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The newly-formed Emergency Coalition to Save Child Care, made up of dozens of organizations and religious institutions, has launched an effort to restore child care to the 17,000 children who are about to lose care under the Mayor’s plan to cut child care for working families. This cut combined with 14,000 slots lost since 2006 add up to a 50% cut in child care for working families, says the Coalition.
The group argues that the cuts will lead to lower graduation rates from high school and force working parents to leave their jobs.
The group has also issued a new report -- Where There Is No Care -- which finds that the impact of these cuts is not shared equally and will hit some of the city’s most struggling communities the hardest.
- Communities with a high unmet need for child care will lose significant numbers of subsidies, including Washington Heights where 370 children will lose subsidies and Unionport/Soundview in the Bronx where 486 children will lose their subsidies.
- Communities with unemployment rates over 16 percent will be hit hard, including Bedford-Stuyvesant where 684 children will lose subsidies and Mott Haven where 502 children will lose their subsidies.
- Communities where less than half of the students are meeting state and city reading standards will bear a large burden of these cuts, including East New York where 972 children will lose their subsidies, and Brownsville where 543 children will lose their subsidies.
“Cutting child care for 17,000 children in working families is penny-wise and pound-foolish,” said Fatima Goldman, Executive Director/CEO of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies. “These cuts will devastate areas throughout the City that already have high unemployment and low performance on state education tests.”
“The Mayor’s plan to cut child care subsidies for nearly 17,000 children will have a dire effect on thousands of working families in our City, forcing parents to scramble for alternative care and preventing tens of thousands of children from getting the early education opportunities they deserve,” said Council Member Annabel Palma, Chair of the General Welfare Committee. “It is unconscionable that the Mayor continues to preach about the merits of upward social mobility while simultaneously denying working New Yorkers the resources they need to lift themselves out of poverty. Our children and families deserve better from their Mayor.”
Advocates argue that the child care system is already under serving the people who need it most. They point to the City’s own Community Needs Assessment released in 2008 which found that the city was serving only 27 percent of eligible children in city-funded programs, and only 37 percent of all children under the age of six were being served in any early childhood setting.
Studies have shown that every $1 cut from child care leads to a $1.86 loss in economic activity, and that child care and early learning programs save up to a billion dollars in future costs for remedial education and lowered high school graduation rates.
“Our City already has high unemployment,” said Raglan George, Executive Director of AFSCME District Council 1707. “Why would the Mayor want to cut 17,000 child care slots – leaving parents at risk of losing their jobs because they cannot find a safe place for their child while they are at work and leaving child care providers at risk of having to lay off the people who work for them?”
Advocates claim that the cuts will lead to a higher need for other government programs such as health insurance, food stamps, public assistance and unemployment benefits. Many parents determine that the high cost of child care exceeds their income, and they are unable to go to work because they have nowhere safe for their children during the day. More than a thousand early childhood professionals will lose their jobs and the availability of employment in this sector will be drastically reduced.
"These cuts should never even be an option for the City" said Rev. Lisa D. Jenkins of Blessed Trinity Baptist Church in Harlem. "These cuts are unacceptable at any time. Children and hard-working parents should not be paying the price for the city's budget shortfalls."
Children will pay the biggest price for this cut in child care services, say advocates. Studies show that positive early childhood learning opportunities lead to more positive outcomes later in life. Children who attend quality early childhood programs are more likely to graduate from high school, less likely to be involved in crime and less likely to become teen parents.
“Our centers provide safe, affordable and educational child care,” said Margarita Rosa, Executive Director, of Grand Street Settlement which has child care centers in Bushwick and the Lower East Side. “If the Mayor cuts these 17,000 child care slots, many of these parents will have no option except to turn to unsafe options that don’t provide kids with the education they need to succeed in school later on. That makes no sense.”
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