The Immaculate Conception 151st Street Preschool, tucked inside a four-story stone-and-brick building in the South Bronx, near Yankee Stadium, promises that students will “build self-esteem” and “develop a positive attitude toward learning.”

City health inspectors visited the school three times in 2023, and each time found serious safety violations, inspection records show. The building was unclean and unsafe, lacking “structural integrity,” and showed evidence of pests, inspectors found. Immaculate Conception did not respond to a request for comment.

Heartshare Human Services runs several day care sites specializing in helping children with disabilities and special needs, telling parents that “A child’s first steps in the classroom are the ones that count the most.”

When city inspectors visited the school’s branch in Howard Beach, Queens, in 2023, they found several serious violations, including failing to fingerprint and background check caregivers — some of whom were determined to have criminal records, according to inspection reports.

The city was so concerned it closed the facility. The site was allowed to reopen two weeks later after inspectors found the violations had been resolved, records show.

Heartshare did not respond to a request for comment.

The problems detailed by inspectors at the Bronx and Queens facilities were far from uncommon. In 2022, the last year when full records are available at the writing of this story, city inspectors regularly uncovered public health hazard violations that posed an imminent danger to children at day care facilities.

Litany of Serious Violations

A NYCity News Service analysis of agency inspection data from 2022 found that city inspectors conducting routine visits found these most serious violations in about one out of every 10 child care centers they visited that serve infants, toddlers and preschoolers.

Some centers have been cited multiple years in a row for violations that endanger the safety of children. Others have been shut down after severe violations — only to be reopened, reinspected and then shut down again after inspectors found still more violations.

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which oversees the city’s child care centers, is responsible for inspecting each of the city’s day care centers at least once a year — checking on staffing and the physical condition of the building, among other things. The department did not respond to requests for comment about the NYCity News Service’s findings.

Most New York children in day care are in free-standing facilities, not smaller settings in someone’s home. There are more than 3,700 day care facilities in New York, and they provide close to 380,000 slots, or roughly 80 percent of the spaces available for all of the city’s children. The remaining 20 percent are in homes.

In the facility-based day care centers, about 2,200 serve toddlers and preschoolers, with room for close to 140,000 children.

PHOTO/NYCity News Service

Cycle of Closures and Reopenings

City regulations mandate that each year, city inspectors conduct multiple types of inspections at each child care center. One inspection category focuses on facilities, including whether the building is safe. Another inspection category focuses on ensuring staff and employees are properly trained, screened and that staff-to-children ratios meet requirements.

At some centers, health inspectors have found buildings falling apart, with rodents and pests in areas where children play.

At others, centers have failed to conduct federally mandated background checks and fingerprint screenings on staff — required so those with criminal records are not working with children. Inspectors also found child care providers that failed to meet the state’s required staffing ratios, or otherwise put children in harm’s way.

At Children’s Ark Day Care Center in Brooklyn, for example, inspectors conducting an annual inspection in February 2023 found several public health and critical violations, including improper ventilation and peeling lead paint.

The city closed the center, but allowed it to reopen a month later, after those violations were resolved. There have been no new violations since, according to inspection records. Children’s Ark did not respond to a request for comment.

If inspectors find severe violations, follow-up checks are often required.

Any violations cited during the city’s inspections are added to the public Heath Department portal. Parents can sign up for notifications sent if inspectors find violations at particular day care facilities.

However, there can be a delay before results are posted on the portal, and only the past three years are shown, so it can be harder to find out whether a center has a long history of violations.

At some day care centers, inspectors have found few or even no problems.

But at hundreds of others, inspectors have uncovered numerous violations.

Years of Data

For this story, the NYCity News Service not only examined recent data, but analyzed data from earlier years. The historical data was gathered by Jessica H. Brown, an assistant professor of economics at the University of South Carolina, who analyzed New York City’s child care inspection records as part of her PhD work at Princeton University. Brown obtained those records under open records requests.

Her work focused on routine annual inspections. In late 2018, then-city Comptroller Scott Stringer found in an audit that the city had failed to conduct required inspections the previous year for over half of the child care centers for preschoolers. The city agency promised to do better, and to improve the way it tracks inspections.

A review by the NYCity News Service found inspectors have continued to find problems when they conduct routine checks.

Little Scholars Learning Center in Marine Park, Brooklyn, has capacity to care for nearly 100 children in its preschool and infant-toddler program, and touts “emphasizing values and joy, showcasing our unwavering dedication to early childhood education.“

Inspectors found violations so concerning that the city closed the center three separate times — in 2018, 2019 and 2021. During those years, inspectors logged failures to do background checks on staff, caregivers with insufficient education or who were too young to be teaching and improper child-to-staff ratios, records show.

The center, one of six that the organization runs, reopened each time. Though the majority of its past violations were resolved, some remained unresolved at the writing of this story. City inspectors have continued to raise concerns about the center.

During one of the center’s most recent monitoring inspections, in February 2024, inspectors found the center’s preschool program had too few staff for the number of children in its care, among other issues. Little Scholars did not respond to a request for comment.

Renanim Manhattan, a preschool in Briarwood, Queens, with a capacity to care for nearly 40 children, promises “an atmosphere of happiness and joy.”

City inspectors found critical or public health violations during annual inspections for each of the past four years. Those violations included electrical or chemical hazards and some insufficiently trained staff.

Annual inspections during these years also found lighting did not work well, and floors, walls and ceiling were not maintained. Inspectors cited additional serious violations during their visit in January 2024, including failure to fingerprint current or prospective staffers, staff who did not have proper training and unqualified caregivers, records show.

Those violations have since been corrected. Renanim Manhattan officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Complaints Lead to Citations

In addition to routine annual reviews, other inspections may be triggered by complaints to the city. New Yorkers can call 311 or fill out an online form. In recent years, such complaints have led inspectors to find hundreds of violations.

For example, in April 2023, the city cited Sunshine Day Care of Mott Haven in the Bronx for failing to get needed emergency medical services among other violations. The center was shut down and later reopened. Sunshine Day Care did not respond to a request for comment.

This backdrop of violations comes as New York faces a pressing need for affordable child care. Experts worry that the lack of affordable care may leave families desperate to enroll their children in any center where they can find a spot.

“The most important thing for parents is choice,” said Jenn O’Connor, director of partnerships and early childhood policy at The Education Trust–New York, a statewide education advocacy organization. “There just aren’t enough programs to go around. There aren’t enough to choose from.”

Still, O’Connor said New York City has strict regulations aimed at keeping children safe.

“New York has one of the most stringent health and safety protocols in the country,” she said. “One thing that programs could probably use more of is support to increase the quality of their programs.”

When centers repeatedly violate health and safety standards, some families may have few alternatives and might be unable to take their children to a safer center.

“We know that the closure can be a significant hardship for families and we provide parents with information about alternative placements,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said in a statement in response to NYCity News Service questions about day care inspections.

But the agency said that when it finds violations, it needs to take appropriate actions:

“The Health Department requires a child care program to close as a temporary, emergency measure when there is a hazardous condition that renders the program unsafe and that cannot immediately be corrected.”

PHOTO/NYCity News Service

In 2020, Anna Ellis and Benjamin Zimmerman got the phone call that every parent dreads.

Over a year earlier, the working parents needed day care for their infant son. A friend recommended Little Rising Stars in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan. It was on Fort Washington Avenue, only a block and a half from their home.

The parents toured the fourth-floor apartment that housed the day care and found it “clean, fresh and new.” Little Rising Stars was licensed as a group family day care.

This is a fast-growing part of the industry, providing space to care for about 118,000 children in New York State. Unlike standalone child care centers, which handle more than 80 percent of city youths in day care, the group facilities are in people’s homes, with no more than 16 children under their supervision.

Little Rising Stars “seemed like a warm and small place,” Anna Ellis told the NYCity News Service.

The price, $1,600 a month, proved appealing, too. Another place the couple liked cost much more — $2,300 — and had no spots available.

The parents began sending their son Ellis to Little Rising Stars. They said he loved it. He spent so much time around the Spanish-speaking staff that his first word was “agua” — water — his father said.

What the parents did not know was the day care’s history of problems: State regulators notified the day care owner in February 2020 that inspectors found serious violations so persistent that it planned to revoke its license, according to a letter obtained under an open records request.

Over a period of several months, inspectors had repeatedly found children were unsupervised, and there were too few workers for the number of children in the day care, according to the letter.

It was far from the only troubled home day care in the city. As of March 4, 2024, there were more than 80 home day care centers in New York City whose licenses were revoked, pending revocation, suspended or denied to continue operating, a NYCity News Service review of state records found.

Among them is the place where a 1-year-old child died because the home day care was also the site of an illegal fentanyl operation, an incident that became international news.

Ellis’s parents told NYCity News Service that had they known about the violations at Little Rising Stars, and had they known that the state wanted to revoke its license, they would have pulled their son from the day care — preventing the tragedy that unfolded.

A Tragic Day

On Oct. 22, 2020, the day care’s owner, Maria Fernanda Perez Torres, called the parents. Anna recalled in a court deposition that the owner told her there had been an accident, that Ellis had gotten out of his portable crib and “that he was hurt and that we should come to the day care.”

She and her husband, who were working from home that day, ran the short distance to the day care center, getting there within minutes, according to the deposition.

When they arrived, they witnessed paramedics trying to revive their son, who lay still, his heart no longer beating, on the floor, according to medical reports included in the court filings.

“I asked an EMT worker if he was breathing and they said that they were breathing for him,” the mother said, according to the deposition.

Though Perez Torres had only told the family that Ellis had gotten out of his crib, the medical examiner’s office later told the family that the boy then “walked across the room and somehow pulled a large, heavy multi-child stroller down onto him and he suffocated to death,” according to the mother’s deposition. The child care center used the stroller for transporting multiple children on trips outside the home, court documents show.

The boy was taken by ambulance to nearby New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, according to court documents. Doctors tried CPR for over 40 minutes before pronouncing Ellis dead. His parents were by his side when he passed, according to medical records.

The official cause of death, according to the medical examiner’s official death certificate, was “neck and chest compression,” an injury that occurred when the child was “found pinned beneath stroller.”

Ellis was 20 months old.

In the Dark

Ellis’ parents sued Little Rising Stars in December 2020, claiming the accident would have been preventable if the day care had fixed past violations and a day care worker had been in the room to keep an eye on the toddler.

While there were video cameras in the room where Ellis’ Pack ‘n Play crib was located, the family was told that the cameras weren’t working at the time of the death, they said in court documents.

Court records show the case was settled in 2021 for $1 million — the most that the day care’s liability insurance would cover. Maria Fernanda Perez Torres and Little Rising Stars could not be reached for comment.

In August 2021, the parents sued New York City, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and city Administration for Children’s Services, seeking $20 million.

New York State licenses home-based child care operations, but relies on the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to conduct inspections of home day care facilities in the city.

The family’s attorney argued government agencies had a “special duty” to ensure safety at Little Rising Stars because it had started the process to revoke its license, yet allowed it to remain open.

The city denied wrongdoing, saying they were immune from this kind of litigation.

However, prior inspections revealed underlying problems at the facility leading up to Ellis’ death.

A city inspection report for Little Rising Stars dated Oct. 1, 2019, found that children at the center were not properly supervised, according to correspondence obtained by the NYCity News Service via an open records request. One of the children there at the time was Ellis, his parents said, though his name had been redacted in the released report.

Elaine Francis, a city inspector, wrote in her report that during a one-hour visit, she “found 5 children in a closed bedroom with no staff. 2 children were up playing. A video camera was observed in the bedroom however no staff on site was looking at the video camera footage to monitor these children.”

“No staff checked on the children in this one hour period,” Francis wrote in the report.

In addition, there were not enough workers for the number of children in the day care, inspections found. Staffing ratios vary based on the age of the children, but for children under the age of 2, the state requires one caregiver for every two toddlers. Inspectors found Little Rising Stars repeatedly violated staffing standards.

PHOTO/NYCity News Service

Pandemic Delays

More inspections ensued, and inspectors found more violations.

On Feb. 18, 2020, state regulators sent a letter to Perez Torres that it was revoking the day care’s license, adding that further unresolved violations had been found in December 2019, January 2020 and February 2020.

Nevertheless, Perez Torres was entitled to challenge the license revocation and, with a hearing pending, the day care was allowed to continue to operate, records show.

The hearing was delayed repeatedly because of the pandemic shutdown, which started about a month after the state’s letter to Perez Torres. So were additional inspections.

While that hearing was pending, Ellis suffered his fatal injuries.

The city is seeking to dismiss the family’s civil lawsuit.

The state Office of Children and Family Services declined to comment for this story, citing ongoing litigation.

The city’s Law Department also declined to comment.

A Citywide Issue

Of the dozens of day cares across the city whose licenses were revoked, pending revocation, suspended or denied to continue operating, one drew major news media attention.

Four children were sickened and one died at the Bronx day care Divino Niño, after officials discovered too late it also housed an illegal fentanyl operation, according to city officials and media reports.

One-year-old Nicholas Dominici died Sept. 18, 2023, from fentanyl poisoning and three other children were hospitalized with serious injuries after being exposed to the drugs, city officials said.

Later that month, on Sept. 27, illegal 3-D printed “ghost” guns and gun parts were found in an East Harlem apartment that was also operated as a licensed day care, according to the mayor’s office.

The day care operator, April Coley, told reporters she did not know anything about her 18-year-old son Karon’s alleged gun-making lab in the apartment.

The guns were discovered during a separate weapons investigation executed after daycare hours, and not connected to a daycare inspection, police officials said at a press conference.

After that incident, Mayor Eric Adams said city inspectors may need more training to spot uncommon but deadly hazards. Adams has proposed a group to consider options, including having law enforcement help with day care inspections.

Better Communication Demanded

When inspectors find violations, a day care is required to post notices so parents can easily see the documents.

But Little Rising Stars did not post any such notices, nor did it post a notice that the day care’s license was facing revocation, according to Ellis’s parents. They said they were unaware of any violations, including those in the months prior to their son’s death, while he was attending the day care.

The family told the NYCity News Service that they now feel shame and embarrassment that they did not know about the violations, but they had no reason to suspect any problems. They said they never thought to check a state government website that shows inspection records.

The couple believes the state can do more to alert parents that a day care has violations, and that it is not enough to expect a day care center to post a notice when it is close to losing its license.

They suggested that the state could create an app or send push notices to those with children in home-based day care, as the city allows parents to do for notifications of violations at larger day care facilities — telling them about violations or whether a day care center faces closure.

Ellis’s father said he’s frustrated that the government did not probe deeply into what led to their son’s death, and should have done more. They said they are left with questions about how their son was able to get out of his portable crib and die from his injuries.

“We’ve heard so many permutations of what happened,” said Zimmerman.

Now the family lives in suburban New Jersey and thinks often of Ellis.

“I look at pictures every night before I go to bed,” the father said.

He makes frequent visits to the cemetery where Ellis is buried.

The family now has another son, Joshua.

Zimmerman said through tears that, by February, Joshua “will become older than Ellis ever was.”