{"id":36460,"date":"2025-11-11T21:49:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T21:49:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/36460\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T21:49:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T21:49:06","slug":"mamdanis-child-care-plan-costs-staffing-and-other-hurdles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/36460\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani\u2019s child care plan: Costs, staffing, and other hurdles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York\u2019s free daily newsletter<\/a> to get essential news about NYC\u2019s public schools delivered to your inbox.<\/p>\n

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has been clear on how he wants New Yorkers to evaluate his tenure: by whether he can achieve his ambitious campaign promises, including free child care starting at 6 weeks old.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing right in and of itself is meaningless,\u201d Mamdani told The New York Times<\/a>. \u201cWe have to deliver.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of the discussion around whether Mamdani can follow through has focused on how he\u2019ll pay for the eye-popping estimated $6 billion annual price tag for universal child care<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But paying for the program is only the first step. <\/p>\n

If he gets the funding, Mamdani will face an array of logistical and operational challenges in standing up new public infrastructure for hundreds of thousands of youngsters, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials, policy experts, advocates, and educators.<\/p>\n

Though Mamdani seems to be looking toward the rollout of former Mayor Bill de Blasio\u2019s ambitious pre-K and 3-K programs<\/a> as a road map, the expansion into child care for infants and toddlers 2 and under brings a new set of challenges. The youngest New Yorkers require different space and supervision considerations than 3- and 4-year-olds, increasing the urgency of growing a staffing pipeline and identifying new spaces. Moreover, many observers say there are big flaws in the current child care system that could undercut expansion efforts if they\u2019re not addressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs child care for all possible? It\u2019s absolutely possible. Anything\u2019s possible with the resources and the will,\u201d said Richard Buery, the CEO of Robin Hood, and a former deputy mayor under de Blasio who oversaw the rollout of universal prekindergarten. \u201cBut I would not understate \u2026 the operational complexity of doing so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what experts told Chalkbeat about where the child care system stands now and what it will take to make it free for all.<\/p>\n

How is the city going to pay for it?<\/p>\n

Cost isn\u2019t the only obstacle to Mamdani\u2019s universal child care pledge \u2014 but it is the biggest.<\/p>\n

The $6 billion estimate covers both the cost of creating new seats and bringing the salaries of child care workers, whose median income is currently $25,000<\/a>, on par with those of city public school teachers, whose median yearly pay is close to $100,000.<\/a><\/p>\n

The city\u2019s 3-K and pre-K systems, by comparison, cost a total of about $1.6 billion, according to the most recent figures from the city\u2019s Independent Budget Office<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mamdani plans to fund the program through a tax hike on millionaires and corporations, a proposal that would need approval from the state legislature and Gov Kathy Hochul. He estimates the taxes would raise about $9 billion a year.<\/p>\n

Hochul has already shut down the idea of a tax hike<\/a>, but has opened the door to increasing state funding for child care, which she shares as a top priority.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t just write a check and cover this cost, but I\u2019ve talked to Zohran Mamdani \u2026 and we will get on a path forward,\u201d she said last month at a child care summit convened by the 5Boro Institute at Citizens Union, a think tank.<\/p>\n

De Blasio faced a similar dilemma, albeit over a much smaller price tag, when he tried to convince former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to greenlight a tax hike on wealthy residents to fund universal pre-K (Cuomo rejected the tax, but found other money in the state budget<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, some advocates and experts are pushing a phased-in approach with a less daunting initial price tag. The group New Yorkers United for Childcare suggests starting out with universal care for 2-year-olds<\/a> \u2014 a proposal City Comptroller Brad Lander estimates would cost $1.6 billion a year.<\/p>\n

And while there\u2019s no way around the high costs, proponents point out that child care also brings substantial economic benefits<\/a> by freeing up more parents to work.<\/p>\n

How close are we to free universal child care now?<\/p>\n

There were about 466,000 kids ages 4 and under living in New York City as of 2022, according to the state health department<\/a>.<\/p>\n

City officials say both pre-K for 4-year-olds and 3-K for 3-year-olds are universal, in that everyone who applied this year got an offer. But 15% of 3-K applicants and 7% of pre-K applicants got an offer to a program they didn\u2019t list on their application<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Of the city\u2019s roughly 195,000 3- and 4-year-olds, about 101,000 of them were in free 3-K and pre-K programs last year. <\/p>\n

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Some observers say there\u2019s still unmet demand for 3-K. Lander estimated 3-K has to grow by 16,000 seats<\/a> to become truly universal.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the vast majority of city-funded pre-K and 3-K programs run only six hours and 20 minutes a day from September to June, leaving tens of thousands of families paying out of pocket for afternoon and summer coverage. <\/p>\n

Making afternoon and summer coverage free for all pre-K and 3-K families would cost around $872 million, Lander estimates. But the City Council is proposing a less costly intermediate step: moving to a \u201cfamily share\u201d model that charges families on a uniform sliding scale based on income for extended hours.<\/p>\n

About 17,000 3- and 4-year-olds got state-funded child care vouchers for low-income families worth $300 a week, according to the Administration for Children\u2019s Services, which runs the voucher program. (There are currently about 10,000 city kids on the waitlist for vouchers because of insufficient funding<\/a>, officials said.)<\/p>\n

For kids 2 and under, free child care is much more limited \u2014 and reserved for low-income families. <\/p>\n

In 2024, only 32,000 infants and toddlers got free care through city-run programs or state vouchers \u2014 just a quarter of the roughly 108,000 kids who qualify based on family income, according to Lander\u2019s analysis<\/a>. And that\u2019s not to mention the more than 150,000 tots who don\u2019t qualify for a means-tested program and currently have almost no free options.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s going to staff it?<\/p>\n

The staffing needs to create a universal program for infants and toddlers are likely to be immense, experts said.<\/p>\n

Younger kids require more teachers \u2014 one for every three infants, and one for every fix to six toddlers, according to licensing regulations<\/a>, compared to one for every 10 3 and 4-year-olds.<\/p>\n

Babies and toddlers are also more likely to be in small, home-based child care settings, meaning any expansion will likely lean heavily on those providers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a workforce that has been decimated by years of low pay, the loss of students and staff to universal pre-K and 3-K programs<\/a>, and the COVID pandemic. President Donald Trump\u2019s mass deportation campaign has further strained the immigrant-heavy workforce<\/a>, according to providers and advocates.<\/p>\n

The chapter of the United Federation of Teachers representing home-based child care providers has shrunk from 28,000 in 2007 to just 12,000 today, said Tammie Miller, the chapter chair.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople love what they do \u2026 but they cannot make a living,\u201d said Doris Irizarry, a long-time home-based child care educator and cofounder of the advocacy group ECE On the Move<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many observers said a logical first step for Mamdani is expanding the existing 3-K and pre-K model to include 2-year-olds<\/a>. The city recently launched a pilot to open 240 seats to 2-year-olds<\/a>, regardless of their parents\u2019 income, through providers already contracting with the city. <\/p>\n

For infants, who are more likely to still be at home with parents or in some kind of informal care, the equation may look different. Mamdani has said<\/a> he plans to subsidize care \u201cat home for families who prefer to have a trusted neighbor or relative take care of their child.\u201d<\/p>\n

Expanding paid family leave is \u201cboth the most economically efficient way to provide care for young children and good for families,\u201d said Emmy Liss, a former Education Department official who helped oversee universal pre-K and studies models of free child care nationwide.<\/p>\n

But some experts warned it\u2019s no replacement for investing in the workforce.<\/p>\n

\u201cExpanding paid family leave is clearly an important benefit for families,\u201d said Lara Kyriakou, the policy director at All Our Kin, an organization that supports home-based child care educators. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not a substitute for a trained, informed workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where are the programs going to be?<\/p>\n

The city relied on space in K-12 public school buildings for a substantial share of 3-K and pre-K programs. Several experts said it will likely be harder to outfit public schools for infants and toddlers \u2014 though models do exist<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mamdani has promised<\/a> to open more child care centers, using city space and public school buildings wherever possible. He also pledged to subsidize commercial rent and ease the regulatory burdens of opening new programs.<\/p>\n

One regulation some providers and experts say makes it harder to build new child care sites: The city\u2019s Health Department requires programs serving kids under 2-years-old to occupy the ground floor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs this really a barrier we need to keep in place?\u201d Hochul asked at the recent child care summit. \u201cIf we don\u2019t add more capacity \u2026 then we\u2019re failing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s going to oversee it?<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s child care sector is currently controlled by an alphabet soup of governmental agencies. <\/p>\n

The Education Department handles the contracts and supervision for 3-K and pre-K programs. The Health Department is in charge of licensing. The Fire and Buildings Departments deal with building inspections. And the Administration for Children\u2019s Services operates the state-funded voucher system for tens of thousands of low-income families.<\/p>\n

Most observers said the Education Department should continue to play the leading role in an expanded child care system \u2014 but urged officials to simplify the complex governance structure. Buery, the former deputy mayor, said he doesn\u2019t see how Mamdani could pull off the operational challenges without maintaining mayoral control of the school system<\/a>, an arrangement Mamdani said he wants to change<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A universal system will also likely have to balance two distinct funding models, at least for now: vouchers that hand cash to parents to spend on child care, and contracts that fund providers.<\/p>\n

Some officials hope to eventually simplify that process, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to, as we go on with it, figure out a way to phase out that type of system,\u201d said City Council speaker Adrienne Adams, a Queens democrat who has clashed with Mayor Eric Adams over child care in recent years. \u201cI believe that we can evolve away from the voucher system.\u201d<\/p>\n

What needs to be fixed in the current system?<\/p>\n

Providers, advocates, and experts warn that if the city doesn\u2019t act to shore up the foundations of the current system, any expansion efforts will cause it to buckle.<\/p>\n

Experts and providers both agreed the city should improve its process for reimbursing providers, which has resulted in delays so substantial that some providers have had to close. <\/p>\n

Another major issue: The city\u2019s free child care programs had more than 27,000 unfilled seats last year, according to city data<\/a>. Programs reserved for low-income families were more likely to go vacant, reflecting the onerous process of qualifying, experts and advocates said.<\/p>\n

The glut of unfilled seats is partly due to demographic projections for pre-K that failed to fully take into account how the city\u2019s declining birth rates and COVID enrollment losses<\/a> would play out on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood level, said Dan Weisberg, the former first deputy chancellor at the city Education Department under Adams. <\/p>\n

Some advocates and experts said the city can help fill programs by allowing providers to shift the kind of seats they\u2019re offering \u2014 from 3-K seats to 2-year-old seats, for example, or from school day to extended day \u2014 to meet the demand in their communities. Some of those changes might happen only through new contracts. (The Education Department is planning to issue a 2-year extension when the current child care contracts expire next year, people familiar with the plans said.)<\/p>\n

Weisberg encouraged the new administration to take a more conservative approach in building out capacity because it\u2019s much easier to add seats than take them away, he said.<\/p>\n

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for Chalkbeat New York\u2019s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC\u2019s public schools delivered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4146,9,24,55,54,56,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-36460","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-chalkbeat","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-city-news","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36460","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=36460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}