Legislature Proposes More Money for Child Care, But Not Enough to Avert Funding Cliff

In their 2025 budget plans released Monday, the state Assembly and Senate proposed hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending to help parents afford child care and to provide a wage boost to workers in the industry. The proposals would still invest less than what advocates and New York City officials say is needed to avoid an imminent funding shortfall that will result in thousands of children each month losing access to the state’s child care assistance program.

The proposals come nearly two months after Governor Kathy Hochul, New York’s self-proclaimed “first mom governor,” put forth her own budget plan that did not include new investments in child care assistance or worker wages. Hochul instead proposed creating another task force to study the issue, saying she wants to “put our state on a pathway to universal childcare.”

The Assembly proposed increasing the state’s investment in the Child Care Assistance Program, a voucher system that helps people who are working or in school afford child care, by $213 million. The program is largely funded by a federal block grant and the state.

The Senate proposed creating a $500 million “workforce retention grant” to provide a wage boost to child care workers, who are some of the lowest-paid employees in the state. Over the past two years, child care workers in New York received a small bonus from the state, paid for with federal pandemic funds. Legislators say that failing to provide another bonus this year would mean the workforce gets a pay cut.

Child care “is a campaign item,” said Pete Nabozny, policy director at the Rochester-based advocacy organization The Children’s Agenda. “But we’re not seeing the attention from the budget process that would match the attention from people who are running for office. It’s very frustrating, because we know what would help many more families access care — it’s funding.”

Child care is more expensive in New York than in any state but Massachusetts, costing an average of roughly $20,000 in 2023. Those high prices can create a substantial burden for parents, some of whom leave the workforce as a result.

As costs have gone up in recent years, Hochul and lawmakers have nearly quadrupled the state’s spending on the Child Care Assistance Program and expanded eligibility, so that a family of four earning up to about $108,000 can receive assistance. In December of 2024, 85,820 families around the state were receiving the assistance.

But state spending has not kept up with increasing enrollment.

Last month, New York City officials warned that the city does not have the funds to maintain current enrollment levels. There are about 60,000 children covered by the program in New York City, where average child care costs have doubled in the city’s family day care settings over the past five years.

The city Administration for Children’s Services, which disburses the funds locally, said that it will have to start removing 4,000-7,000 children from the program each month if the state does not allocate hundreds of millions of dollars more to New York City to maintain enrollment levels.

The cost of child care is only one part of the problem. Parents also struggle to find spots for their kids, which state officials and advocates largely attribute to a child care workforce shortage caused by low wages and poor benefits. In state Senator Jabari Brisport’s Brooklyn district, parents sign up for child care waitlists before their kids are even born.

Brisport, the chair of the Senate Committee on Children and Families, said providers have empty classrooms because they can’t find or retain workers, who earn a median income of $25,000 in New York City. A recent report from the city comptroller’s office noted that salaries and benefits at big box retailers are often more attractive than what child care providers can offer.

The Senate’s proposal would invest $500 million to once again provide bonuses to child care workers. In 2023 and 2024, the state gave more than 80,000 child care workers a combined bonus of more than $5,000 over those two years. Hochul and the Assembly did not propose funds to provide a bonus again this year.

The Empire State Campaign for Child Care, a coalition of parents, educators, and advocates, had requested a $1.2 billion workforce fund.

“We don’t have enough child care workers, and we want to get to a place where every single parent can enroll their child in a childcare program,” Brisport told New York Focus. “The governor’s [budget] proposal totally missed that.”

In a bright spot for parents, the Senate proposed creating a Working Families Tax Credit to send up to $1,600 to low and middle-income parents per kid annually. The credit would replace existing tax credits for parents with children and be phased in over five years, starting at a maximum of $550 in the first year.