Albany -- "I want to partner with the legislature put our State on a pathway toward universal child care," Governor Kathy Hochul said during her State of the State address.
That initiative is a part of Governor's "Affordability Agenda", which includes a middle-class tax cut, universal free school meals and tripling the child tax credit.
To continue the path towards universal child care, Hochul is proposing more than $100 million in capital grants for construction and renovation for child care centers.
"I mean, location is huge," Russell Weaver, Research Director for the Cornell ILR Buffalo, says. "We do have a number of what are considered child care deserts across the state, especially low population density areas. So certainly, any funds that are coming in from the executive level or from the legislature to improve construction...all good news there. However, I think the construction grants that are being proposed are about $110 million. Just as a comparison for the Buffalo Bills stadium, New York State kicked in about $600 million so again, there's some thinking about what level of investment is needed in this industry, and our research shows that it's a pretty big one. On the upside of that, our research also shows that there's a big return on investment for child care. It tends to have one of the highest economic multipliers of many industries."
Weaver has been working on a child care desert mapping system, which he and his colleagues hope can facilitate the State's investment in construction of new centers, and addressing the affordability of child care. Right now, the Governor says it averages $21,000 per child for a family.
As for making child care universally free, an advocacy group, New Yorkers United for Child Care, recently released a 5-year plan to phase in a program like that.
Their first-year-goal of availability of free care for ages 3 and up in New York City is already in place, which Weaver says is a good start.
"I do think New York State is a leader on this issue, but as a country, we have a very long way to go," he says. "It's really hard to say [when it'll happen], there are a lot of moving parts. Because, we don't want to push any current providers out of that landscape and consolidate, say, around schools and have childcare just be part of that system. That diversity, I think, is important to a lot of parents to be able to send a child to a family provider, for example. So there needs to be a way to figure out how to square that circle and perhaps absorb that landscape...that diverse landscape of providers, but from a public or state-owned perspective."