Dutchess County is working with childcare providers, families and businesses to shape a new universal childcare pilot, with enrollment expected to open in the first quarter of 2027 and seats beginning to fill in the second.
The county is one of three, along with Broome and Monroe, developing programs intended to serve up to 1,000 children each. The three-year pilots were authorized as part of this year’s state budget and are seen as a small step toward state-wide universal childcare and one prong of an initiative to allow upstate counties to catch up with progress made toward universal childcare in New York City.
The state says the pilots will help determine pathways to expand provider capacity and ease the administrative burdens around providing universal childcare.
Each county will receive $20 million from the state to develop their program and each county must match that with $2 million of their own, with the intention of offering care without income restrictions and help the state determine how to expand access elsewhere in New York.
State officials say Dutchess County is making significant progress in mapping out their path forward, and Sabrina Jaar Marzouka, commissioner of the Dutchess County Department of Community and Family Services, told Spectrum News 1 that’s partly because the county has spent the past several years creating a robust coalition of childcare advocates and providers intended to improve access to care in the county.
Jaar Marzouka said that experience helps, but getting the pilot up and running requires a significant amount of planning and discussion.
“This is innovation, this is new to all of us including the state,” she said.
Providers must be licensed by the state office of children and family services and will file for reimbursement by the county.
Dutchess County is weighing how to run the pilot, which providers might take part, and to what extent the county will take on day to day operations. Marzouka said the state has given counties significant leeway to build their programs from the ground up and all three counties have been given the opportunity to conduct their own outreach and planning.
“How they intend to operate, will they do it in-house, will they subcontract, which people will they subcontract,” she said
At this point, Marzouka explained that in recent weeks officials have held forums with community partners to try to answer some of those questions as the end of the year fast approaches.
“We’ve been engaged in conversations with providers, with families, with businesses,” Marzouka said.
The county is also considering what happens after the three-year pilot ends. It has an established child care council and is working with providers “to really focus on the business model and support the providers to ensure we can come up with a business model that is sustainable,” Marzouka said.
Dr. DaMia Harris-Madden, commissioner of the state Office of Children and Family Services, said the existing child care infrastructure in Dutchess, Broome and Monroe counties made them promising places to start.
She said that Dutchess, in particular, has shown a commitment to assisting families who are in need in accessing child care slots.
“This is a first step to universality,” she said. “These three communities are very promising and so with any pilot we want to see what transpires and how we can continuously improve.”
The state says members of their team are meeting with county officials on a regular basis as they work to develop specifics throughout the fall.
But as planning continues, advocates who have pushed tirelessly for expanded capacity upstate are waiting for concrete details on how families can get access to the program.
“Fall is really the key period. It’s when we will get more program details from the Office of Children and Family Services. We’ll start to see what it’s going to look like and how families will be able to access the programs,” said Pete Nabozny, director of policy at The Children’s Agenda in Rochester.
The massive infusion of money being put toward universal childcare as part of the budget came alongside a tremendous push from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamadnai, who ran in part on expanding access in the city, but deep funding trouble within the state’s Child Care Assistance program throughout 2025 shined a light on deeper problems within the system.
Harris-Madden said the pilots are just one part of the state’s broader childcare effort. She stressed that additional funding for the Child Care Assistance program has helped social service districts that had waitlists or had stopped accepting families get back online.
After a bruising several months in 2025 in which the number of counties that had closed enrollment or opened waitlists ticked up each month, she said the situation is stabilizing.
“We’re now at 42 counties without waitlists; this is tremendous progress, and it’s all thanks to the resources the governor has made available,” she said.
Nabozny credited Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers for that progress, but stressed that families still face barriers to care.
“It’s something the governor and the legislature should take a lot of pride in. The tricky part is despite that we still have families who can’t access the care they need to go to work, to pursue an education,” he said.