New York City’s childcare educators, a workforce primarily composed of women of color, have struggled for years with pay parity and delayed payments. With the renewed push for universal childcare programs from Mayor Zohran Mamdani, are childcare providers finally faring better, or is it more of the same?
Mamdani has been working since his first month in office to promote the rollout of the city’s 3K, preK, and new 2K programs this year. Enrollment was pretty much a success, but just ahead of school’s opening on Sept. 10, the administration ran into an age-old problem: late payments to childcare providers.
“Childcare changes lives,” said Mamdani in a previous statement. “For parents struggling under the weight of the affordability crisis, it can mean the difference between being able to work and being forced to choose between a paycheck and caring for your child. But we cannot deliver that relief without the child care providers who make it possible every day.”
Following the COVID pandemic, the city’s childcare infrastructure was in a crisis, with many parents with little or no affordable childcare left, after centers were forced to close, according to a 2021 report from State Sen. Jabari Brisport’s office and the Alliance for Quality Education. In the last six years, both childcare centers and home-based childcare providers have complained and protested over low wages and being paid egregiously late by the city.
This backlog left the city’s mostly Black and Hispanic women childcare workers struggling to keep up with demand as the fall semester began. Many childcare providers are starting to see payments this September, while others are waiting.
To his credit, Mamdani tried to respond quickly in August with a comprehensive overhaul plan for the city’s childcare procurement process and a $43 million investment in fixing the New York City Public Schools’ Division of Early Childhood Education to better support childcare providers. His administration also threw a Mayoral Child Care Educator Appreciation Dinner at Gracie Mansion for Child Care Educator Appreciation Month back in May, and published an amNewYork joint op-ed in June with Juanita Hollaway, who runs the Emmanuel Family Daycare in Flatbush, about how much the city needs early childhood educators.
The Mayor’s office said that they’ve been working to address payment delays to providers through both interest-free loan disbursement and expedited contract registration, with a priority for home-based child care providers. All “complete loan requests” submitted before the first day of school have been approved, said the Mayor’s office.
“We need to [fill] the stopgap. We can’t have the childcare providers close the doors, and then promise to sit 29,000 children. We still have providers that have not been paid. Let’s start there,” said Zuleika Hines, a childcare strategist and founder of Decoding Childcare. Hines owned and operated Beyond Basic Learning Daycare, serving Hoboken, New Jersey, and Fort Greene, Brooklyn, for over 20 years.
Childcare providers support the vision of universal child care, but the program cannot succeed if they are expected to finance it themselves, said Hines. Delayed contracts and payments can force providers to rely on personal savings, assume debt, and struggle to meet payroll and operating expenses, she said. Hines added that she’s spoken with other providers from as far back as last year who were waiting on payments this month.
“A lot of times what we’re doing is that we’re telling the childcare providers to become their own banks,” said Hines. “We’re telling them to max out their credit cards. We’re telling them to take equity against their home. We’re telling them to leverage their husband’s income in order to supplement a promise that hasn’t come through. And most of the burden falls on women of color.”
Hines added that under Mamdani, more families can qualify for subsidies in childcare and there has been an increase in subsidized payments for providers closer to “market rate,” which might’ve contributed to the existing backlog. In the city’s executive budget, the Mayor invested $40 million to increase rates for contracted childcare providers, including a 5% rate increase for family childcare providers and a 2% increase for family childcare networks, said the Mayor’s office.
The plan to overhaul the city childcare system in the long-term includes deploying additional contracting staff for registration and payments; expediting interest-free loans and disbursement; providing school supplies at no extra cost; and calling and emailing affected childcare providers directly about the loan process. Additionally, the city plans to increase early childhood education division staffing, implement contracting reforms that establish clear timelines to avoid administrative “bottlenecks,” and commit to communicating with childcare providers as small businesses.
A spokesperson for the Mayor’s office said, “For too long, our city has asked providers to do more with less and treated them as an afterthought — this administration is changing that. We’re overhauling the way City Hall works with and invests in these small businesses, building a childcare system that works for families and providers alike. New Yorkers deserve nothing less.”
Additionally, there’s a $3 million Emergency Microgrant Fund to support licensed home-based childcare providers that is supposed to be implemented before the end of 2026, said the Mayor’s office. The new fund aims to serve more than 500 licensed providers who will be eligible for emergency microgrants ranging from $1,000 to $10,000.
