New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham joined a group of children, parents and educators at a Santa Fe preschool Tuesday morning to sign her free, universal child care initiative into law.

“I really wanted something that would create a sea change for families and children in New Mexico,” Lujan Grisham said before signing the bill. “Senate Bill 241 is the culmination of decades of leadership of the Legislature and eight years of good leadership by a short little governor and, most importantly, the dedication of the people in the child care industry and the parents and the families.”

After the bill signing, she told reporters she believed that free childcare will ameliorate New Mexico’s with child well-being. The state routinely ranks 50th for child well-being in the national Kids Count report published by the nonpartisan Annie E. Casey Foundation. Since November, Lujan Grisham said more than 16,000 new children have enrolled in free child care — and more than half of them were already eligible to receive free child care under the state’s previous requirements.

“All of these families struggled for no reason,” she said. “This is maybe the most monumental, pivotal day in New Mexico’s past, its current and the opportunities for its future. We couldn’t be prouder.”

The ranked with and as one of the Legislature’s top priorities in the recent 30-day session. Initial proposals from members of the state House of Representatives would have required co-pays from some New Mexico families to participate, but the bill Lujan Grisham signed into law Tuesday will only require co-pays from families with a household income of than 600% of the federal poverty level under certain signs of economic decline, such as inflation and decreasing oil prices.

A recent from the state Legislative Finance Committee found a slight decrease in the state’s general fund revenue. “Major” changes in oil and gas revenue would affect the Early Childhood Trust Fund and other similar state funds. The new law allows the state to take up to $700 million from the $11 billion Early Childhood Education and Care Trust Fund to pay for universal child care over the next five years. State leaders created that fund in 2020 with about $300 million.

Lujan Grisham praised Lt. Gov. Howie Morales for prioritizing this issue when he was a state senator and for refusing to let it go when he joined her administration.

“When I received the phone call back in November…saying we’re going to move forward with this and that the governor has made sure that we’re going to implement this coming Nov. 1, I got emotional,” Morales said to the crowd gathered at Tuesday’s bill signing. “I remember sitting there, talking to you as the governor and saying, ‘I don’t think this is a fight we can win,’ and the governor turning to me and saying, ‘Some fights are worth fighting, even if you lose.’”

Lujan Grisham also signed into law, which will ease zoning restrictions on regulated child care homes in residential areas. From inside the “Owl Classroom” at Garcia Street Club School, a decades-old preschool in the middle of a Santa Fe neighborhood, she said she hoped to knock down barriers to where child care facilities can go.

“If we can do this since 1945, we can do more,” she said, referencing the school’s origination date. “That’s exactly what we want — home, historic environments as well as brand new facilities. We want a hybrid and a mix all throughout the state.”

She said she believes the two laws, taken together, can make New Mexico a replicable model for how the rest of the nation tackles issues of child well-being.

“This really, truly can be a state in America that solves this problem,” Lujan Grisham said. “When a poor state — in terms of our stats, not our money — solves it for America, America will redesign and reshape how we treat our families, and that’s a long time coming.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Goldberg for questions: info@sourcenm.com.

 During his successful bid for mayor, Zohran Mamdani argued these prices, which have increased 43% since 2019, are driving families out of the city.

In response, the Democratic Socialist proposed an ambitious fix: universal free child care for all kids under 5, regardless of their family’s income.

To help him execute on this largely popular, yet hugely challenging promise, he’s brought on Emmy Liss, an expert in the field who was instrumental in the rollout of universal pre-K and 3-K under former Mayor Bill de Blasio. 

Liss has spent the years since working on early childhood policy and advocacy issues, partnering with cities and counties across the country as they launched their own publicly funded programs. She’s also worked as a consultant at and a child care policy advisor at the .

Liss and Mamdani say they plan to strengthen existing free pre-K and 3-K programs, while also scaling to include all 2 year olds, through a program they’re calling 2-Care. The first 2-K seats are set to open this fall for families with the greatest need, followed by an additional the following year. 

The first two years of the program, which the administration has promised will be fully scaled by the end of Mandami’s first term, will be by the state, through a $500 million investment, announced by Gov. Kathy Hochul back in January.

New York City parents can currently access free 3-K and preschool through a variety of providers, ranging from district public schools to community-based organizations and licensed home-based centers. In the almost 44,000 students were enrolled in 3-K and just under 60,000 in pre-K.

For the initial rollout of 2-K, Liss told �鶹��Ʒ that the administration will focus on partnerships with community and home-based providers, the organizations and small businesses already doing this work, a number of whom faced under de Blasio’s rollout of universal 3-K and preschool. 

Integrating this patchwork landscape of care options will not be easy, and ultimately Liss said she’s hoping for more than just a shift in policy: she also wants a shift in ethos, in which early education is no longer seen as a privilege, but rather a public good.

“In the same way that we think about public education being available to every New Yorker, child care should be no different,” she said. 

�鶹��Ʒ’s Amanda Geduld recently spoke with Liss to dig into the key tenets of the mayor’s plans and hear lessons learned from her last time in city government. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Can you paint a broad-stroked picture of some of the main goals of the proposed universal, free child care program? How quickly will you be able to scale it over the next four years?

The broad-strokes vision is exactly as you said: Our goal is to ensure that every family has access to a free, high-quality, culturally responsive early care and education setting — across a range of different settings — for their children who are under 5. We know that care has to be provided in a range of settings by caregivers who are compensated and respected and trained appropriately, and that families have options that work for them, whatever their specific needs might be. 

We see benefits to that on so many levels: It benefits children to be in high-quality early learning settings where they can learn and grow and develop, and it benefits parents and their ability to stay in the workforce. 

Obviously, the fact that we are pushing for free is a huge saving to families. That’s $20, $30, $40,000 back in their pocket on an annual basis, which changes their own economic status as a family. We see universal child care as a real mechanism to stop the out-migration of working- and middle-class families in New York City, because that’s who we see leaving the city at really an unprecedented rate. 

And then this has broader and wider economic benefits as well. New York City on an annual basis loses over $20 billion because of child care gaps. Families who leave the city, families who do not have the disposable income to spend in our economy, losses to business as they have higher turnover rates, and all of those trends we hope to see reversed with the implementation of universal child care. 

What we’ve laid out as an implementation plan and vision is that by this fall, we will launch our initial 2-K seats with about 2,000 kids, and we’ll really deliver fully on the promise of universal 3-K and pre-K. Over the course of the first term, we’ll continue to scale up the 2-K program so that we are serving all 2-year-olds whose families want to participate in this program by the end of the mayor’s first term (in 2029). And then we’ll continue to grow and scale from there, working really in partnership with the state as we do.

How will you determine where those initial 2,000 seats are? What sorts of questions will you ask families to determine where the greatest need is?

We’re looking at a couple of different factors. We’re looking at family economic need. We’re looking at unmet-need for child care for 2-year-olds — so parts of the city where we see limited supply of free or subsidized child care options for families today. 

We are also looking at where in the city we have child care providers who have the capacity and interest to begin partnering with us right away. We recognize that there are many parts of the city where there is not enough child care capacity today, and so part of our challenge and opportunity over the next couple years will be to expand capacity in those areas. 

We’ll have more news soon on where we’re headed this fall with 2-K, but those are a couple of the factors we’re thinking about. 

Mayor Mamdani has been explicit in his vision that this will truly be a universal, high-quality program. In terms of accountability, it’ll be pretty easy to determine if it’s universal. But in terms of the quality piece, what are you going to be looking at as benchmarks to make sure that each of these centers are not only available but also high quality?

This was something we thought a lot about in the early rollout of pre-K and 3-K, and I think we’ll continue to apply a lot of the same thinking here. We will look at — just as a baseline — ensuring that all of the places, centers and home-based providers we partner with demonstrate a very high standard of health and safety (and) that we know children are being cared for responsibly in those environments. 

But it’s also about making sure that the caregivers and educators are trained and able to provide a highly responsive and developmentally appropriate experience for the children in their care. In the past, we have leaned really heavily on coaching and support as a vehicle to make sure that we are supporting providers to meet those goals, and I think we’ll continue to build on a lot of that same work. 

Quality can look and feel really different from program to program, and we want to honor and respect the range of different setting types that we partner with, and the different ways that high quality early education can look. 

For us, access and quality have to go hand in hand: that as we grow access, we are continuing to invest in quality as well.

There have been debates nationally about targeted approaches to child care (that only serve the lowest-income families) versus universal ones (which serve all families). For folks who aren’t as familiar with this space or might push back on the goal here of universality, how would you respond to them? And how would you respond to those who might be skeptical of an investment this large in child care generally?

First, I would say that we’ve reached a point in New York City where child care is, frankly, not affordable for anyone. Last year, the comptroller’s office put out research suggesting a family would have to make over $300,000 to comfortably afford child care for even a single child. 

So when those are our economic realities in the city, it’s not as though we were talking about passing on a luxury good. Child care is a necessity, and when you are in a position where families earning mid-six figures can’t afford child care, let alone our most economically vulnerable families, I think that’s a real call to action for the economic imperative that we address this. 

We’re also really trying to shift the conversation here from access to early education being a privilege to something where it really is a public good. In the same way that we think about public education being available to every New Yorker, child care should be no different. 

We also recognize that when you restrict access to incredibly important programs like child care, you actually hurt the families who need it the most. When we put onerous means testing on these programs and ask families to supply months — even years — of pay stubs, ask them invasive personal questions in order to gain access to child care, it keeps families out, and it keeps out the families who need care the most. 

By stripping those barriers away, and no longer asking families to demonstrate that they deserve child care — but actually treating it as the public good we believe it should be — I think we will see participation grow from all families, and especially the families, again, who we know need these services most and are kept out when we put these barriers in place.

Mayor Mamdani has talked about making sure this serves all children, including those with disabilities. How are you thinking about including these children and addressing their specific needs?

As we think broadly about making sure that our supply of early education seats matches family demand, we have to be focused on meeting needs of children with disabilities, and then as we continue to expand to serve children who are younger and younger, making sure that we are drawing all the necessary connections between early education and early intervention; that we are equipping program leaders and teachers with the training they need to support children who may be identified as having a developmental delay or disability; and then continuing to think innovatively about the right program models to meet family need.

Another place where we’ve seen gaps historically is for really young kids living in homeless shelters or who are otherwise not in stable, consistent housing. I know that Mayor Mamdani that’s a real priority for him as well. Can you give one or two specific examples of how kids in those environments will be served under this program?

As we look at where to expand 2-K to first, and at areas where there is great economic need, we will look at places where we have large numbers of families with young children in shelter, and as we develop outreach plans to make sure families are finding their way into 2-K we’ll make sure that we’re partnering closely with the shelter providers and others in the community to connect those families to services. 

We recognize that for many families, government isn’t always the most trusted voice, particularly families who have gone through real challenges and have faced government systems in not always the friendliest light. So we have and will continue to look to trusted community partners, who those families may go to for support, to make sure that we can leverage them and they can help connect families to care as well.

The universal 3-K rollout under the de Blasio administration was largely regarded as a successful program, but one critique was that home-based child care providers — who are typically women of color — often felt locked out of the system. You just mentioned (some other states that) did good work to address this. Can you talk about some of the policies they implemented?

If you look back at the implementation of pre-K and then 3-K in the city, I would talk about those two things differently. There are laws and policies and regulations that exist at the state level that make it much harder to bring (home-based) providers into the city’s pre-K program. In other states, the funding structures are set in a way that makes it much more straightforward for those providers to participate in their state pre-K programs. And so I think that’s an area where we can look at other states as examples.

With 3-K, and then as we think about now the expansion of 2-K, the city has tried to take a really different approach, and is trying to make sure that our programs are inclusive of home-based providers. I think in some other parts of the country, they’ve been really thoughtful in the ways that they have done outreach to providers to make sure that they are aware of the opportunities to participate. They’ve provided business coaching and other sorts of operational and administrative support to help those providers come into their public systems. 

They’ve thought about contracting mechanisms that are responsive to providers, so thinking about ways that providers can enter into contracting agreements that don’t have to be in English necessarily, for example, recognizing that home-based providers often do speak and serve children who speak languages other than English.

I think there’s been a real investment in some other communities, and I think New York has done this in pockets, but there’s more opportunity for us to do this and just supporting these providers — these women primarily — and empowering them as business leaders and giving them resources and support so that they can continue to grow and sustain their businesses. 

And then thinking about the ways in which we can take administrative load off of their plates. These are women who are working 10-, 12-hour days, providing care to children, and then on top of that, doing all of the prep work and the cleaning and the cooking and everything. They’re one-woman operations in many cases. So to then ask them to take on an incredible contractual, administrative business load on top of that, I think just looking at all the ways in which we can simplify and streamline the process for them.

A report out of looked at the economic disparities between caregivers working in these different environments and found that those running home-based programs often earn far less than the minimum wage (on average about $6 an hour) and certainly less than those running center-based programs. 

How are you planning on approaching that partnership and making sure that home-based providers are truly earning a living wage and that they can keep their doors open to keep serving families?

We recognize that there are incredibly inequitable gaps here, and that this is something providers have borne for decades and decades. For too long the work of home-based providers in particular, has gone under under recognized, underpaid, under respected, and it’s something we know we have to address, and we’re going to look at all the different options for how we can close some of these gaps.

Child care and early childhood education are obviously areas where you’ve devoted so much of your career, and I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about what drew you to this space initially, and why this is such an important issue to you.

I’ve always been really interested in the role that government can play in actually ending child poverty, and so I started working in education policy, because I saw education as a real anti-poverty lever. I was particularly drawn to early childhood education because it’s not just about the child, but really about the whole family and how we can change the economic reality that families face. 

I was also just so privileged to work in government at the time of the expansion of 3-K and pre-K, because it gave me this very front row seat to what’s possible when government sets big goals. What we were able to deliver over the course of eight years for families — with the expansion of 3-K and pre-K — really just cemented my view about what’s possible when the public sector activates around that kind of a goal, and so I’ve been focused on it ever since. 

Then, on a personal note, as now a parent of young children, I really see the incredibly important role that child care plays in a family’s life, and I think that that motivates me as well — just thinking about my own experience and the access I’ve had, and how that allows me to come and do a job like this every day, knowing that my children are safe and nurtured and cared for and developing and growing. That’s something I want for every parent.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has said he opposes mayoral accountability, calling it undemocratic. But real democracy in a city of 9 million people and a school system serving 1 million students isn’t about diffusing power: It’s about making responsibility clear. Democracy depends on knowing exactly who is in charge and giving stakeholders the ability to demand results.

Under the current system, parents and voters have a direct line to leadership. They can advocate to the person responsible for the system. And if that leader fails their children, they can vote them out. That’s democracy in action: clear, direct and fair.

New Yorkers must not forget the chaos that mayoral control replaced. Before 2002, New York City’s schools were governed by 32 local boards that often worked at cross purposes and sometimes in open conflict. Decisions about budgets, staffing and curriculum were fragmented and inconsistent from one district to the next.

Some boards were run by dedicated community members, but too many were dominated by political operatives. Nepotism and corruption were rampant. Jobs went to friends and relatives instead of qualified educators, and investigations uncovered board members steering contracts to allies or hiring individuals with criminal records to work in schools. 

Millions of dollars meant for classrooms vanished into a cloud of bureaucracy and self-dealing. Parents were left powerless. When a school failed, they didn’t know whom to call: the local board, the superintendent, the central office or City Hall? No one was clearly responsible, so everyone passed the buck. Student performance stagnated, and inequities deepened. Children in wealthier neighborhoods got attention, while kids in lower-income communities were left behind. 

That system was nothing like a democracy — it was dysfunction junction.

Mayoral accountability changed that. It created a single, unified chain of command: one person with the authority to make decisions, drive reform and be held responsible for outcomes. This clarity made major progress possible. Under mayoral accountability, the city’s graduation rate rose from 46% to over 81%, while the share of graduates earning Advanced Regents diplomas increased by more than 20%. SAT participation nearly doubled, and pre-kindergarten enrollment skyrocketed from fewer than 14,000 to over 64,000 children. Even overcrowding declined, with fewer schools exceeding capacity at every level. 

These gains didn’t happen by accident; they happened because a single accountable leader could coordinate agencies, funding and policy to get results for students.

Critics claim that mayoral control concentrates too much power in one office. In truth, it concentrates responsibility — and that is the foundation of public trust. A system serving a million students with diverse needs cannot govern its schools by committee. It requires decisive leadership that is ultimately answerable to voters.

That doesn’t mean the system is perfect. It must become more transparent, more responsive and more inclusive of parent and community voices. But strengthening transparency is not the same as dismantling the structure that makes improvement possible.

Ironically, without mayoral accountability, even Mayor-elect Mamdani’s own priorities, from expanding equitable access to early childhood education to addressing systemic inequality, would be undermined. Without clear authority to align city agencies and resources, those goals risk becoming aspirational rather than achievable.

Mayoral accountability is not the enemy of democracy. It is the mechanism that makes democracy effective. Parents deserve a system where they know who to challenge, who to advocate to, and who to hold responsible for results.

As City Hall and Albany debate the future of this system, one message should be clear: New York cannot afford to go backward. Dismantling mayoral accountability would not restore democracy, it would simply revive dysfunction. New York City’s students deserve a school system that is transparent, coordinated and accountable. The next chapter of educational progress depends on leadership that embraces those principles, not abandons them.

With an open mind and a broad vision, Mayor-elect Mamdani has an opportunity to build on what works, fix what doesn’t, and continue moving our schools forward. The future of 1 million children — and the faith of millions of parents — depends on it.

Starting Nov. 1, New Mexico will offer free child care to every family in the state. There will be no fees to pay and no income limits to sign up, according to the Early Childhood Education and Care Department.

State leaders and newspapers across the country claim it as the first universal child care paid for by a state.

People who support the program say it will help parents keep their jobs, give child care workers better pay, and make the economy stronger — adding it will also help the state’s youngest children who get the care.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for �鶹��Ʒ Newsletter

“The well-being of kids is tied to the well-being of the adults in their lives,” said Dr. Philip Fisher, a professor of early childhood at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education and director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood. “And adults’ well-being depends on their economic circumstances.”

But there’s a problem. New Mexico might not have enough child care centers to actually take care of all the children whose families want help. There simply aren’t enough spots available, especially for babies and families living out in smaller towns.

The state has gradually helped more families with child care assistance since 2019. By 2023, families making 400% of the federal poverty level were able to get help, opening the program to more middle- and higher-income families.

Right now, about 27,000 children across the state get child care, according to the Legislative Finance Committee’s  on Early Childhood. Officials think another 12,000 children will join the program when it becomes universal.

But the committee found, as of this year prior to the new subsidy going into effect, there were only enough openings for about one out of every three babies under age two. The shortage was even worse in rural counties where almost no licensed infant care exists.

The number of child care spots dropped by 3% between 2019 and 2023. That’s mostly because the number of people providing child care in their homes dropped by half, according to  from the Cradle to Career Policy Institute at the University of New Mexico. Most of the drop  in unlicensed home-based care—places that were simply registered as providers.

Not counting those home providers that closed, the numbers would show more licensed child care centers, which have higher quality ratings from the state. But home-based providers are more likely to offer care at night or in a family’s native language. With so many of them gone, families who work night shifts or want someone who speaks their language may have a harder time finding the right fit, according to the institute. It’s worth noting that the share of assistance going to families at or below the poverty line fell by nearly 3% between 2019 and 2023.

State officials know there are not enough child care options and have announced a $12.7 million fund that offers low-interest loans to build new centers or fix up old ones. They plan to ask lawmakers for another $20 million. The growth will focus on care for babies and toddlers, low-income families, and children with special needs. The state is also working with businesses and schools to open more locations and is trying to recruit new people to run child care in their homes.

To keep workers, state officials plan to pay child care centers more money so they can cover their real costs. Programs that pay staff at least $18 an hour and stay open 10 hours a day, five days a week will qualify for incentive rates.The state plans to boost child care in underserved communities by making sure workers get fair pay and by using data to make smart choices, said Elizabeth Groginsky, secretary of the Early Childhood Education and Care Department.

Fair wages can help child care workers think of early education as a real career instead of just a temporary job. That means they can build lasting relationships with the children and families they serve, Groginsky said. “We use data to drive our decisions. We just completed a supply-and-demand study with interactive maps showing which parts of the state have the largest gaps. That will guide how we fund applications through the new loan program.”

Even with those plans, questions remain about who will benefit most and how much difference the system will make for children.

While supporters say universal child care is a win for families and the economy, Republican lawmakers  that removing income limits means taxpayers will now help pay for child care for wealthy families.

Legislative Finance Committee analysts have also questioned the program’s impact on learning. Their 2025 report found that while child care meets an essential need for working families, it does not have the same effect on kindergarten readiness as public pre-kindergarten programs.

But Fisher said the benefits go beyond teaching ABCs and 123s.

Stable, predictable, caring relationships are the foundation of healthy learning and development, he said. That matters more than exposing young children to math or reading skills that they will pick up anyway once they start school.

Healthy child development has more to do with relationships than what kind of child care you use, he said.

“There is not like a prevailing amount of evidence that having a child in a kinder care situation is going to lead the child to be a college graduate [versus] having them cared for by the lady down the street or in your apartment complex is going to lead them to end up, you know, incarcerated,” Fisher said.

Fisher also questioned whether the market alone can give families what they need.

“It’s a broken market,” he said. Parents can’t afford what high-quality care actually costs, employers don’t usually help cover it, and providers often don’t make enough to live on.

When adults are stressed about money, he said, it directly affects children.

“It’s easy to imagine that if you’re an adult who’s taking care of a young child, that if you yourself are worried about not having enough food for you to feed your family, or you’re skipping meals so you can feed the children, or you’re worried about eviction, or you can’t pay for health care, that those things weigh on you and that they take away from your ability to really buffer your child from what’s going on around them,” he said.

Groginsky said the stakes are high.

“The first five years is the fastest period of human development, with over a million new brain connections per second in a baby’s brain,” she said in an interview. “It’s those responsive, nurturing relationships that drive positive outcomes.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Goldberg for questions: info@sourcenm.com.

was originally reported by Jennifer Gerson of . .

She’s a centrist Democrat and newly minted grandmother born and raised in Buffalo whose first childhood home was a trailer by a steel plant. 

He’s a Democratic socialist and a newlywed, born in Uganda and raised mostly in New York City by a renowned film director and a Columbia University professor.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral nominee in New York City, are an unlikely political pairing in many ways. But what brings them together is a shared interest in affordable child care — specifically the idea of making it universal for New Yorkers. 

It’s a policy Hochul has stressed while talking about her support for Mamdani, who is likely to be named the winner of the city’s mayoral race after polls close Tuesday. 

“I’ve had conversations with Assemblymember Mamdani about how we can get to universal child care. I believe we can. I believe that,” Hochul said this month at an event with Mamdani at the Boys & Girls Club of Queens in Astoria.  

Experts in child care policy and the politics around it see the shared ground for these two politicians — even if they don’t agree on all the details — as emblematic of how critical the issue has become to many voters, particularly younger ones. It’s especially true in New York City, which is heavily Democratic, and the state, which is solidly so. 

Reshma Saujani, the founder and CEO of Moms First, a national group organizing on paid leave and affordable child care, said that she’s seen a shift in the past two years and that “universal child care is quickly becoming a platform issue on every single Democratic platform.” 

Amanda Litman, the president and co-founder of Run for Something — which recruits and supports young, progressive candidates to run for local and statewide office — said affordability is the issue defining millennial candidates’ races right now, as evidenced in the Mamdani campaign. The fact that child care figures so prominently is no surprise, she said, since for many millennials, struggling to afford child care is part of their lived experience. 

“Politicians who want to win and who want to be seen as fighting both for families but also for the future of the economy will position themselves accordingly,” Litman said.

Enter the unlikely partnership of Mamdani and Hochul. 

“I think we’re at a turning point,” Hochul said in a phone interview with The 19th. “There’s a larger narrative around this now.” 

But for her, the issue is nothing new. 

“I’ve been talking about this long before there was a mayor’s race with this position, and I’m glad we have other people who are supporting my position,” Hochul said. “As a mom-governor, this is personal and it’s something I raised in my first budget and I raised again this year. I love that people are talking about it through an affordability lens as well.”

Hochul said that years ago she had to leave a job she loved on Capitol Hill because she couldn’t find affordable child care. She’s concerned about how little has changed since — she’s now watching her own children, who have begun having children of their own, encounter the same issue.

As governor, she in the state, giving families up to $1,000 per child under the age of 4 and up to $500 per child from 4 to 16. This spring, Hochul also announced a in child care, including $110 million for new child care facilities, repairs to existing sites and new home-based programs. She also for child care assistance so that families of four making up to $108,000 are eligible for child care that costs just $15 per week. 

According to , the average annual cost of child care in 2024 for infants and toddlers in family-based care was $18,200, up 79 percent since 2019; for  center-based care, it was $26,000, up 43 percent since 2019. 

In her address in January, Hochul expressed her desire to create a roadmap for universal child care for New York state, forming a task force and considering revenue streams outside of raising taxes. 

Mamdani has proposed for New York City children six weeks through 5 years old and has discussed to do so. But the mayor of New York City does not have the power to raise taxes — to fund his proposal, he needs the assistance of the governor’s office. 

However, raising taxes is something Hochul has not expressed support for: Even after her appearance at a rally with Mamdani on Sunday was met with she in an interview on a Fox News podcast the following day: “I will say one energetic rally does not get me to change my positions. I assure you.”

Hochul told The 19th that it would take approximately $7 billion — more than the city’s police budget — to fund universal child care in New York City and close to $15 billion to implement it statewide.

In a statement, Mamdani’s spokesperson Dora Pekec told The 19th, “After rent, the number one cost facing families is child care — it’s driving working families out of this city, which is why Zohran Mamdani has made universal child care a cornerstone of his affordability agenda. Zohran is grateful for Governor Hochul’s partnership on the issue and looks forward to making universal child care a reality for all New Yorkers alongside her.” 

Hochul said she is happy to see that the conversation about child care has been shifted out of the realm of “women’s issues.”

“It’s about time that we have more than just the moms,” she said. “Having a mayoral candidate like Zohran Mamdani embracing this as well shows that this is not a gender-specific issue at all, and I think that’s the progress we’ve been needing.”

The Mamdani-Hochul alliance speaks to politicians’ belief that action on child care is critical to winning Gen Z and millennial voters who are feeling shut out of the promise of economic mobility.

“I’ve always said this, but whoever basically fixes child care will win the ballot box. … It is such a pain point and such a deciding factor for so many families and the trajectories of their lives,” Saujani said.

Rebecca Bailin founded New Yorkers United for Child Care two years ago when the city’s universal preschool program for 3-year-olds was under .  Since then, she has organized over 10,000 New York City parents around the issue of universal child care in the city. 

“In all my years of organizing, I’ve never seen something so resonant. People were ready for this because it really hits home. Yes, we care about our children and all the benefits of child care in terms of their development. But also this is about being able to work. This is about living our lives without totally going broke,” she said. 

Bailin pointed to recent data that shows that parents with children under the age of 6 are . 

She said her coalition includes low-income and middle-class parents who are feeling the financial burden of child care, but also those watching this struggle and seeing the toll it takes — something that is now reflected in Mamdani’s campaign. 

“This is aunties. This is friends who are sick of seeing their friends leave the city because they want a more affordable city and want to keep the community that they’ve come to love and not lose people when they start families. This is employers who want their employees to be able to afford the city,” Bailin said.

She credits Hochul for understanding this dynamic — and early. 

“Governor Hochul is hearing what people are saying. She’s understanding that this is a real crisis moment, not just for the city, but the entire state and the entire country,” she said.

Mamdani’s embrace of universal child care as an issue has laid bare an interesting gender dynamic. 

“I have been saying that for way too long, this was a ‘women’s issue’ — that people would say, ‘You made a choice to have children. This is your problem. Figure it out,’” Hochul said. “I think we’re seeing this transition from ‘It’s a you problem’ to ‘It’s a collective, societal problem.’ And that’s a very positive dynamic and one I’ve been working for for a long time.”

Political experts echoed the importance of Mamdani embracing the issue.

“It is rare that you see a young, childless dude talking about this issue. I think that he’s a really good messenger for this because it is not built into his bio — the way that most of his campaign is not built into his bio — but about what he’s hearing from voters,” Litman said. 

She said this is why the Mamdani-Hochul alliance on this issue is a strong one. “It’s not just, ‘The woman is trying to get it done,’ but they can send the message of, ‘It’s the public servants who are trying to get things done.’ I hate this reality, but this is the reality and this is the reality that gets us to a place where we don’t have to spend some $30,000 a year on child care.”

Saujani stressed that getting universal child care in New York City would have a huge impact nationwide. Seeing a city of this size — and a state this diverse — funding and implementing this would be a strong signal that child care is not just a personal problem for a family to fix, but an economic problem that the government can and should manage. 

“Voters are drowning. They’re being priced out of the American dream,” Saujani said. Reducing the cost of child care is “not just a sound bite, but a real reality that people are looking for when asking, ‘Have you changed my life? Have you helped me thrive, not just survive?’”

This story was originally published on The 19th.

New Mexico will offer child care at no cost to all residents, regardless of incomes, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham , thus becoming the first U.S. state to offer universal free child care, she said.

The state Early Childhood Education and Care Department will begin writing rules to entirely remove the income eligibility threshold for a family to receive child care assistance by Nov. 1. The state currently parent copays on child care for families whose income is up to 400% of the federal poverty level.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for �鶹��Ʒ Newsletter

“Child care is essential to family stability, workforce participation, and New Mexico’s future prosperity,” the governor said in a statement issued following a news conference. “By investing in universal child care, we are giving families financial relief, supporting our economy, and ensuring that every child has the opportunity to grow and thrive.”

The free child care will save families on average $12,000 annually, the governor’s office said.

During Monday’s news conference, Lujan Grisham said reaching the milestone of free universal child care required asking the Legislature and New Mexico voters for sustainable sources of funding. New Mexico voters in 2022 a Constitutional Amendment that pushed state lawmakers to tap into a state fund and use it to build out the early childhood education system in the state.

“That was always the vision,” she said. “It took us this long to realize it, but by golly, we did.”

Along with the expanded access to free child care, the state in one week will allow entities like local governments and schools to start applying for low-interest loans to expand or create new child care facilities, under rules to the state’s Child Care Facility Loan Fund passed in the most recent legislative session, Early Childhood Education and Care Department Secretary Elizabeth Groginsky said.

Between 12,000 and 13,000 new child care slots could open up, with a goal of 55 new licensed child care centers, 120 new licensed homes and 1,000 new registered homes, she noted.

“We see the interest, we’re also talking to industry leaders who are very interested in this, and also school superintendents,” Groginsky said. “I think it’s an all-in strategy from industry, business leaders, our schools and our community-based providers.”

Lujan Grisham said universal child care is “the backbone of creating a system of support for families” that allow parents to go to work or college.

“It’s going to make New Mexico extremely attractive to build your business here,” Lujan Grisham said. “It’s going to make New Mexico extremely attractive to come here and raise your family.”

The new rule will also address pay for child care providers, the governor said. According to a handout at Monday’s news conference, under the proposed rule, providers will earn additional funding if they pay all entry-level workers at least $18 to $21 per hour and remain open at least 10 hours per day, five days per week.

Monday’s announcement builds on six years of progress in the state, said Dr. Neal Halfon, founding director of the . He said New Mexico is the first U.S. state to put in place a blueprint for “an ecosystem of early childhood supports,” including a first-of-its-kind statewide comprehensive, actionable data program.

“This portfolio of strategies — I’m telling you as an outsider — is a really big deal,” Halfson said. “As a developmental scientist, we’d like to see every place have this kind of scaffolding in place. This is a national model.”

In the most recent legislative session, lawmakers increased the department’s budget by $113 million to $995 million total, including $463 million specifically for child care, Groginsky said. The state in 2020 also created a new pot of money called the Early Childhood Trust Fund, which started at $320 million and now has $10 billion, Lt. Gov. Howie Morales said during the news conference.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Goldberg for questions: info@sourcenm.com.

 attended an event last November where the nonprofit New Yorkers United for Child Care launched a  for expanding care: City Comptroller Brad Lander, State Sen. Jessica Ramos, State Sen. Zellnor Myrie and State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani. Ramos has put the issue  of her mayoral run. 

Two other candidates have also embraced the issue. Former New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer has  to cap the cost of child care for the city’s families, and in a previous run for mayor he  universal child care. Michael Blake, a former aide to President Barack Obama, has also  he supports it. 

Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who recently entered the race, is  to make the city’s 3-K program fully universal; as governor, he  state funding for New York City’s groundbreaking universal pre-K program and  a task force on child care affordability before he resigned in the wake of multiple sexual harassment allegations.

“There’s a strong argument that New Yorkers United for Child Care has already won the New York City mayor’s race,” Lander said. 

New Yorkers United for Child Care got its start about a year ago. Rebecca Bailin, its executive director, realized there was no group dedicated to the single issue of child care. “It felt really insane that we didn’t have a constituent base ready to build power around this very critical issue,” she said. 

The group had its work cut out for it. Instead of working toward creating new early education programs, it found itself immediately leading the opposition to Mayor Eric Adams’s  to what was supposed to be a universal 3-K program. While the program is still not universal — despite Adams’s promise that every family would get a seat who wanted one this year, plenty  being waitlisted — the mayor last year  some of the funding he threatened to cut.

A Plan for Universal Child Care

Now New Yorkers United for Child Care is going on the offense with its to achieve free care for all children at a cost of $12.7 billion a year, or 6 percent of the state’s current budget, once the plan is fully implemented. The plan would launch in the city and spread across the state, using state funding, perhaps through taxes on capital gains, corporations or high-income earners. 

The idea is to create an early childhood education system for children from infancy through age 4 that mirrors the K-12 system. The plan calls for a free, full-day program, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., to accommodate parents’ work schedules. Spaces would be within 15 minutes of families’ homes “because you cannot bus a toddler or a baby,” Bailin said. 

The first year of the plan would be spent ensuring that 3-K and pre-K programs in the city are “truly universal” and expanding them to other areas of the state. Year two would guarantee universal access statewide while growing access for 2-year-olds, and then later years would be spent on younger ages. 

Bailin isn’t waiting for lawmakers to come around. In January, her organization brought advocates, parents and elected officials to New York City’s city hall  a campaign for free care for New York City 2-year-olds, which it’s calling “2-Care.” They ultimately want to serve 60,000 toddlers at a cost of about $1.3 billion annually. Ramos and Lander both support that campaign, too.

Support from City and State Leaders

Indeed, the push for universal child care has found fertile ground in the current mayoral race. Both Ramos and Lander have children and dealt with the problem firsthand. When Ramos had her first child 13 years ago, she had to put together a “hodgepodge” of child care coverage “and it was just really, stressful to do,” she said. But then when her child was 4 years old she worked in the administration of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio setting up universal pre-K, and both of her sons got to attend. “That was really eye opening,” she said.

So when she was elected to the state Senate, one of the first bills she introduced was  that would create a funding stream to cap families’ child care costs at 7% of their income and pay providers at least $45,000 a year. That legislation has not yet passed. She’s also worked on expanding eligibility for child care subsidies so they are now available to families earning 400% of the federal poverty line, or $128,600 for a family of four. The state has  spending on child care over the past four years, although it still only devotes less than half a percent of its budget to it.

“My campaign proposal is really building off of, or taking from, my state plan to implement a city system,” she said. If elected mayor, she’s  she would streamline the bureaucracy of the existing system, open more facilities, invest in providers, and, ultimately, achieve universal child care. As with Bailin’s plan, she would start by “really mak[ing] 3-K work,” and then move down to create a program for 2-year-olds and “get as close to newborns as possible.” She would start “on day one.”

Lander said enacting universal child care would be one of his top three priorities if elected. His other priorities are tackling homelessness and building affordable housing, but he said those initiatives would take a long time to come to fruition. Universal child care, on the other hand, “is the single biggest thing we could do to have a near-term impact on the affordability crisis that is facing New York City’s families.”

Lander’s first step would be to ensure the existing 3-K program is universal, something he says can be done in his first year with existing city funding. Then he would work with New Yorkers United for Child Care to expand universal, free care to age 2 and, eventually, all the way to 6 weeks old. 

“If you want to have a functioning democracy, if you believe in any meaningful way that every kid ought to have as close to equal opportunity to thrive as you can provide, and if you want a city where you can have a thriving economy with families working, publicly provided early childhood education is a linchpin,” Lander said in an interview. 

New York City can’t create universal child care on its own; both Ramos and Lander acknowledged funding will have to come from the state government. Bailin agrees, though believes it will eventually pay for itself as universal child care has been  to do in Quebec, Canada. 

There are signs of interest in Albany. State Senate Majority Leader Andrew Stewart-Cousins  “universal, affordable child care” in 2022. In December, Sen. Samra Brouk and Assemblymember Michaelle Solages published  also calling for free, full-day universal child care, and Sen. Andrew Gounardes  in his priorities for 2025.

In her state of the state address this year, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul  for putting the state “on a pathway toward universal child care.” So far, nothing concrete has passed, “but before they weren’t saying anything,” Bailin noted. 

If a candidate who supports universal child care wins, Bailin said parents like those in her group will have to make it clear this is a priority. “This is what their constituents are clamoring for and demanding,” she said. “It’s our job to make sure that our elected officials are hearing from them.” 

The tension between 3K-for-All’s ambitious goal and its political and economic realities underscores a central question facing every fledgling public preschool program: Should the program be “universal” — available to all — or “targeted” to the families who need it most?

in the peer-reviewed empirical microeconomics-focused Journal of Human Resources has a ready answer: Preschool programs reserved for poor children aren’t nearly as effective as universal ones.

Elizabeth Cascio, the study’s author and an economist at Dartmouth College, was once among the many who suspected that targeted preschool programs offered the most learning bang for the buck. In 2013, Cascio and the economist Diane Schanzenbach of Oklahoma and Georgia’s preschool programs which found that the universal programs had a significant, positive impact for disadvantaged children. It did not have an impact for children from higher-income families, who would have otherwise likely been enrolled in private preschool paid for by their parents. For those families, the free program acted mostly as a cash transfer, said Cascio. “In the conclusion, we were really tempted to say, why don’t we just do this in a targeted way, because you can get the same results with lower costs?” she remembered.

But there was one big, potential caveat to that recommendation: Targeted preschool programs made the most financial sense unless — for some reason — the wildly positive results for children from lower-income families depended on the programs being open to families of all economic strata.

To test whether that was the case, Cascio used survey data from the national Early Childhood Longitudinal Study to compare test scores of thousands of 4-year-olds in more than 30 states, some which offered targeted state preschool programs, others universal, yet others none. Across the board, poor children in states where preschool programs also welcomed children from other economic backgrounds showed far better reading test score gains when they became eligible for and enrolled in public preschool than children in states with programs targeted to disadvantaged children. This held true even when Cascio adjusted for factors such as class size, spending per pupil, teacher training and education in the state programs, as well as children’s alternate care arrangements. Effects on math scores were also higher for disadvantaged children in states with universal programs, though not high enough to be deemed significant.

With such pronounced, positive effects in universal programs, Cascio determined that the universal programs were also more cost effective. Universal programs “cost more overall” because they serve more children, said Cascio, but their return “is more per dollar spent.”

The key takeaway? To reap the greatest positive benefits for children from low-income families, explained Cascio in a phone interview, “you have to pay for the kids who aren’t disadvantaged.”

The study was not able to determine why, exactly, the universal programs worked so much better, but Cascio and other researchers have offered possible explanations. Universal preschool programs may be operated or designed in ways that focus more on kindergarten readiness, leading to higher test scores, said Cascio in a phone interview.

Alternately, higher income families generally have not only more social capital, but sometimes a heightened sense of entitlement, which could prompt them to hold programs more accountable, leading to higher quality. “Maybe higher income parents feel more like their voices will be heard and are sort of more empowered to make their opinions known and have the privilege to do it,” said Cascio.

Or it may be that mixing children from different economic backgrounds–even if only slightly different–is key. Economic integration has been found to be beneficial for older children’s learning, but there is scant research on economic integration among young children, largely due to a lack of opportunity to study it. Because most early education is private, programs typically segregate by what parents can afford. But research has been able to establish that higher skill sets in preschoolers strongly correlate with higher income families. And in preschool, kids learn as much, if not more, from playing and interacting with each other as they do from teachers — what researchers call “the peer effect.” It goes to reason, then, that in economically mixed classrooms, the skills of more economically privileged children can influence other kids, potentially leading to the higher test scores. In other words, paying for those kids’ presence might be what makes universal programs so effective.

Whatever the reason, the finding that universal programs are both more impactful and cost efficient than targeted programs flies in the face of decades of policy assumptions and decisions in the U.S. Historically, most government funding for early education has targeted economically disadvantaged families, with the idea being that affluent families already pay for preschool. As the historian Elizabeth Rose details in her book The Promise of Preschool, ever since President Richard Nixon vetoed a national plan for universal child care in 1971, Americans grew used to the idea that preschool should be paid for privately. This led to “stronger political support for using public dollars for low-income children who clearly ‘need’ it than for building a bigger and more expensive system,” wrote Rose.

This, in turn, helped to cement economic segregation during the early years, which some researchers believe has only fueled the achievement gap between children from low- and higher income families — a gap which arises long before children step foot in kindergarten. “It is exciting to think that a [universal preschool program] could address that,” said Cascio.

Universal programs also have other benefits–in many places, they’ve increased mothers’ participation in the workforce and generated significant tax revenue. But in the absence of federal funding, state and city leaders continue to face tough choices as they struggle to foot the bill for truly universal programs.

Cascio’s research should tip the scales, the economist Diane Schanzenbach said back in 2017, when Cascio revealed the study’s early findings in a working paper. Given the research, Schanzenbach , “I think this means we have to support universal pre-k programs, and the large price tags that go along with them.”

Tomorrow, New Mexico residents will vote on , to allocate permanent funding toward early childhood education, which includes child care, pre-K and home visits. For a state that ranks last for “,” the focus of child care is one way to improve outcomes and well-being for residents.

Please note that the ballot initiative was the culmination of a 10-year effort from advocacy groups to provide a dedicated funding stream for early childhood. This has the potential to change the future of work and child care: states are often the Petri dishes for making sweeping policy changes, so New Mexico’s efforts and results will be closely watched by advocates.

One policy expert is already keeping a close eye on the move to near-universal care. Hailey Heinz, deputy director of the University of New Mexico Cradle to Career Policy Institute, will be one of the experts to measure the efficacy of the state’s child care program and how it affects outcomes.

In this Q&A with Early Learning Nation, Heinz explains how New Mexico’s child care landscape has changed and what policy advocates across the country should be watching for.

Rebecca Gale: Let’s start off with New Mexico’s existing progress on child care: the money set aside for child care and early education has done well during the  oil boom.  How has that set the landscape for what’s happening now?

Hailey Heinz: It’s important to understand that New Mexico did not become interested in early childhood this year, or during the pandemic or just a few years ago. The state has had a long interest in funding early childhood; It has spent decades at the bottom of national rankings about child well-being, so there’s political will and urgency around figuring out how to improve the lives of families and children.

In terms of setting the landscape, in 2019, New Mexico created a dedicated cabinet department for early childhood, and in 2020, the legislature created the Early Childhood Trust Fund. But I can point back further to other choices that set the stage: the 2018 legislature, under a Republican Governor, gave $25 million in new state dollars to subsidize child care systems, rather than just relying on federal block grants, which is how most state child care is funded. In 2013, New Mexico passed the Home Visiting Accountability Act, and since 2005, New Mexico has had high-quality, state-funded pre-K. New Mexico has been punching above its weight on early childhood for 20 years, with a really dedicated group of advocates, and it’s often been bipartisan in nature.

RG: There’s a lot of research about the positive effects of universal pre-K programs, but less about the positive effects of child care, specifically. Without having to wait 20 years to look at graduation rates, are there ways that New Mexico can know if their programs are working?

HH: I think we’ll see a mix of things we can measure right away and other things that take a long time. And, it will be up to people with jobs like mine to measure it correctly.

The funding will support different types of programs, including New Mexico’s pre-K. We have studied pre-K and we know it has strong outcomes, including improved 3rd grade reading and better rates of high school graduation.

For a program like the home visiting, we are looking at building strong relationships between babies and caregivers. This work is important to do but has a later payoff. The big bet we are making with home visiting is that it will build the capacity of families to be more patient, resilient and supported. It’s going to take years to see the results of that. Knowing that families become more supportive caregivers is good, but that’s a long way out for us to really know it’s successful.

One of the things that really appeals to me as a child-care scholar is that high quality care has an impact on families right away. Women’s labor participation, within a year or two, will see a shift as women were able to return to the labor force if they wished to. It can be a subtle shift too with women working more, or being more willing to take a promotion or go full time without being worried about losing their child care assistance. In a state like New Mexico, with its huge rates of economic insecurity, reliable stable child care makes a difference.

On the child-level benefits for near-universal child care, it’s less clear in the research than it is for something like pre-K. But I think NM is well-positioned to work on that, too. We have a quality system. Based on pre-K standards, we know pre-K gets results. But it’s not the same with child care because access is different. With pre-K, the family signs up; they get a year of pre-K; they don’t have to prove eligibility; and they get free pre-K for the entire year.

Child care assistance has historically been more of a welfare model where parents need to show they are needy and deserving. Because circumstances and eligibility can change, kids cycle in and out of the program so they don’t get that consistent, extended access. As access to child care improves, the results may start to look more like pre-K and we’ll see more of the child-level outcomes, but that can take longer.

RG: New Mexico is not offering universal child care, but it’s pretty close. A family of four can access benefits with income up to about $110,000 per year (400% of the poverty line) in a state where the overall median household income is about $51,000 per year. For families above that eligibility line, will they see a benefit to the child care programs? Has that been a difficult political issue?

HH: Expanded investment in the child care sector and expanded subsidy eligibility benefits all families with children who use child care because it’s a way to infuse funding into a sector that is really cash-starved, especially during the pandemic. Families, including those who pay privately, benefit from stable quality care. Public investment helps build quality capacity for everybody.

In New Mexico, our subsidy policy changes meant that providers received more payment for a subsidy than from families who were private payers — which has been the reverse for most states. Interesting to see what happens with that — I am keeping my eye on that.

It hasn’t been a difficult political issue. People in households earning more than $100K are not accustomed to qualifying for direct public benefits. They don’t expect them and it’s not like something has been taken away. A lot of other parts of the early childhood system are universal. Our pre-K program does not have an income qualification. Most of our home visiting programs have universal eligibility. New Mexico has taken a universalistic approach; the eligibility ceiling is high enough that I haven’t heard blowback about it.

RG: The American Rescue Plan funds inspired many states to innovate with early child care, and New Mexico attempted to change the cost modeling for child care, meaning paying providers what child care costs, not the market rate of what they could sell it for. Do you see that aspect having national reverberations, particularly in light of providers losing staff to higher paying jobs?

HH: Yes. The most interesting thing going on with the cost modeling is the potential to improve wages and working conditions for the child care staff. Policymakers can use the cost modeling study as a basis to say, “We did a study and this is what we think child care costs per toddler if we pay everyone $12 an hour.” What would it cost at $15? $18? We can set rates that way, but it’s capped at what parents can pay.

Part of the exciting potential is that it has better positioned New Mexico to address compensation through the subsidy system. If you can reach a point where many of your child care slots are paid for by subsidy, it is big enough in your system that you can use it to move the needle on something like compensation.

I think wages and working conditions are really the next big frontier in early childhood that must be solved to achieve anything else. You can’t expand access if you can’t hire enough people. And you won’t get to quality outcomes unless you have a stable workforce. Child care has a tragically underpaid workforce. This is where I have the most hope that the permanent fund initiative will be a game changer.

New Mexico has managed to do amazing things. But we have done it on the backs of the workers—mostly women and women of color—who have not earned enough to sustain the system.

RG: You mentioned you think the ballot initiative will pass, but that so much of the radical change on child care has happened already. How long do you think it will take for state residents to feel that this shift has made a difference?

HH: It’s not obvious to a family if the lead teacher in their child’s infant room gets a raise, but families complain when there is high turnover in their child care system. Better pay and working conditions promote stability, and families should see shortly thereafter, an enhanced stability because the workforce isn’t being tempted away to go work in retail or fast food.

The funding gives New Mexico a chance to keep doing what we are doing. States did a lot of interesting things. I predict there we’ll see a thousand dissertations on what states did with ARPA funding.

There is some hand-wringing about what happens when federal funds go away. But some of what we feel here is that it won’t go away. What I feel is that it won’t stop. It’s part of what makes New Mexico unique, to say, “Yeah this isn’t temporary. We don’t think it should stop.” We are going to be the ones to keep this early childhood investment going.

A Fleeting Universal Child Care Program During World War II

During War War II, New York City’s Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia funded a handful of already existing school-based nurseries so that women could work in factories, replacing men deployed to war. This inspired the federal government’s 1941 Lanham Act, which paid for wartime daycares in hundreds of cities. Historians argue this is the closest the country has come to universal child care.

Through a quirk of definition, New York City nurseries did not qualify for federal funding from the Lanham Act. But with local funding, the city grew the number of its nurseries offering child care. Women loved them. When the war ended, soldiers returned home, and women were expected to stop working for pay, working women in New York City and around the country rallied to keep the wartime daycares open, framing child care as a universal right and essential to women’s social citizenship. It was the first time “American parents directly expressed their need for child care in a visible and organized fashion,” wrote Sonya Michel in Children’s Interests/Mother’s Rights.

New York’s wartime programs remained open, but they were not available to all, as the activists had wanted. Instead, they were reserved for poor families. Nonetheless, it was “a massive victory,” wrote Black. California was the only other state to emerge from the war with its publicly-funded wartime daycares intact. New York City’s nurseries became the foundation for what would eventually become the largest publicly-funded child care system in the country.

New York City’s Daycare Workers Organize

In the 1960s, as support for universal child care continued to grow throughout the U.S., staff at these publicly-funded daycares organized into the country’s first union for child care workers, drawing attention to the working conditions of the child care workforce at a time when many middle class feminists were focused solely on making child care more available. “It was not just a demand for child care, but a demand for decent work conditions for a workforce made up disproportionately of women of color,” explained Black.

This union, which remains the largest daycare local in the country, won its workers a wage scale comparable to that of elementary school teachers in public schools. In the decade to come, these unionized workers would become some of the most steadfast activists in New York City’s second major push to win universal child care.

New York City’s Second Push for Universal Care

Around the time that New York City’s child care workforce was organizing, the number of families receiving welfare was ballooning and policymakers in D.C. began to eye , one with potential to reduce the growing welfare rolls. They made federal funding available for that purpose.

But among the public, support for publicly-funded universal child care available to all continued to grow. For middle-class white feminists entering the workforce, the dream of universal child care “expressed their dissatisfaction with gender and family norms that forced middle-class women to take care of children at home,” explained an from Bitchmedia. For welfare activists, it challenged the practice of using means-tested child care benefits “to surveil and control” welfare recipients. And for Black feminists, advocating for universal child care “disputed the common cultural narrative that blamed Black mothers and Black families for systemic poverty.”

In many of New York City’s low-income Black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods, parents began forming their own pockets of free or low-cost child care by organizing small community-run daycares for local children. Unlike most child care centers of the time that were overseen by large social service agencies as charity for poor families, these small daycares were an outgrowth of the civil rights movement and represented community empowerment, and the community looking out for itself. But some were financially precarious and began looking to the city for funding.

The community programs found a receptive ear in New York City’s Republican Mayor John Lindsay. By the end of the decade, the amount of federal funds available for child care had mushroomed, and Lindsay began using this money to lay the groundwork for the expansive publicly-funded child care system that feminists and advocates envisioned. As I described for , the city began funding many of the community-controlled child care programs while also opening new child care centers. In just three years — from 1971 to 1974 — the city tripled its child care programs, growing from about 120 programs to over 400, and providing child care for more than four times the number of children.

Lindsay created a new city agency to oversee the programs. The Agency for Child Development, as it was named, was staffed with feminists and “vocal advocates” who embraced an expansive child care vision of “as much quantity and quality as possible,” according to a . New York City’s network of public child care centers quickly became known for both the large number of children served as well as “its commitment to high quality care that set national benchmarks,” wrote Black. These standards included a 10-hour-day for working families, onsite nurses at many of the centers and family counselors.

But a contentious question loomed: who were the daycares for? The federal government had a ready answer: federally-funded child care was meant to be a support to move welfare recipients into the workforce. But it granted states and cities flexibility in interpreting the federal eligibility requirements. And so the community-run programs, which comprised a little less than half of all the city programs, used their own liberal definition of “community need” when enrolling parents. Some refused to ask families about their income, wrote Black, “considering such questions an invasion of privacy and a means of reinforcing class distinctions.” In essence, they were providing a form of on-demand universal, economically-integrated, community-controlled child care for whichever families expressed a need for daycare.

This brush with universal child care was brief. In 1971, President Nixon vetoed a plan for a national child care system. Soon after, federal funding for child care began to dry up. In response, the state set stricter eligibility requirements for government-funded child care. These changes outraged workers and parents at the community programs. Over many months, parents and workers staged protests. A coalition of community-based programs demonstrated on New York City’s Triborough Bridge (now officially known as the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge); they held a sit-in at the campaign headquarters of Mayor Lindsay, who was contemplating a run for president; and they organized a one-day model daycare in front of City Hall. , a daycare leader who would later co-found Ms. Magazine, was central to the movement and her pro-daycare arguments involved issues of racial, gender and social justice. Linking child care to welfare surveilled poor mothers, she said, and isolated their children.

At first, staff at the Agency for Child Development and Mayor Lindsay sided with the activists. But when the state threatened to cut funding, the city capitulated: the centers would serve only poor families. As federal and state funding continued to wither, the city began cutting services and even quality standards in the programs to save money. Working conditions worsened with the programs and staff stretched thin. When New York City entered a deep fiscal crisis in 1975, it began closing programs, laying off hundreds of workers while leaving working parents, and especially mothers, scrambling. “The dream of a universal child care system in New York City had once again been crushed,” wrote Black about the time.

And yet, many gains won by the activists persevere. New York City continues to have the country’s largest publicly-funded child care system for low-income families, “one recognized for its commitment to high-quality, center-based programming delivered by non-profit community agencies,” wrote Black. Much of this system’s workforce remains unionized and have continued to advocate for better wages and working conditions over the years. And Black sees New York City’s Universal Pre-K and 3K program as a direct outgrowth of the many years of this advocacy.

Today, during a pandemic that has wreaked havoc on child care programs and working parents nationwide, New York City hovers yet again on the verge of universal child care. Black is optimistic. Unlike in previous decades of activism, today’s advocates are armed with hard data demonstrating how quality care benefits children and also pays for itself through tax revenues generated by working mothers. Advocates are using that data to construct what Black calls “a different kind of narrative,” one more focused on economics. He’d like to see the earlier arguments of social justice and gender equality succeed, but he thinks the new ones will be what tip the scale. Regardless of the winning argument, Black added, today’s advocates “stand on the shoulders of previous generations of poor and working-class women who laid the foundation” for this moment.

Proponents and advocates are watching closely, in hopes that this model can be replicated in other states, or extrapolated onto the national scene, as President Joe Biden pledges a historic investment in early childhood education.

A Long Game in Vermont

Change can be years, decades and even longer in the making. Vermont is no exception. For example, in 1982, real estate developer Rick Davis saw that poverty was affecting the livelihoods of families in Burlington, and wanted to take action. He spent decades investing in youth programs, including building a youth center, meeting with families, offering jobs on his work sites to kids who could be mentored and well cared for by his team. But he still felt that the cycle of poverty wasn’t fully broken, and began looking for more tangible ways to make a difference and change outcomes for kids in adverse situations.

This led him to learn more about the brain science of children’s learning and the “return on investments” of diverse interventions. What he found surprised him. “The ages of birth to five,” said Davis, “are when quality care and strong relationships have the most significant impact on the rest of a child’s life.”

That’s when his mission shifted to getting more kids in quality child care programs. Davis became the founder of the Vermont Community Preschool Collaborative, since rebranded as Vermont , which is spearheading the effort of bringing quality, affordable child care to every child in the state of Vermont. The movement has swelled into a nearly 40,000-person coalition, 6% of Vermont’s population.

Experts agree that investing in the first five years leads to better outcomes academically and socially for kids. Quality, accessible and affordable child care also allows parents, especially moms, to stay in the workforce longer, providing more stability to a family overall. But even with strong support in polls and from experts in the field, no state in the country has implemented such a program. Vermont, if successful, would be the first.

Before Universal Child Care, A Push for Universal Pre-K

Before the push for universal child care, Vermonters had a streak of support for early learning and care. Vermont was one of 10 states, including D.C., with a universal pre-K program, and while ,” only Vermont’s program, along with D.C. and Florida, allow any child to enroll, regardless of enrollment numbers, deadlines or funding.

Vermont’s initial universal preschool offering was a “voluntary law” from 1997. This means that a locality was required to set up the program and run it for two years, before becoming eligible for state funding in the third year.

• In 2008, when Davis and his team first began conversations around universal child care, only about 20% of localities had universal preschool programs.
• In 2013, after five years of bringing business leaders, philanthropists and nonprofits to the table to work with school boards to establish funding for those first two years, 80% of Vermont’s localities offered universal pre-K. This created the “tipping point” Davis said, for universal pre-K to be available statewide.
• In 2014, the measure was signed into state law and Vermont became the first state in the country to provide 10 hours of preschool per week for every 3- and 4-year-old in the state, for 35 weeks a year.

After the state passed a universal pre-K program, Davis felt ready to tackle birth- to-five child care. This was when the Vermont Community Preschool Collaborative was rebranded as Let’s Grow Kids, a nonprofit with a specific 10-year mission to bring universal child care to the state. Formed in 2015, the group expects to sunset in 2025. “This creates a clear sense of urgency and purpose,” said Let’s Grow Kids’ CEO Aly Richards, whom Davis recruited from the governor’s office to head the group.

Thus began the effort to mobilize business leaders, political leaders, experts, educators and families around the idea of universal child care. The organization had a policy arm and a political arm, designed to bring a wide array of stakeholders to the table and build a case for universal child care.

The group combined relationship building with grassroots efforts and a public education campaign on the benefits of universal child care. Field staff worked in every Vermont county: tabling at county fairs, community education events on early childhood brain science, door-to-door canvassing, phone banking, text banking, and volunteer development through annual advocacy events and trainings. The public education effort used both grassroots organizing and multi-channel marketing, including radio and TV ads. The campaign’s effectiveness was tracked through polling, which steadily increased as Let’s Grow Kids’ efforts ramped up.

Business Entices Young Families to Thrive in Vermont

Vermont, like the other northern New England states Maine and New Hampshire, has a large retiring baby boomer population without enough children and working adults to replace them; that number is . “Over the next 10-15 years, we will have a huge wave of retirements and no workers in the pipeline to fill the jobs,” said State Senate Leader Becca Balint.

The year 2017 marked the first time that Vermont had as many seniors (over age 65) as children (under age 18). Just two decades earlier, children outnumbered seniors . Balint believes the “shrinking workforce” problem played a key role in attracting support from the business community for universal child care, which she described as “a bright shiny object” to attract and retain young families in Vermont and allow parents to enter and stay in the workforce.

More Women in the State House

Balint also credits changing demographics in the state house, notably the influx of more women who deeply understand the struggle to find child care, just as she had, in building support for the movement. Balint remembers her arrival to the state senate in 2014 as the mother of two young children when most of her colleagues were males, over age 60, “long since retired.”

“They hadn’t been thinking about the issue of having two people in the workforce,” Balint said, whose wife also worked. “They would tell me it was strictly a personal issue, and say ‘someone should just be home with the kids.’”

Now, the general assembly is over 40% women for the first time in state history, including women as Speaker of the House, Lieutenant Governor, President Pro Tempore of the Senate, the House Majority and Minority Leaders, and the Senate Majority Leaders.

Both Balint and Richards point to Covid as that final watershed moment that child care was a necessity that workers couldn’t do without. “We know that child care is an integral part in getting more people into the workforce,” said Balint. If Vermont wants a thriving business community, it needs to shift child care from a “personal issue” to a collective one.

What’s Next?

Despite the groundswell of political will for the program, Vermont still faces a major hurdle in funding the universal child care program. H.171 puts in place two studies: the first on how to make the program accountable and efficient, and to decide which agency will regulate it and how. The second is a revenue study, designed to map out the costs and payments. Balint mentioned one idea for the dedicated funding stream via a payroll tax, shifting the burden of paying for child care to people working, exempting the retirees.

The goal, said Richards, is to present both the revenue and governance bills in 2023 to the legislature for a vote. That’s in keeping with Let’s Grow Kids’ own deadline of 2025 to sunset, and with the urgency and momentum the movement has built.

Richards knows they have their work cut out for them, and both she and Balint expressed optimism that the universal child care program will succeed.

“We have a no-popping-champagne rule,” Richards explains. “The hardest work is still ahead.”

Support for this reporting was provided by Better Life Lab at New America. 

Cities are wherepar . But urban environments can feel built to deter kids and caretaking. That spurs families to bail on cities – – contributing to climate change through increased dependence on driving and inefficient housing. Kid-hostile urban design also takes its toll on the many families who live in cities.

Although studies on how neighborhood design impacts child development are has established clear links between stress and the developing brain. Ask any caretaker and they’ll tell you—the size of their home, the transportation they can and can’t safely access, the safety of their streets, and how easy it is to use parks, child care and other amenities, can have a significant, ongoing impact on the strain experienced by parents and, by extension, their kids.

These elements make up what urban planners refer to as a neighborhood’s “built environment.” The built environment can support children and parenting, or be just another obstacle to overcome. Either sets the tone for how kids and caretakers experience a city, says Christine Serdjenian Yearwood, founder and CEO of the family transportation advocacy group . It can influence whether, say, a pregnant person gets offered a seat on a crowded subway or if that baby bump is viewed as a lifestyle choice, no more deserving of accommodation than a bag of golf clubs.

So what does a city that values kids and caretakers look like? Planners knowledgeable in child-friendly design say that walkable neighborhoods with a mix of commercial space and diverse housing lead to “ and a strong sense of community” that help families thrive. Parks and other green space is also key, the Australian planning consultant Kristin Agnello explains in her book, .

Montreal makes for an inspiring example in North America. Teeming with green space and pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, it’s also a city where considering family needs feels baked into urban planning.

Family-friendliness “is a policy that Montreal has adopted,” explains Faiz Abhuani, director of Brique par Brique, an affordable housing initiative in Montreal. “In some boroughs, this is their guiding principle. It’s like a religion.”

Paid Parental Leave and Universal Child Care

As part of the French-speaking province of Quebec, Montreal families benefit from Quebec’s renowned paid parental leave and – – two initiatives that in part sprang from efforts to promote the French language’s endurance in the province by strengthening families. This attitude towards children as an investment to be nurtured permeates everything from the government’s having procedures, to with family-friendly work environments, to a pandemic prioritizing parents for the vaccine. It’s an attitude that also informs ongoing adjustments to the city’s housing policies, transportation system and green space.

Housing to Fit Families

According to Canadian urbanist Brent Toderian, a key reason many young families flee cities is housing. Families need bigger homes, Toderian explained to . But because real estate developers maximize profits by building smaller units, without regulation of new development, housing designed for couples and single people dominates a city’s landscape. This is true for affordable and subsidized housing as well, with finding that in New York City, the affordable three-bedroom apartment is nearing extinction.

, Montreal now has several neighborhoods barreling toward unaffordability, and the city has long suffered a shortage of family-oriented housing stock. As a corrective, the city recently passed requiring major housing developments to set aside a percentage of units for affordable and subsidized housing as well as family housing, defined as three bedrooms or bigger.

Abhuani of Brique par Brique has concerns that the bylaw ties new housing to gentrification, and that real estate developers with no commitment to the community will be the gatekeepers for homes. But he and other advocates generally agree it demonstrates an important willingness to center families’ needs in planning.

Stroller-Friendly Public Transportation

Walking and using public transportation isn’t just good for the environment; it’s good for the family budget and health. In y, architect Nidhi Gulati makes a persuasive case for taking public transportation being good for children’s cognitive development as well, by providing brain-boosting interactions with the built environment.

But public transportation is designed with the single commuter in mind. that women using public transportation with children in Los Angeles incur “higher travel costs, elevated stress, and faced greater safety risks on transit than men.” Yearwood of UP-STAND says it’s no wonder “there’s this huge population of people that just opt out of public transportation because it’s not built with them.”

Welcoming a new child is when some families purchase vehicles for the first time, or trade in cars for gas-guzzling SUVs. Others stop venturing out with children. “We hear all the time that once people have young children they just don’t leave the area. And it most certainly has an impact on their mental health and isolation,” says Yearwood.

A leader in the global movement to make cities more bike- and pedestrian-friendly, Montreal’s public transportation is free. The city’s public buses are low to the ground, making for easy stroller- and small-child-boarding, and there’s a space up front with folding seats marked for both wheelchairs and strollers.

Its metro system has clear signage identifying strollers and pregnant passengers as a priority group for seating, and the entire system is undergoing a to become more accessible. Improvements, which include more elevators and clear barriers separating train tracks and platforms, will be a boon for small kids and their caretakers.

Montreal also boasts an impressive biking infrastructure that parents feel safe enough to use with kids. At the YMCA camp my kids attended this summer in a bustling neighborhood, children as young as 6 or 7 biked alongside parents for transportation.

Green Space to Grow On

Also significant: camp counselors and kids made use of not one, but four nearby parks. Research shows this kind of easy access to green space offers city dwellers a host of benefits: from mitigating the effects of extreme heat, to promoting well-being, to providing an arena where young children play while building gross- and fine-motor skills.

The greenery doesn’t stop with parks. The city makes judicious use of cement planters to slow traffic, and the city’s car-free streets, sidewalks and alleys are filled with whimsical, often nature-inspired and reminiscent of the “” of researchers Kathy Hirsh-Pasek of Temple University and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff of the University of Delaware. Montreal is also a trendsetter in “flipping asphalt into gardens, public seating or people-friendly infrastructure,” notes urbanist researcher and writer John Surico in his newsletter, Streetbeat.

That’s not to say life is perfect for Montreal families; locals have critiques. Many want to see the government-funded child care centers expanded so more children receive their quality care. A group of advocates and researchers noting fathers, too, often get overlooked in policy planning. And Abhuani of Brique par Brique says the city’s planning for families too frequently means “nuclear, white, professional families,” whereas the city has many multigenerational families under one roof, as well as families without legal status who face debilitating discrimination in the job and rental markets. These families’ have needs that will not be addressed “by green space and bike lanes,” notes Abhuani.

But there’s also a general consensus that family well-being is considered a key part of the city’s overall health. For parents enduring a global pandemic in the many North American cities where kids have felt like a policy afterthought, putting families front and center in city planning can feel radical, even revolutionary. But it shouldn’t be. As so many urban planners have noted, a city that works for small children works for just about everyone.

Photos by Kendra Hurley and Sandeep Prasada