city um i am on the board for advisory board for paca i'm on the advisory board for um the philly
pre-k advisory council i'm also a part of the family child care advisory board um so basically
this is what i eat and breathe every day gotcha and then um why don't you tell the board and maybe
we'll go to the floor plans and that may make it easier so let's do that how many people work at
the facility so currently there's four of us i'm in the process of hiring a fifth person um and
because some things were brought up at the civic association and we try to accommodate some of the
things that have been said um and we're going to try to make that work um because to me it's a
process i teach children and um to learn and if i wasn't a good educator i wouldn't try to learn as
well okay i just want to go to the floor points and by the way beyond uh behind the letter from
the community there's many letters from people within the community and her customers which
speak highly of her and there's also a petition but i want to go to the floor plans to kind of
walk you through those floor plans and then we can go back to that petition um trying to find it hold
Hold on, one second.
Sure, slow.
Oh, I missed it.
All right, here we go.
Okay, so you said you have four people working with you
You said you have four people working with you, and then you're going to add on a fifth, right?
and then you're gonna add on a fit.
What are your hours of operation?
Currently, our hours of operation are 5.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., and we do make variances for parents if something happens, if they have to work overtime, things like that.
But I was done today by 5 o'clock.
Okay, great.
And, you know, you have, you know, you come in through the front door, right, to go into the facility, right?
So we do have several doors in my home.
So we, you can come into the front door, which is our sun porch.
and that area has cubbies for our zero to three students as well as our school-age students,
but there is also another entrance coming through the basement and that's where our
preschool students have their cubbies. And then that's these separate steps that
have exterior steps, not, you know, so it goes directly in. It's not like someone's
climbing into something, there's exterior steps, right? That is correct. So I have three doors
to my property. And so there's several ways of egress. Okay. So you have an infant and toddler
room. How many infants and toddlers do you have at any one time? So we have regulations. And so
right now we have two infants. Okay. All right. And then how many, uh, toddlers do you have
currently? Currently we have, uh, the 10 toddlers. Okay. Because, and you're, and you're limited to
12 under the zoning classification. Absolutely. Okay. All right. Um, why don't you just say what
the typical day is? Why don't you tell me what today was like? Sure. My typical day is, you know,
I wake up and my students are coming in at 530. I do have parents that are prison guards and work
for the post office and things like that. So we do try to accommodate those early hours. So in
essence my front door is always open um so the parents come in at 5 30 and between 7 30 and
8 o'clock i'm either getting uh school-age students to school or i am fixing breakfast
um so for some of my students today was their last day um or yesterday was their last day
excuse me and then for some of my students tomorrow is their last day school-age students
We have a pre-K program, and our pre-K graduation is tomorrow at the Please Touch Museum.
But my typical day, we were planning for everything.
We were making sure that we had everything together.
And when I say we, myself and my staff, and our snack time is at 10, our lunch time is
at 12, and our afternoon snack is at 4.
So throughout the day, some of my kids went to a playground and were in the sprinklers today. The other half of my students were in the facility and they were doing things like playing with puppets. My staff was teaching them different elements of our lesson plan.
All right, great. I'm going to reshare my screen. I kind of want to go through the letters of support that you obtained. And so who are some of these people that you gave us as in support of this, hopefully permanent variance?
So I have parents. I keep in touch with all of my parents. We become a family. The proverb that
it takes a village to raise a child is what I stick by. I speak to my staff about that when
we're doing orientations. We're these people's family, so we want to make sure that we still
are with them. So some of these letters are from my parents, and these students are probably
graduating from high school. I have letters there from family. I have letters
from current parents and I have letters from colleagues that are either above me
in these advisory councils that I'm a part of or they have a particular status
within the ECE community and there are letters from therapists
There are letters from therapists that come into my facility. That is one thing that I want to mention. In this area, there are so many students that have needs and big facilities, oftentimes the parents come and they say they have trouble with the students getting the proper care.
And my students flourish because it is a smaller facility. We are quaint. It's a more one-on-one. And I have students that have anything from oppositional defiance disorder. They may be on the spectrum in various stages or they just have speech delays.
I also am Department of Human Services certified.
So that means that foster children that are being raised by their foster parents, they do come to me.
So I deal with a lot of children that have trauma.
And so I have a certificate in infant toddler mental health.
And that really helps me maneuver and figure out strategies to help these students.
My computer died, actually.
Can you charge it?
but yeah i mean we have many letters to support uh from members of the community this is a you
know a facility that has been approved previously by this why don't you show us some photos yeah
I'm going to show you some photos.
Not working?
No, it is.
I don't think I expected it to be here that long.
It's not an issue.
It's just like I should have kept it plugged along the wall
so my computer sometimes dies.
Oh, there you go.
That was quick.
I just hopefully get back in.
Uh, let's see.
I have to get Zoom back in.
Come on, I just gotta now sign up again.
I guess you've been invited as a panelist.
Check your email.
I don't see the email.
Not as a panelist.
Oh, wait.
Here we go.
Host invited you.
Here we go.
Maybe because I wasn't.
Let's join.
let's see
All right, so let me show you some pictures of the block.
here's actually some literature all right so a little bit about her we went through
uh and these are some pictures from you know her website showing the outdoor area
I'm just trying to find photographs specifically of the property.
So just, all right, here we go.
All right, so this is the front of the property.
There's a common driveway with the owner to the left.
And I think that's part of the pushback.
There's an owner to the left.
I don't know if they showed up.
There was a controversy of what she didn't show up to the community meeting.
like we were told that she was on vacation and then we were told that she didn't get the notice
and you know so it's all in the letter but you know we sent out the person next door the next
door she's lived they've lived they've owned my client has owned the property for almost over 20
years and she's been doing this for over 20 years so the person who's lived next door is also lived
there for over 20 years. And my clients had some issues with that person. So, but here's the notice
posters. This is hay work to the right of the property to left of the property. Here are the
interior photos. So, Kelly, what are these photos that we're looking at? Sure. So, this is the
basement area. I am really big on literacy. You will see books everywhere. I feel as though that
gives students that don't see certain things a gateway to the world. So downstairs in the top
left photo is that little barn door goes back to our storage area and my administrator has an
office back there um there is a set of cubbies the white door is the bathroom um and if we move
over to the top picture on the right um it's a different angle going forward um that is our um
you know our circle time rug area um the children have little red furniture so that chair may look
big in the picture but it's actually for um younger students my preschool students
um and in the bottom left um it's just a different angle it's the other side of the room
and um the bottom right is a desk um sometimes school-age children i do uh homework help with
them. They sit downstairs. That is the desk. There is a boat there. And the children read
their books on the boat and they rock back and forth. We find that black and brown children
need to move. But they are the races that go into the fourth grade and can't read at a fourth
grade level. So what we do is we give them the ability to move back and forth. So they rock in
the boat and they and they read um and i guess we can go to another picture so that's the um back
part of the room so that's the left hand side of the room um and we do small um small center
exercises or activities at the blue table um the on the right side that is uh our bins of everything
so it's our cubby tower and we have everything in there every type of manipulative you can think of
is in that cubby tower it has four different sides um bottom left is our sand and water table
um there's little cubbies and nooks for kids to put things in um and then on the bottom right
we do have a kitchen set so our dramatic play area is around that area all right and what about here
what's this so this is actually the bathroom so we have a bathroom on every
floor and so this picture is I guess just it's showing artwork there's an
easel there when you have children art children's artwork you need to keep it
on their level so that's artwork on their level and then this is just
showing you the bathroom um we were part of early head start our our children aged out
but they provide diapers wipes and things like that so we have an abundance of them
but they provide diapers, wipes, and things like that.
So we have an abundance of those things,
which gave us the ability to use those for other parents.
And that is the bathroom in the basement.
And then that next picture is actually the door
going into the zero to three area,
but that is my front door.
Okay. And then these are more pictures.
So those are the cubbies for the school age children. That is the front porch area. The picture to the right is my deck. We have all kinds of activities out there. That particular activity, the children were learning about gardening. We do have a scientist that comes out and helps us with different things.
um the bottom left oh well you moved it you moved um but the bottom left we do have a
no no that's what i'm trying to there's a lot i'm sorry yeah that's fine there's a lot
yeah and here are the steps the exterior which most importantly is the exterior steps
that leads to the lower level so as you can see it's it's a safe transition for the house which
is important obviously for you know for both my client and this board to understand that they're
not you know in in a place where there's and you know that is unsafe and then we have fire drills
regularly so they know how to get out every door yeah and then the person that lives on the first
on the in the single family dwelling above is a family member is that correct it's myself and my
son okay there you go so you even live on site so yes proof of mailing for the community meeting
notice or application for appeal the deed to the property as well as the certificate of tax
clearance and like i said we have some we have some response if there is some people talking
about opposition because i do know there may be and i'll leave that to if someone is going to
you know contest this matter right right um what was the whole tenor of the rco meeting i mean you
talked to mr goldberg well yeah i did actually that good point um so he presented and he actually
stated is there any issue here uh there were like 12 members of the community there and and five
board members and no one said anything so we were actually he was actually surprised by you know the
vote and and the and and the fact that they were not in support especially since there was a
temporary variance many years ago this property has been used since 2008 this way and um the
overwhelming support within the community from the members who use the part so questions from
the board so what is the issue with the neighbor maybe maybe she can explain that and and has there
been um any kind of uh activity to kind of remedy that you know throughout the years that that we
have tried well yeah you know kelly it's better for you to say it than me i know the general sense
um but you know let kelly speak to that miss graham you wanted me to answer the question
about just just give us an idea of why the neighbor does not want you to be able to have a
a permanent permission to have the day care and would rather you continue to have some variance,
I mean, temporary variances. So I'm actually, I can't definitively say
that the issue is the child care facility. The neighbor has had issues with us since we moved in.
So there's information in what the attorney presented.
There have been several issues since the very beginning.
And even in the letter that she presented, there's issues that have nothing to do with the child care facility itself.
So I can only say that it's just me living there.
I don't know.
I honestly, I don't know.
it's been since the beginning she said like the drop-off process how what is your drop-off process
in terms of the cars uh moving uh to get the students uh dropped off picked up how was that
um and does that like create any kind of um obstruction for the neighbors you know that
are just going about their business okay so uh we are between two schools and thank you for asking
the question we are between two schools an elementary school and a high school um hayward
street is a thorough thoroughway for between both of those schools um so there's going to be traffic
in the morning no matter whether i'm there or not um but the drop-off process we do have a community
uh officer and i went through this with him before um before when
and i went through this with him before um before when we had the zoning hearing into um in 23. um
the process is our parents are to either pull into the driveway um or find a parking space
we live on a two-side residency but one side parking one-way street there's not always parking
this is Philadelphia people grow up stopping in the middle of the street we ask our parents not
to do so but if we catch them doing it and if there is not a supervision issue we run out get
the child and bring the child in our parents that are like clockwork the children are ready
the process in the driveway on average we've been looking this week and last week the process is
between two and three minutes. And in regards to the driveway, we use the driveway. The neighbor
uses the driveway. But in that letter, it seems like she doesn't use the driveway and she uses
the driveway as well. And so my parents know not to pull all the way in so that if she does need