- The document analyzes NYC daycare center violation data from 2009-2013 using SQL queries. The worst offender identified is Preschool of America, with 817 total violations across 17 facilities. - The Preschool of America location on Park Avenue in Manhattan had the most violations, with 120. It had higher rates of serious health violations than the city average. - The document proposes following up by visiting the Park Avenue location and accompanying the Department of Health on an inspection to check if previous violations were corrected.

1. To: Prof. Ben Lesser, Data I
From Ilgin Yorulmaz, Dec. 15th, 2015
Re: Memo 2 on NYC Daycare Inspections Dataset
Dear Prof. Lesser,
Further to my first memo done on Excel on November 30th, this time I used SQL
to analyze data for daycare center violations between 2009-2013. My story is
based on two simple questions: “What is the worst daycare center in NYC?
Who is behind it?” My hypothesis is that the facility with the highest number of
violations isn’t necessarily the worst daycare center.
Here is a summary of data log and my analysis. I renamed my table DAYCARE.
DOING INTEGRITY CHECK
There have been 87,276 violations recorded in the five-year period this data
was collected.
I ran the following and created a table each time:
query#1
SELECT NAME, COUNT(*) FROM DAYCARE GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 2 DESC
This query gave me Bedford Stuyvesant Early Childhood Development
Center, Inc. in Brooklyn as the facility with the highest number of violations
with 491 counts. But is this really the worst daycare center in NYC?
To check this result, I decided to run another query, this time going by DCID
(facility ID):
query#2
SELECT DCID, COUNT(*) FROM DAYCARE GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 2 DESC
Table name: DCID
This query gave Educare Child Center, Inc. (DC460) in Brooklyn committing
the highest number of violations with 222 counts.
query#3
I re-checked if this facility was entered once, and it was:
SELECT sum(DCID) FROM DAYCARE WHERE DCID = "DCID460"
I decided to stick to DCID number query#2 rather than name of the facility
query#1, because I suspect there might be dirty data due to misspelling or
multiple variations of the name of the same facility. This gave me a total of 3050
DCID’s. Am I right to assume that there are 3050 unique facilities?
On the brighter side, 210 of the 3050 facilities had just ONE violation in the five-
year period of inspection.
I ran a third query to join the two queries:

2. query#4
SELECT DCID, NAME, COUNT(*) FROM DAYCARE GROUP BY 1,2 ORDER BY 3
DESC
I found that Bedford Stuyvesant Early Childhood Development Center, Inc. had
not one but many DCIDs. Its DC174 had 116 violations and DC1932 version had
93, for example.
I also tried the following series of queries:
query#5
SELECT BOROUGH, COUNT(*) FROM DAYCARE GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 2 DESC
Table: borough
This gave me the result that of the five boroughs, Brooklyn had the most
counts of violation with 40,679 counts. This represents nearly half of all
violations recorded (46%) overall.
query#6
SELECT YEAR, COUNT(*) FROM DAYCARE GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 2 DESC
Table: YEAR
As a general trend, violations seem to have decreased between 2009 and 2013.
There was a 23% decrease from nearly 20,000 violations in 2009 (the
highest recorded) to 15,339 in 2003.
query#7
SELECT AKA, COUNT(*) FROM DAYCAREGROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 2 DESC
Table: AKA
This query showed that one person or company may own several facilities
with different names, because 2640 companies appeared as opposed to 3050
facility entries with unique DCIDs that I found previously. Also, the same facility
at the same venue may have two different programs: an infant-toddler one and
a pre-school, for example.
Surprisingly, this query also turned up a third and a stronger candidate for the
worst daycare facility in NYC:
Preschool of America (DCID 12049) had an incredible 753 counts of
violations.
Narrowing the list down to 2640, I ran another query to pinpoint facilities that
had “America” in their names so as not to miss any mistyping or misspelling:
query #8
SELECT * FROM DAYCARE WHERE AKA LIKE "%AMERICA%"
It gave me all sorts of facilities, which had “America” in their names.
And then again:
query #9

3. SELECT * FROM DAYCARE WHERE AKA LIKE "%AMERICA”
Table: AMERICA2
Bingo! This time, I was able to zoom in on just Preschool of America, which had
an even higher number of violations than the 753 I found earlier: 811
violations in total.
Preschool of America brand is operated by [TK] slightly different center names:
Preschool of America (USA) Inc.
DC1150 83-04 Broadway, Queens – 31 violations
DC19716 and DC19724 186-01 73rd Avenue, Queens, 11366 – 62 violations
DC21825 and DC21826 859 60th Street, Brooklyn, 11220 – 32 violations
DC21911 382 Baltic Street, Brooklyn, 11201 – 9 violations
DC22766 42-31 Colden Street, Queens, 11355 – 4 violations
DC22830 and DC3078 63-47 Booth Street, Queens, 11374 – 36 violations
Preschool of America, LLC
DC12049 25 Tudor City Place, Manhattan, 10017 – 70 violations
DC12277 1501 Lexington Avenue, Manhattan, 10029 – 41 violations
DC14265 and DC14525 600 6th Avenue, Manhattan, 10011 – 81 violations
DC14786 345 W42nd, Manhattan, 10036 – 48 violations
DC14809 and DC15272 1180-90 Park Avenue, Manhattan, 10128 – 120 violations
DC15143 101 West End Avenue, Manhattan, 10069 – 45 violations
DC18610 44-46 Market Street, Manhattan, 10002 – 28 violations
Preschool of America
DC19725 112-33 Queens Boulevard, Queens, 11375 – 25 violations
DC20484 and DC2979 83-38 Cornish Avenue, Queens, 11373 – 58 violations
DC3094 39 Eldridge Street, Manhattan, 10002 – 58 violations
Preschool of America L L C
DC20673 and DC23227 2109 Broadway, Manhattan, 10023 – 46 violations
I realized that DCID is NOT the unique ID number for each facility, because the
same Preschool of America at exactly the same address had two different DCIDs.
CONVERTING COLUMN NAMES
This is where I hit a wall initially. For some reason, my queries for columns with
two names such as Violation Type wouldn’t be recognized by SQL command. (It
kept giving error and saying “There is no column named Violation” when I had
correctly entered Violation Type. Why is that?)
DIRTY DATA
Sadly, query#7 also confirmed once again that the data was dirty: Next to Home
Child Care and Next 2 Home Child Care should be one entry, but they were
treated as two different ones with DCIDs of DC14852 and DC17047, respectively.
However, I decided to focus on one company, Preschool of America, which had

4. an unusually high number of violations. I also checked this company on the up-
to-date NYC Health and Mental Hygiene database between 2012-2015.
FINAL ANALYSIS
- There were 87,276 violations recorded in 3050 daycare centers between
2009-2013 across five boroughs. Distribution of these violations shows
Brooklyn accounted for nearly half (46%) of all the violations in the City.
- The most serious violation category is PHH (Public Health Hazard), which
must be corrected immediately. In the latest data available 20% of
violations in the City fall into this category.
- The biggest suspect in highest violation practices between 2009-2013
period to which this data set belongs is Preschool of America (USA,
Inc., LLC) with 811 violations in their 17 facilities in Manhattan, Queens
and Brooklyn.
- The worst violator was their 1180-90 Park Avenue, Manhattan facility with
120 violations. It runs two different programs: infant-toddler and
preschool.
The following was based on the latest dataset from NYC Department of
Health and Mental Hygiene website:
- Recent data from NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene shows
that over the past three years, on the average 41% of infant-toddler
program inspections citywide with violations classified as Critical and PHH
were found.*
- Preschool of America Park Avenue Infant-Toddler has 60% of its
inspections in violations, which is nearly 20% higher than the city
average. And they are all PHH or Critical, the two most serious violations.
- Its latest initial inspection was done on December 1st, 2015. There were
three critical violations and one minor violation. Critical violations need to
be corrected within TWO WEEKS of inspection. Of the three critical ones,
only one (failure to provide appropriate guards to protect children from
potential injury) had been corrected as of today. The other two (not
properly maintained, in disrepair, dry sweeping; and failure to take any
and all necessary action to eliminate potential hazards) were still open. A
re-inspection is scheduled.
- Preschool of America Park Avenue pre-school has 50% of its
inspections in violation vs. 44% of the city average. All of PoA’s December
12th, 2015 inspection violations were Critical or PHH: failure to provide
appropriate guards to protect children from potential injury (corrected
since); failure to provide sufficient number of toilets and sinks for the
number of children (the facility has maximum capacity of 62 children); not
properly maintained, in disrepair; failure to take any and all necessary
action to eliminate potential hazards; and exits and other egress not
provided with required signage.
- Preschool of America Park Avenue pre-school has a bigger problem
though: Its 78% staff turnover over the past three years is a massive
question mark compared to just 22% of the citywide. A story may be

5. done on the reasons for extreme cases of staff turnover based on this
latest data set.
NEXT STEP
It’s surprising that the worst offending facilities are not in the underprivileged
neighborhoods, but rather in the middle of the richest ones like Park Avenue,
Manhattan. The next step would be to pay a visit to the facility and talk to their
owners and to see if the violations are corrected by today, which is when the
two-week deadline ends. I would also ask NYC Health and Mental Hygiene for
permission to accompany them to the compliance inspection of this facility. The
facility is 9 years old and is in renewal process of its permits for its both infant-
toddler and Pre-school programs (permits No. 7619 and No. 7620, respectively),
which expired on August 9th and 4th, 2015, respectively.
Another angle would be to analyze Event Type “Complaints” versus Event Result
“No Action” taken by Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. There were 569
Monitoring Inspection – Complaints where OCFS inspection agency went to
inspect, but chose to take no action. 190 of these no-action complaints were
from Brooklyn, 87 from Manhattan, 207 from Queens, 15 from Staten Island, 70
from the Bronx. Of those 70 facilities, 40 are still in business. One such facility is
Highbridge Advisory Council Day Care Center, 1181 Nelson Avenue, received four
complaints that were then deemed No Cause for Action. I am curious to see if
the facility has any criminal or negligence record. Other possible areas of
investigation are 319 cases of Violation of Rules and Regulations where there
was No Cause for Action (NULL).
* Another table from the same recent dataset shows 34% of infant-toddler
program violations were Critical and 20% were Public Health Hazard. This
doesn’t add up to 41% as described in the glossary; it needs to be clarified. (The
same goes for pre-school program data. A staggering 59% of citywide
inspections in this program resulted in PHH [21%] or Critical [38%] evaluation.)
Another 41% were minor violations, bringing up the total to 95%. Just 5% of the
city’s day care facilities had been found to have no violations in their inspections.
“Which ones are these perfect scorers?” can be the subject of another story.
Glossary Page
Inspection Type
• Initial Annual Inspection
• The Health Department performs initial inspections at all permitted child

6. care programs on an annual basis to determine compliance with the
NYC Health Code Article 47.
• Compliance Inspection
• The Health Department conducts re-inspections of child care programs to
determine if violations have been corrected. A re-inspection is required
if the initial annual inspection resulted in public health hazard, critical
and/or six or more general violations.
Performance Comparison
• % of annual inspections with violations requiring immediate correction
(Public Health Hazards)
• All cited violations categorized as a violation requiring immediate correction
represented as a percentage.
• % of annual inspections with Violations requiring correction within two
weeks (Critical Violations)
• All cited violations categorized as a violation requiring correction within two
weeks represented as a percentage.
Performance History
• Over the Past 3 Years
• The data presents the child care program�s performance history over the
past three years.
• Note: If the child care program has been in operation for less than three
years, the data covers the program's time in operation.
• % of Annual Inspections w/Violations
• The percent of annual inspections conducted at the child care program in
the past three years that resulted in either public health hazard or
critical violations issued.
• # of Educational Staff
• The number of teaching staff employed at the child care program. Teaching
staff includes educational directors, group teachers and assistant
teachers.

7. • Educational Staff Turnover
• Three-year average staff turnover rate is calculated as the average number
of educational staff who left employment at the child care program
during the three-year period divided by the current number of
educational staff at the child care program. Educational staff turnover is
not calculated for child care programs open for less than one year.
Permit Status
• Permitted
• The permit to operate a child care program is current and valid.
• Expired-in Renewal
• The permit to operate a child care program has expired and is in the
process of renewal. The child care program is authorized to continue
operating while in the renewal process.
Program Type
The type of child care program you are looking for:
• Camp
• Child care provided for children under 16 years of age, anytime between
June 1 and September 15 in any year, primarily for the purpose of
outdoor organized group activity.
• Child Care-Infant/Toddler
• A service of child care that, during all or part of day or night, provides care
to children younger than 24 months of age.
• Child Care-Preschool
• A service of child care that, during all or part of day or night, provides care
to children older than 24 months of age and younger than six years of
age.
• School-Based Child Care
• A service of child care operating as part of an elementary school, providing
school-based instructional programs for children ages three through
five.

8. • Universal Pre-K Half Day
• A service of child care that provides care to children ages four years old, for
half the day (2 � hours). The child care program is contracted with the
NYC Department of Education.
• Universal Pre-K Full Day
• A service of child care that provides care to children ages four years old, for
the full day (6 �hours). The child care service is contracted with the
NYC Department of Education.
Program Name
The name of the child care program. Doing Business As (DBA). You may enter
any or all of the letters of the name of the child care program. Example:
Sunshine Day Care. Enter "S", "Su" or "Sun".
Violation Summary
Some of these citations may have resulted in the Health Department issuing a
Notice of Violation, which the child care center is entitled to dispute at a
hearing at the OATH Health Tribunal.
Violation Type
• Violations requiring immediate correction (Public Health Hazards)
• The most serious type of violations, which may present an imminent threat
to the health and safety of children. These violations must be
immediately addressed and must be corrected within one business day
by the child care provider. The Health Department will conduct a
compliance visit to assure these violations have been corrected.
• Violations requiring correction within two weeks (Critical Violations)
• While these violations do not pose an imminent risk to the health and
safety of children, they are serious and must be corrected by the
provider within two weeks. The Health Department will conduct a
compliance visit to assure these violations have been corrected.
• Minor violations (General Violations)

9. • These are violations that do not pose a direct threat to children but must
be corrected within one month by the child care provider to assure the
optimal functioning of the child care program. Child care services are
expected to correct all violations. The Health Department does not
perform compliance inspections to determine if violations were
corrected when there are no critical violations and fewer than six
general violations observed at the time of an inspection.
• Total violations:
• All types of violations.