FYI: City Comptroller William Thompson, Jr. said today that the Agency for Child Development’s “poor oversight and planning” has left almost 2,000 child care slots open in the 344 centers with which it contracts to provide daycare for low-income parents. This, Thompson notes, goes on while more than 46,000 children sit on waiting lists for placement. The comptroller’s report, which looks at a snapshot of data in March 2002, notes that Brooklyn had both the largest number of vacancies (830) and the longest waiting list (6,697) and that the vacancies are clumped in a relatively small number of the centers. Thompson also stresses that funding is allocated according to daycare centers’ capacity, not their actual enrollment–which means the city is wasting an estimated $17 million a year. [4/1/03]