmons…as well as a talented staff and dedicated Board of Directors, Community Family Development has operated continuously since that time, and has grown both in size and in the quantity and quality of the services it provides to the community. Throughout, it has continued to pursue the same goals and to hold to the same values that were laid down by the original founding agencies nearly 40 years ago. Staffing today includes an Executive Director, two Site Directors, and at least 35 teachers, teacher aides, and support staff, depending upon enrollment. Over the succeeding years, there have continued to be difficulties with funding, enrollment, and other significant operating issues. The Centers’ highly professional and well-trained staff, supported by it’s equally talented and dedicated Board, has managed to deal with and resolve these very difficult problems and has done so without sacrificing the quality of the services provided or compromising the ideals set forth by the founders.