New York State Education Social Services Affordability

New State Law Could Unlock Thousands of Child Care Seats, Critics See Risks

The Hochul administration now has a chance to relax New York’s child care staffing ratios — among the country’s strictest — after 26 years. But will it?

Melissa Manno · May 12, 2026

Four young children sit around a table, playing with clay.

Current state regulations say that day care classrooms must have one adult for every five children aged 18-36 months. | Photo: Pavel Danilyuk/Pexels

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Despite having room to serve more children, Middletown day care owner Peggy Fuentes often has to turn away families in desperate need of care. Each of her toddler classrooms has 10 students — the state caps class sizes for that age group at 12 — but to fill the remaining seats, she’d have to hire another employee. That’s because a decades-old state regulation says day care classrooms have to have one adult for every five children between 18 and 36 months old.

With operating costs climbing across the board, from utilities to insurance, Fuentes said it simply isn’t feasible to pay another salary to accommodate just two more children.

“I have an inventory of child care spots that I’m reluctant to use because it is cost prohibitive,” said Fuentes, owner of On My Way Early Learning and Childcare Center, which serves around 240 children under 13.

New York state has some of the strictest staffing requirements in the country — stricter, in fact, than New York City’s. As state leaders allocate billions of dollars to address the child care shortage in this year’s budget, a new state law could ease those requirements and unlock new day care seats at no additional cost to providers — but only if the state agency that oversees child care decides to act on it.

“There’s a child care crisis in New York. If we can’t use our full supply of seats, then that crisis is just going to continue.”

—Peggy Fuentes, Middletown day care owner

In December, Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation eliminating a provision in a 2000 social services law that has prohibited the state Office of Children and Family Services from relaxing child care staffing ratios. The new law leaves it to the agency to actually change the ratios; if it did so, the same number of workers could care for more children.

State Senator James Skoufis, who introduced the bill in 2024, told New York Focus that adjusting the ratios is “more critical than ever” amid the state’s ongoing efforts to scale up its child care sector and provide more affordable care to working parents.

Child care advocates who oppose the change are concerned having the same number of staff supervising more children would increase the risk of accidents and injuries and fail to address a root cause of the state’s child care crisis: low wages for workers.

Supporters counter that looser ratios are consistent with national norms set by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a professional membership organization that promotes high-quality early childhood education, and that alignment with the group’s guidance would offer flexibility to providers who already operate with razor-thin profit margins.

So far, OCFS has not indicated whether it plans to update the regulations. In a statement provided to New York Focus, OCFS spokesperson Daniel Marans said the agency is “currently assessing the viability of the requested ratio change, with the goal of supporting child care providers without compromising our commitment to child safety.” The law does not impose a deadline for OCFS to make the switch.

More than 60 percent of New York’s census tracts are classified as a “child care desert,” meaning that there are three or more children under 5 waiting for every available slot, according to the state Office of Children and Family Service. Meanwhile, more than 16,000 children are unable to receive child care specifically as a result of staffing shortages that have led programs to operate under capacity. While that’s not necessarily related to staffing ratios, some think easing them could help address the shortage.

“We can provide more resources to counties and to providers all we want, but if we don’t provide the very common sense flexibility that these providers require in order to effectuate creating more seats, then the money is only going to go so far,” said Skoufis.

Skoufis introduced the bill after providers, including Fuentes, expressed their frustrations to lawmakers over being held to tougher ratios than their counterparts in New York City, where staffing requirements are set by the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Day care providers in the five boroughs must have one staff member for every five children between 12 and 18 months and one for every six children who are 2 years old. In the rest of the state, it’s 1–4 and 1–5, respectively. The discrepancies are even wider for older children.

Assemblymember Andrew Hevesi, who sponsored the bill, believes aligning ratios with New York City could help thousands of those families access a seat without burdening providers or taxpayers with additional costs.

“Child care providers are operating on such slim margins that they frequently worry about going out of business,” Hevesi said. “We were looking for a way to give them some breathing room in an incredibly difficult climate without costing anybody any money.”

Dede Hill, vice president of policy at the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy, a social policy and advocacy organization, has a different perspective. “One thing that makes child care in New York state so high quality is because we have low ratios — and that’s certainly not something we want to step away from,” she said. Hill is a member of the Empire State Campaign for Child Care, which advocates for universal child care.

“I don’t think staffing ratios are the solution to the tremendous issues we have related to supply,” said Hill. The key is more investment in the workforce, including higher pay for child care workers, she said.

One reason providers are facing significant financial strain is that the state’s reimbursement level for its child care voucher program, which covers nearly all of the cost of child care for low- and middle-income families, isn’t enough to provide high quality care, Hill said. With providers forced to absorb the shortfall, many are unable to offer adequate wages: In 2025, the annual average salary for child care workers in New York was $37,675, lower than 96 percent of other jobs.

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Fuentes, who has owned her day care center in Orange County for 17 years, said she currently has to choose between raising tuition for all children in order to pay another employee and waitlisting families even though there is ample space to serve them. If OCFS chose to align statewide staffing ratios with New York City, she said, she could enroll around 15 more children without hiring additional staff.

“There’s a child care crisis in New York,” she said. “If we can’t use our full supply of seats, then that crisis is just going to continue.”

For Heidi-Jo Brandt, president of a union representing more than 8,800 providers outside New York City, the flexibility doesn’t seem worth it. Some revisions to standards may be appropriate, such as the current 1–2 ratio for children under 2 in home-based care, she said, but a broader relaxing of staffing ratios could put children at risk. Research shows inadequate supervision is the main cause of injuries in child care settings, including drowning, choking, and severe burns from bottle warmers.

“While it could have a tremendous impact statewide, our concern is always for the safety of children,” said Brandt.

Some research indicates that high staff-to-child ratios and smaller group sizes are critical for children’s health, safety, and development, but data on the safety outcome of ratios like New York City’s is limited.

In recent years, as the child care industry has reeled from a pandemic-driven dip in enrollment and rise in operating costs, over a dozen states have proposed loosening their child care staffing ratios, increasing maximum group sizes, and relaxing other regulations to meet demand. Many states set ratios based on guidance from the National Association for the Education of Young Children; New York City’s ratios are roughly in line with the group’s recommendations.

Meanwhile, New York state has some of the most stringent ratios nationwide. It is one of just a handful of states that uses the restrictive ratios recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Public Health Association for 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds. Even New York City’s staffing ratios remain stricter than those in many other states.

Skoufis first introduced the bill after then-OCFS Commissioner Suzanne Miles-Gustave informed him that aligning statewide ratios with New York City would require legislation. At the time, he said, OCFS officials “made it crystal clear” they wanted to pursue the changes, though he’s less clear on their position today.

In a January letter to current OCFS Commissioner DaMia Harris-Madden, Skoufis argued that it is “financially unreasonable” to require a 1–5 staff-to-child ratio for 18- to 36-month-olds with a maximum group size of 12.

Hevesi said that he believes the agency should “act sooner rather than later” given the potential benefits.

A book lies open and face-down on a desk.

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“My instinct is that there’s going to be support to look at this and see what’s appropriate — but my role was just to take the handcuffs off and now they are free to do whatever they feel is appropriate,” he said.

Buffalo day care owner Emily Thrasher pointed out that New York City and state regulations differ on other aspects of child care: The city also has more lenient classroom space requirements than the rest of the state, as well as different age group definitions that determine other regulations. For example, New York City defines a toddler as a child between 12 and 24 months old, while New York state’s definition is 18 to 36 months.

Thrasher said full alignment with New York City’s standards would allow her small business to generate hundreds of thousands of additional dollars annually. That, in turn, would enable her to serve more families.

“I can’t even imagine how much that would compound for larger day care centers,” she said. “We could help more families, open more slots, pay our staff more. … The changes seem small, but it would make the biggest difference.”