The changing face of Stoneham day care
Published on September 22nd, 1999
STONEHAM, MA - Former employees of Strawberry Mill Child Care, located on the Boston Regional Medical Center campus, say the program is not the same now under Melrose YMCA leadership as it was under hospital control. Because of this change and the fact that most of the longtime staff has left, former administrators say the program is misleading people by using the Strawberry Mill name.
YMCA officials say they saved the day for families depending on local child care. The name, in their opinion, is a small detail.
Last week former directors of the Strawberry Mill Day-Care Center, Janice Papalegis and Marie Tirone, sent a letter to local newspapers stating their disapproval of the continued use of the Strawberry Mill name.
"To continue using the name does a great disservice to all the years of commitment and effort it took to build Strawberry Mill into the great child care program that it was," Papalegis and Tirone wrote.
YMCA officials say, in fact, they have done the community a great service.
"We kept this going for the children and the parents," said Melrose YMCA President Richard Whitworth. "And the parents liked the name, so we kept it."
The YMCA stepped in to keep the day-care program going at the Woodland Road site after Boston Regional went bankrupt and had to pull the plug on the center. The Melrose YMCA is negotiating to move the center to another location in Stoneham. (Reliable sources around town say the YMCA is looking at the former Jewish temple on Franklin Street.)
In a separate interview Tirone toned downed comments about the quality of child care and said her issues with the YMCA centered around educational philosophy.
Whitworth acknowledged that the YMCA has a distinct philosophy:
"The YMCA is value oriented and we treat everyone with responsibility, care and respect," Whitworth said.
"Every company has a different corporate culture," he added.
Tirone said the old Strawberry Mill Staff had a certain way of running the program, which the teachers had developed and molded over the years.
"If things were going to be different, we didn't want to be a part of it," Tirone said. "We didn't want to work for another big company."
Tirone agreed with Whitworth that the center would have disappeared completely if the YMCA had not taken over. She said she did not want to criticize the current program.
But, Tirone said parents should know that the program is different...
"That's why we wrote the letter."
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