Hundreds of New York City 2-year-olds will turn out for their first day of free preschool Thursday \u2014 realizing Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s signature policy pledge to deliver more affordable childcare for parents.<\/p>\n
But the debut of 2-K along with a growing number of publicly-funded seats for 3- and 4-year-olds comes amid an ongoing payment crisis<\/a>, with some providers owed months of funding and others on the brink of closing. Some program directors told Gothamist they didn\u2019t have money to pay their staff, cover their rent or buy school supplies \u2014 but decided to open anyway.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have taken a line of credit to keep operating, to keep the payroll going, to keep paying the rents,\u201d said Kamila Faruki, who owns four Manhattan childcare centers offering 3-K and pre-K. She said while payment delays are typical, providers usually receive an advance either through their contracts or no-interest loans before the year starts.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you start like this, you’re constantly catching up,\u201d she said. Faruki said the city owes her $1.6 million and was working on approving a loan in the meantime.<\/p>\n Officials with the Mamdani administration said all 2-K programs would be able to open on Thursday and they were working around the clock to issue no-interest bridge loans to providers waiting for their contracts to be approved. They also reassigned staff to bolster the education department\u2019s ability to process contracts and payments, and vowed to spend $43 million to restore the agency\u2019s ranks.<\/p>\n But some providers said they still hadn\u2019t received bridge loans as of Wednesday and at least one site in Brooklyn offering 3-K and preK told parents in a letter obtained by Gothamist it would open a week later due to lack of funds.<\/p>\n Slow payments are common but childcare providers said they usually have funds to start the school year. Many provider contracts also expired this summer and needed to be renewed, adding further lags to the process.<\/p>\n \u201cThe contracting and payment delays that we\u2019ve seen are unacceptable and do not reflect how the city should be dealing with childcare providers,\u201d said Emmy Liss, executive director of the Mayor\u2019s Office for Child Care.<\/p>\n Providers said late payments due to bureaucratic delays are not new for the city\u2019s publicly funded preschool programs or for community organizations as a whole. What\u2019s different this year is many have run out of savings, maxed out on personal loans and are frankly fed up with covering costs for the city \u2014 especially given Mamdani\u2019s high-profile pledges around universal childcare.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the perfect storm of new contract actions that had to take place because old ones had expired. A new program that’s getting a ton of attention. And provider frustration because this is the same problem we’ve been having for many, many years, and there’s no fix,\u201d said Nora Moran, director of policy and advocacy for United Neighborhood Houses, which represents settlement houses that provide services to the community.<\/p>\n In all, Gothamist spoke to nine childcare providers ahead of the start of the school year. Staff at four home-based programs said they hadn’t experienced delays and were ready to welcome 2-year-olds. Five said Wednesday they were still working with the city on their loan applications as they waited for their contracts to get approved.<\/p>\n Providers usually receive a three-month advance for the start of the school year, which can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n \u201cThese types of delays are catastrophic,\u201d Danielle Demeuse, director of policy for the Committee for Hispanic Children and Families, a child advocacy group that contracts with the city on behalf of smaller family providers. \u201cThe fact that any programs can survive this is a miracle.\u201d<\/p>\n One Queens provider said she considered delaying opening her 2-K classrooms until next week but was promised her city loan would arrive by Thursday. Two other 2-K providers said they would open their doors on Thursday even without city funding, hoping the money would arrive soon. All asked Gothamist to withhold their names, saying they feared the city would retaliate against them by further delaying their payments.<\/p>\n \u201dThere has been a pattern of always looking at these providers as the ones that will make do with less \u2026 we take advantage of women, mostly women, that are deeply, deeply committed to serving children and families in populations that sometimes are marginalized,\u201d said Maria Mavrides Calderon, who is an assistant professor in early childhood education at Hunter College and a former childcare center director.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a lot of hope that this administration, that was really focused on labor rights, and was really focused on families in New York City, were going to actually do something about this. So there has been a disillusionment.\u201d<\/p>\n A breaking point<\/p>\n Providers said the payment crisis is just the tip of the iceberg and warned that even when their delayed payments arrive, the city still needs to fix inherited issues with outdated contract rates, long processing times and pay disparities<\/a> between providers who labor in daycare centers and those who do the same work in school settings.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have reached a breaking point. We have to acknowledge that,\u201d said Mavrides Calderon. She said the city prioritized expanding childcare with its new 2-K program, rather than rectifying underlying problems that have long tormented providers since former Mayor Bill de Blasio launched pre-K more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n The Mamdani administration boosted reimbursement rates for centers by 2% and for family providers by 5% in this year\u2019s budget but providers said that still falls short of what\u2019s needed. The city is also grappling with a hollowed out early childhood division at the education department that happened under a reorganization by the Adams administration, childcare advocates said.<\/p>\n