NEW YORK—The parents of 10,800 children are in jeopardy of losing their subsidized child care as early as the end of June due to a one-two punch of budget shortfalls and a change in how the city’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) subsidizes child care programs.
“This seems to be a pattern every year, where it is on the council to do extraordinary things to restore what ought to be ACS’s obligation,” City Council member Stephen Levin said during the executive budget hearings at City Hall on Tuesday.
While similar shortfalls have been filled in the past, such deep cuts this year could be exceptionally difficult to fill.
Levin noted the $84 million proposed budget reduction from last year in the ACS budget while other departments had increases in their budgets.
“Why on earth do we decrease the budget so drastically for our youngest children?” asked Levin.
Ronald Richter, commissioner of the New York City ACS, explained 6,500 spots in city-funded centers would lose their funding unless a $71.5 million shortfall is filled.
In addition, 4,300 vouchers, which allow parents to receive subsidized child care at non-city funded centers, would also lose their funding unless an $11.8 million shortfall was filled.
When asked what parents are supposed to do with their children, who no longer have subsidized child care, when they go to work, Richter replied, “We, for families who are losing ACS, are going to work with them to try to answer person by person that question. We will obviously, based on what you are looking at, not have a satisfactory answer for each individual and that is painful.”