Testimony of Vice President for Non-Department of Education Members Anne Goldman before the New York City Council Committee on General Welfare and Committee on Women’s Issues
Good afternoon Chairman Levin and Chairwoman Cumbo and the members of the General Welfare and Women’s Issues committees. My name is Anne Goldman, and I am Vice President for Non-Department of Education Members for the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). On behalf of our union’s more than 200,000 members, including more than 20,000 home-based, family child care providers, I want to thank you for this opportunity to offer testimony on the mayor’s proposed expense budget as it relates to the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) and child care specifically.
First, we would like to acknowledge the New York City Council for its fierce advocacy fighting for the rights of children and families and for its leadership ensuring the necessary checks and balances to protect the interests of those in our city who have the smallest voice but the greatest need. We appreciate your oversight of the budget process and of the agencies responsible for our children’s education and well-being.
We again look to you to lead in the effort to gain more funding for subsidized early child care and for your continued advocacy on behalf of parents and their right to high-quality child care options.
Looking forward with hope
This is the first budget in some years where the UFT and child care advocates across the city aren’t fighting against proposed massive cuts to the ACS child care budget. Child care as a whole and family child care in particular, suffered under the former mayor. In the recent past, the Bloomberg administration proposed tens of millions of dollars in cuts year after year, and it was the members of this body that stood up and blocked the administration’s attempts to balance its budget by decimating ACS. Last year alone the City Council restored over $60 million dollars of funding to child care, including $11 million that went directly to Family Child Care which is the home-based care provided by UFT Child Care Providers. We are excited and thankful that last year’s City Council’s restorations have been base-lined in the FY 2015 preliminary budget.
The policies enacted concurrent with these cuts were equally damaging to family child care — principally, the EarlyLearn redesign forced many providers to find new networks to affiliate with, causing chaos for parents whose children lost the caregivers and educators with whom they’d formed strong bonds. Added to its poor implementation, EarlyLearn caused serious delays in provider payment, worsened by attempts to collect money from hastily closed networks impaired by expired city contracts and by allowing networks to pay family child providers less than the already too low market rate, despite the fact that networks are paid a per-child rate that is often higher than the market rate. Compounding matters for network providers, many networks also charge the provider an administration fee — often a per child, per month amount — further reducing their compensation from a starting point that is already lower than the market rate, which itself is already low. We are now beginning to receive reports that some networks are raising the administrative fee that they charge their providers.
The city has entered a new era with a new administration taking the helm at City Hall and at the Administration for Children’s Services. We approach the deliberation over the city’s proposed Fiscal Year 2015 ACS budget with a sense of hope that there will now be a greater emphasis on expanding access to quality child care and respecting parents’ rights to choose the child care which best fits their needs. We are looking forward to working with Commissioner Gladys Carriòn in her new role. She has been a tireless advocate for child care on the state level and we believe that our members and the families we serve will benefit from her stewardship over the ACS.
Increase family access
Working families depend on child care to maintain their employment and to ensure their children receive quality early education. For parents and guardians working to support families at the lowest income levels, high quality, reliable child care is a must, and affordability is the critical element. New York City’s high cost of living can place even basic needs out of reach for those living at or under the poverty line. The statistics on poverty and the working poor in our city in the aftermath of the country’s recession are staggering. A recent report published by the Coalition for the Homeless found the number of children sleeping in shelters rose eight percent last year, reaching a level of 22,712 in January 2014, the highest in history.
In a February 2012 review of the current research on gaps in poverty, income and educational achievement, the New York Times highlighted findings from a number of studies offering a sobering view on the impact of the lack of access to high-quality early education and care. According to the University of California, Los Angeles, “by the time high-income children start school, they have spent about 400 hours more than poor children in literacy activities.” Overall the researchers found that over the past several decades, higher-income parents have intensified their investment in their children’s education, while lower-income parents are “increasingly stretched for time and resources.” More recent data from Stanford University, 2013, show that disadvantaged children begin school at a deficit and the gap only widens over time.
Unfortunately, too few New York City working families can afford early child care without the assistance to pay for it. While thousands of low-income New Yorkers, predominantly families of color, depend on family child providers, according to the City only 27 percent of income-eligible families currently receive child care subsidies. Our city has fallen woefully short in meeting the need.
Our city’s families need greater access to child care and quality early education. Every year that eligible families don’t receive subsidies, we allow the gap to widen placing vulnerable children at a significant disadvantage. Additionally, a parent’s right to choose the type of child care that best fits their family’s need, which is clearly defined in federal law, must be respected by the City. Quite simply, if a parent chooses to send their child to a center, they should be allowed to do so. And if they prefer to send their child to family child care, that should be their choice. Expanding access to early child care is an economic and educational imperative.
Educating and caring for our earliest learners
We are especially encouraged that Mayor Bill de Blasio has galvanized the public will and focused his administration on the importance of offering universal, full-time pre-kindergarten to all four-year-old children in our city. His leadership on this issue has dialed up the conversation throughout the state on the benefits of high-quality early childhood education and how it fosters lifelong learning.
Educating and caring for our earliest learners is a high priority for the UFT and the professional development and credentialing services we provide to our union’s family child care providers is evidence of our commitment. We’ve partnered with curriculum development teams from public television and the UFT Teacher Center to deliver age appropriate instructional support for our members’ use in home-based settings. Strengthening early child care options and expanding access for families seeking educationally sound, subsidized care is smart policy for our city’s future.
Closing Thoughts
In closing, I reiterate our gratitude to the City Council and the members of the General Welfare and Women’s Issues committees for your strong leadership and advocacy on behalf of the children we care for, especially with respect to their rights to a high-quality education in a safe and caring environment.
We are excited to have an administration that we feel will engage all stakeholders in making our City’s child care system work better. It is our firm belief that by investing now in our city’s children and families, our city will reap long-term economic and social benefits.