{"id":337459,"date":"2026-09-04T00:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T00:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/337459\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T00:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T00:08:12","slug":"mamdanis-child-care-disaster-is-par-for-the-course-for-his-potemkin-govt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/337459\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani\u2019s child-care disaster is par for the course for his Potemkin gov’t"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to square any of Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s socialist dreams <\/a>with reality, but when it comes to free, universal child care, even he should\u2019ve seen the technical problems looming long ago \u2014 and made sure they were fixed by now.<\/p>\n

Never mind that City Hall isn\u2019t likely ever to have the money \u2014 $6 billion, by his count \u2014 for a fully scaled-up version of the child care <\/a>he promised (and that an independent study put the cost<\/a> at 50% more than that).<\/p>\n

It turns out the Department of Education staff can\u2019t even process contracts and distribute funding in time for the opening, leaving city child-care providers in a lurch<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And even Mamdani\u2019s small expansion of the child-care program, for 2,000 2-K kids, only makes the problems worse.<\/p>\n

Some providers actually had to dip into their own pockets to pay for staffing and other essentials; one said she had to tap her own personal 401(k).<\/p>\n

City Comptroller Mark Levine says his office hadn\u2019t received any 2-K contracts for registration as of last Friday.<\/p>\n

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Although City Hall hasn\u2019t given exact numbers, scores of child-care centers are likely at risk. <\/p>\n

Adrienne Bond, director of the Quick Start Daycare Center in Queens, feared that if she opened on the first day of school, she \u201cwon\u2019t have staff\u201d because she was awaiting roughly $400,000 from the city.<\/p>\n

City Hall on Monday belatedly announced an emergency all-hands-on-deck response to fix the child-care payment backlogs, using contracting officers from across city government, plus an added $43 million in funds.<\/p>\n

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The plan also includes \u201cexpediting interest-free bridge loans, accelerating contract registration and delivering critical supplies directly to providers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet if City Hall does manage to pick up the pace of contract reviews, it will likely swamp the city Comptroller\u2019s Office, leaving far too much work to be done at the last minute.<\/p>\n

Maybe the goal to set up Levine as the scapegoat for processing delays \u2014 perhaps as revenge for his dead-on criticism: \u201cThe start of the school year is not an unexpected event.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyone with the slightest understanding of the DOE\u2019s penchant for bureaucratic bungling<\/a> should\u2019ve seen this disaster coming.<\/p>\n

Yet the DOE focused on rolling out the expansion to make good on Mamdani campaign promise without bothering to get all the financial ducks lined up first.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s in keeping with the practices of this Potemkin government: Pretend you\u2019re rolling out socialism \u2014 by announcing new government-run grocery stores<\/a>, free buses, universal child care \u2014 but never worry about actually delivering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to square any of Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s socialist dreams with reality, but when it comes to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,3208,4337,304,41579,9,24,63,299,47350,209,129,131,130,82],"class_list":["post-337459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-childcare","tag-department-of-education","tag-editorial","tag-kamar-samuels","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-opinion","tag-pre-kindergarten","tag-public-schools","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}