High turnover and red tape key obstacles as Mamdani admin outlines child care expansion plans

Cayla Bamberger, New York Daily News on Mar 2, 2026

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NEW YORK — The New York City Council on Monday pressed the Mamdani administration on its plans to bring their vision of universal child care to life — from hiring enough teachers to cutting through red tape.

During a nearly five-hour hearing of the Council’s newly formed subcommittee on early childhood education, members asked top child care officials how they plan to implement a new program for 2-year-olds, plus tackle long-standing issues in the city’s early childhood system.

“To truly get to universal child care, we’re never going to get there if we don’t cut down on the dysfunction and bureaucratic delays that are embedded in many city agency processes,” said Council Speaker Julie Menin, D-Manhattan.

Mayor Mamdani ran on a campaign promise to dramatically expand free child care in the city to babies as young as 6 weeks.

The mayor got a big boost earlier this year from Gov. Hochul, who sent the city funding to launch child care for 2-year-olds, expand preschool for 3-year-olds in high-demand neighborhoods, and protect families from losing child care vouchers at their chosen programs.

To pull off the expansion, Emmy Liss, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Child Care, said her six-person team focused on the big-picture rollout is trying to make it “less burdensome” for providers to meet some regulatory requirements.

She also acknowledged a “need to significantly expand the number of trained professionals work in child care.” Advocates estimate the city needs to hire 5,000 new early childhood teachers every year just to keep pace with high turnover rates.

“The child care workforce has been underpaid and under-respected for too long,” Liss said. “We will invest in building the pipeline of child care workers supporting and sustaining the existing workforce and creating growth opportunity for child care professionals.”

Liss added that her office is launching a new interagency group this week focused on workforce development. The city is also exploring career programs in public high schools and colleges and universities, she said.

Jennifer Gutiérrez, D-Brooklyn, the subcommittee chair, called for paying providers a living wage to strengthen the workforce: “The one thing I hate is us asking women to do things and not paying them for it. And I just don’t want us to fall into that again,” she said.

The city will also have to find physical space for new programs, though there are 27 empty centers that Simone Hawkins, deputy chancellor for early childhood education, said the public school system is currently creating plans to fill.

As the city considers where to open the first 2,000 seats of 2-K this fall, Liss said the city will prioritize areas where families are living in poverty and don’t currently have access to child care, and providers can scale up quickly. The plan calls for growing to 12,000 seats in the 2027-28 school year, before expanding citywide by the end of Mamdani’s term.

The hearing generated some confusion around the hours of 2-K, including if programs are expected to run until parents get off work. Working parents have complained of needing to turn down free 3-K and pre-K because the programs offered did not provide extended hours or even after-school for a fee, requiring them to leave their jobs early to pick up their children.

“We are right now anticipating for it to be a full-day program, an extended-day program,” said Hawkins.

Later in the hearing, though, Liss added the cavet that prospective 2-K providers were also able to apply to offer school-day programs. A City Hall spokesperson clarified the Mamdani administration was not committing to all full-day programs, at least for now.

“We want to understand the capacity that our providers have,” Liss said. “We do anticipate many providers and families will want a full day, but we have left open the option for both.”

Outside of early childhood education initiatives through the public schools, there are 16,500 families currently waiting for child care subsidies that can be used at programs of their choosing, according to the Administration for Children’s Services, which administers the vouchers.

“We have enough money to keep everyone who has a voucher in a voucher for next year, but we have $0 associated with that waitlist,” said Lincoln Restler, D-Brooklyn.

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