Child Care

Bill Thompson knows that finding quality, affordable child care is a challenge for many working families in New York City. Bill believes that it is essential for all New Yorkers to have access to safe and reliable child care services so that they have the ability to work and support their families. That’s why as Comptroller, Bill has fought to expand access to child care services, advocated on behalf of the city’s home child care providers, and worked to ensure safe conditions in child care facilities.

 

As Comptroller, Bill Thompson:

  • Stood with child care advocates and elected officials against Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to slash 3,000 child care vouchers from the Administration for Children’s Services budget in June 2009.

  • Opposed Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to cut pre-kindergarten services and move kindergarten for five-year-olds out of day care centers and into overcrowded public schools.

  • Released a report finding that the City’s Agency for Child Development routinely allowed thousands of slots in City-funded childcare centers to remain empty while numerous low-income parents awaited places for their children. Bill  recommended an automated electronic database be created to ease delays in granting available slots to parents on the 46,000 families on the waiting list while eliminating $17 million in waste.

  • Advocated for the City’s 28,000 home child care providers, after the City declared it could not afford to pay them their state-mandated wages, even as the city unveiled a $45 million plan to retrain unemployed investment bankers, traders, and other laid-off Wall Street workers.

  • Supported greater access to the City’s school-based child care program, Living for the Young Family through Education, which provides quality and convenient child care that allows teenage parents to remain in school and receive the education they need to succeed.

  • Invested New York City Pension Fund money in rehabilitating child care facilities in low and moderate income housing areas, providing safe and convenient child care facilities for working parents.

  • Exposed in an audit the lack of ineffective oversight of the City’s 493 contracted day care centers by the Administration for Children’s Services, and developed guidelines to add oversight and remedy problems the audit found, such as the administration’s failure to perform annual evaluations at 20 percent of sampled day care centers, instances of missing background checks and Department of Health certifications of teachers, and understaffed centers.

  • Revealed, in an audit of the Administration for Children’s Services and a contracted non-profit child care provider, unsafe conditions in family-run day care such as natural gas leaks, nonfunctioning smoke detectors, a lack of cribs for infants, issues with provider certification and documentation, and recommended the agency adopt stricter oversight and inspections rules.