Transcript: Mayor Adams Makes Historic $167 Million Long-Term Commitment to Fund Critical Early Childhood Education Programming

April 16, 2025

Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos, Department of Education: Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Thank you so much for being here in what I like to think is the best part of Tweed, one of our actual classrooms. And I am so honored to be here standing alongside our mayor to make such a huge announcement today. 

Under this administration, we've invested over $3 billion for 3-K and pre-K seats across the city, expanded access to special education pre-K seats, and launched a 10-point plan to make high-quality child care more affordable for our futures. Now I'd like to introduce someone whose unwavering support for our city's youngest learners has led us to today's announcement, our mayor, Mayor Eric Adams.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you so much, and really excited. You probably didn't notice when he walked in, but we are here with former mayor, Mayor de Blasio. You know, we cannot say enough. And part of being a mayor is to ask yourself, what is the legacy you're laying out for the future? And there is no job that is just so rewarding and challenging than being the mayor of the city in general, but specifically the mayor of the greatest city on the globe, and that's New York City. 

And you cannot talk about the legacy of Mayor de Blasio without talking about what he did around early childhood education. He just got it. He understood that for far too long, we have been embracing the philosophy of pulling our young people out of the river downstream instead of preventing them from falling in the river of lack of educational opportunities upstream. Early childhood education, it works. 

No one can argue that, and far too often, when you go into economically challenging communities that are particularly Black and brown and immigrant communities, they don't have the dollars to give the private tutoring, to do the early diagnosis to learning disabilities, to make sure they get the proper counseling when they're dealing with traumatic experiences throughout their lives. And this is how you get it right. 

I always remember that 11-year-old when I was in the 88 precinct as a lieutenant who was arrested for robbery several times, armed robberies, and he was angry. He was frustrated. He knew every four-letter word you can imagine. And it was only through the midnight hours of being a lieutenant that finally I got him able to talk to me. When I asked him what was happening with him, the young man just broke down and started crying. His dad was in jail for a homicide. His mother was hooked on crack cocaine. He was out of school for months, and no one checked on him. We created that problem. 

And this administration, following the leadership of the former administration, he handed off the baton and talked about that. I remember when the mayor was briefing me in the last few months of his administration sitting at Gracie Mansion. He talked about this. He talked about this subject and how we had to continue it. And I heard you. I heard you. And we want to make sure we get it right and invest in that. 

And chancellor, you are focused on this early childhood education, and it impacts just as former chancellors have as well. This is the best place to raise our children and families, this place we call New York City. There's no other place like it. But it is crucial that in the process of raising our children and families, that we give them the opportunities they deserve. 

And last year, we made a commitment that every child who wants a seat will have access to one. And we lived up to that commitment. And for the first time in the history of the 3-K program, that was done. And now, we're making the commitment again this year. 

Today, we are proud to announce that we have once again succeeded in delivering for New Yorkers, especially for our families. We are here to celebrate a historic, long-term investment in early childhood education that we will be making in our upcoming fiscal 2026 executive budget. For the first time ever, we will baseline the funding, investing almost $170 million annually to support popular and critical programs like pre-K, special education, and the expansion of city-wide 3-K. I remember we were walking the streets in Brownsville when you were talking about 3-K, when you were the mayor at the time.

Just hats off to Jacques Jiha at OMB for keeping our priorities in order. This is a Herculean task that we are able to accomplish. We're baselining this. What does that mean? In political terms, that means any administration that can come can't screw it up and can't touch it. It's in the budget, and it will be permanent in the budget. What does that do? That gives permanency to parents to know that 3-K and pre-K and our early childhood programs that we are putting the money for will be in place.

It will become permanent, part of our city's budget, so the programs cannot be tampered with. And when you think about it, it's a huge, huge step forward. And because we anticipate real federal changes on federal Head Start funding, we're going to look ahead and think strategically to promote equitable and high-impact results for our youngest students. 

We'll be working closely with families throughout the city for the realignment to make sure they are aware of Head Start and all other available early childhood education programs. We're leaving a lot of resources on the table over and over again. When we did an analysis, we saw that there were far too many communities where we needed early childhood education that families were not taking advantage of them. 

And that is why we put dollars in the budget to make sure we can go out and tell families that early childhood education is not sitting in front of a television set at home alone. It is being part of the socialization of other children and learning how to develop your full personhood and the development of your child brain. Those early years are crucial in the development of a child's brain on so many levels. And being around a well-educated and informed school facility and staff could make that happen appropriately. 

So we're going to continue to work closely with the families. And this administration knows that working class families are the backbone of the city. That is our north star to make sure that they could have the opportunities that are available and that a successful early childhood education system is crucial to making New York City more affordable, particularly for working class mothers. 

Our child care blueprint shows that almost 375,000 parents left or downsized their jobs because of COVID-19 pandemic and lack of access to quality child care. For mothers, the decision to leave the workforce to care for a child can cost up to $145,000 in foregone earnings across their lifetime. And those are real dollars. This money a whole family loses. The whole family loses when something like this happens. And our entire city feels the economic impact. That is why our plan has been a holistic plan. 

Decrease unemployment in Black and brown communities, but across the entire demographics of the city. To decrease the cost of child care from $55 a week to less than $5 a week. To expand these seats to 150,000 children participating in the program. All of these things are part of the holistic approach to improve the lives of working class families. 

So our investment in early childhood education not only takes bold steps to ensure that our young students have the tools they need to succeed, but also ensure that parents don't have to make the difficult choice between losing income and child care. And make no mistake, it hasn't been easy. It has been challenged. It has been difficult. And every day, our OMB director and his team are making these tough choices. 

We had to devote $7.5 billion, and I want to constantly remind New York that $7.5 billion we had to find a way to fill that hole caused from the failure of the previous administration in dealing with the migrants and asylum seekers. No city should have to take upon the economic responsibility of the federal government, and that's what we had to do. And it impacted many of our services, and we had to navigate through that. And that's what OMB did. 

In fact, we have expanded the program to 150,000 children across our entire system. That is a record. And we did it under challenging and difficult economic times. We increased the initial 3-K office by 350 percent last year compared to 2019, despite the number of applicants more than tripling. We have also reduced the cost of subsidized child care for a family of four, as I indicated, down from $55 a week, $220 a month, to less than $20 a month. Those are real dollars, and they really impact the lives of our family. 

That's more than 10 times less than it was previously. And the average co-payment for subsidized child care is less than $220 per month. And that's from $1,500 in 2022 per child. But we must be honest. The easy thing to do is to ignore the challenges within the early child education system, and we're not going to do that. We must be smarter. We must be in alignment. And we must make sure every child that needs a seat can have a seat. 

And today, we're making long-term investments that will make the programs more sustainable into the future for the years to come, to make New York City continue to be the best place to raise children and families. The role of chief executives, as the mayor will continue, is to take the baton from previous administrations and continue them out. 

And I have to really just take my hat off to the vision of former mayor, Mayor de Blasio, and how he had that vision, fully understood the power of early childhood education. And we're going to continue that work, and we're hopeful that we will continue this work in the future for all of our children to get the support they need at the beginning stages of education. 

If you do it upstream, you won't be pulling children out of the river downstream because of lack of education. If you don't educate, you will incarcerate. And that is what we are attempting to do. We want to educate. Thank you. Thank you so much, mayor. Thank you.

Chancellor Aviles-Ramos: So now, I have the pleasure to introduce the person whose vision and leadership changed our city by making it a more affordable place for working families. 10 years ago, his universal pre-K program changed the lives of over 73,000 children and their families, and was the most ambitious early childhood expansion in the nation's history. Today, we have a record 150,000 children enrolled in our early childhood programs, and the number keeps growing. Thank you to former Mayor de Blasio. Thank you.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, I'd like to coin a phrase here, tale of two cities. It was over 10 years ago that I went to Albany to try and get help to make sure we could have pre-K for all. And the people in New York City had spoken in the 2013 election, they had spoken resoundingly in favor of helping our youngest children. And I went to Albany and I found a door that was closed quite often and a lack of support, and we had to fight and fight and fight to finally get what our children deserved. 

I juxtaposed that in my tale of two cities. I juxtaposed that with what we're seeing here today. In this case today, I was minding my own business this weekend, and Mayor Adams called and said, "we're going to invest more in early childhood education". And it wasn't because I was hassling him, it was because he had that commitment to our children. 

And I look at what a difference a decade makes, and I appreciate what the mayor said about his own personal experiences, why his life taught him the importance of reaching our young people early and giving them that better option. And this investment is huge because baselining, I loved your description of baselining, mayor. You made it politician-proof. That's pretty good. 

But this is when you really find out what a city is about, what a community is about, when you say we're not only going to invest, but we're going to invest permanently in our youngest kids and our families to actually give them the chance they deserve in life. So, mayor, this is profoundly important. And if it wasn't baselined, it would be endangered in the future. There's no question about it. These are perilous times. And in these kind of times, we've got to make our priorities even sharper. 

We've got to,  really throw down and say this is what we're going to do no matter what. And that's what Mayor Adams has done here today on behalf of our children. I want to thank the chancellor. I really appreciate the great work you're doing. I want to thank my old friend Jacques Jiha, who the minute I saw him when I came in today, I remembered the many, many unreasonable things I asked him to do, and the look on his face each time, a painful resignation, and yet he found a way to achieve these lofty goals and balance the budget at the same time. 

And I also want to thank, I know they're not here, but our friends in the City Council, I want to particularly thank Council Member Justin Brannan, Council Member Rita Joseph, both of whom have been champions for early childhood education. Look, there's three simple things I want to say, and I'll say them quickly. Ten years ago, we just passed the ten-year anniversary, the start of the program. There's been some really interesting reporting kind of bringing those times back. 

And I just want to tell you, if you meet anyone who was part of that effort, really just take a moment to appreciate what they did in record time, what we laid out as a goal to create universal pre-K and then later 3-K. We ourselves wondered many times whether it was possible. And the only reason it happened was the extraordinary efforts of public servants who went so far beyond the call, I can't even tell you, the nights, the weekends, everything, but just the belief in reaching our children. 

The mayor said something really important a moment ago. If we didn't do that, a lot of kids, instead of getting the education they deserve, were going to spend a lot of time in front of a television and not get that opportunity to tap into their potential. That fueled us back in 2014. We knew if we failed in 2014, we would lose that year of children, that group of kids' futures hung in the balance. And that's what kept us going every single time. But I just got to say, folks in this building and beyond did unbelievable things. 

And it's a time in history when public servants are under attack wrongfully, but if any New Yorker saw what happened in those months in 2014 and how much commitment and love people put into their work, they would be very, very proud of their city government. And they should continue to be proud of their city government today with this announcement. 

The second thing I want to say is there is a profound moral question here. Are we going to build a society where everyone gets an equal opportunity, or are we not? When we invest in early child education, we create something that actually lives up to the ideals of this country and this city. We say every child should start at the same starting line. We understand there are profound disparities in our society. But here's something where we can actually get it right. 

And we know, it doesn't matter which zip code you're in, there are kids who will do extraordinary things for humanity that [are] just given that chance. And when they get early child education, quality early child education for free, it gives each child that pathway that before was literally closed off to them simply because of economics. So this is why it's just so profound. 

The last thing I want to say is to pick up on the mayor's point about affordability. This is the best place to raise a child anywhere in the country. I don't have a doubt about it. By the way, the kids who go through New York City public schools are the best prepared for life of any children anywhere. They can do anything. They've been through it all. They know how to deal with all of humanity. We are blessed in this city. 

But let's face it, it's a tough place to live on a lot of levels and it's a place [where] we have a profound affordability challenge. I cannot tell you how many people have come up to me over the last decade and said the reason they could live in New York City, they could stay in New York City was because early child education was for free. And that's across the spectrum, every conceivable kind of New Yorker. 

I duly note that a lot of folks who bring their talents to this city, homegrown or they come from elsewhere, they want to be here. And if we don't provide them with early child education, we're basically saying here's your ticket to New Jersey or the suburbs. But when we do this, and the mayor's done something really important here today by sending a message to so many New Yorkers we want you here, we need you here, and we're going to take care of your kids to make sure that this community can be strong.

So this is profoundly important. We have more work to do always. And I want to particularly thank the mayor and the chancellor for their focus on kids with special needs, special education kids at the early childhood level. That was an area we honestly needed to do more in and you took that baton and went much farther and I'm deeply appreciative for that. But the bottom line is this is progress, real progress today for our children and families and for more affordable New York. So it's something to celebrate. Thank you, mayor. 

Chancellor Aviles-Ramos: Thank you so much. And there are so many people here today who made this remarkable moment happen and we want to make sure that we do not fail to mention them. So first of all, I want to thank Deputy Mayor Ana Almanzar for her leadership in this space. And his name has been called a few times but you can't call it enough. OMB Budget Director Jacques Jiha for finding the dollars to the tune of almost $170 million to baseline early childhood. Deputy Chancellor Simone Hawkins. And Deputy Chancellor Christina Foti. 

Both of them continue to advocate for our youngest learners and I'm so proud to be on a team with them. Tara Gardner, the Executive Director of the Day Care Council representing our local providers. And our many partners and our advocates in this space from our providers to our elected officials. And so I'm thrilled to be here today not only as a lifelong educator and as chancellor but really my first role in everything is as a mom. 

And if you don't know that to be true, you might have seen me do a little weird movement earlier where I tapped my head and went like this and that was to tell my own daughter in the audience to take her hood off. Now she's hiding. But I know firsthand the importance of high quality early childhood education. And I remember my time transitioning to principal when my daughter was an infant and trying to figure out what that looked like and being able to rely on my mom and my sister. But at some point they said "that's it, sis, you gotta figure it out." And when the mayor was talking about having to choose between your career and your family. 

That is a real thing for all families. But historically, especially for women. And as we look at the incredible things that women do in leadership every single day, I'm just touched that as chancellor I get to stand here with not one but two mayors who have made this happen for New York City. And all of you should be equally proud because these are the types of opportunities that make this the best place to raise children and the best place to develop yourself and know that anything is possible in a city this great. 

And so when our youngest learners are set up to thrive, so are their families. Their parents and guardians can balance childcare with their own careers, and our babies can get a jump start on learning to read, do math, and develop social emotional skills. And the changes that we are making, baselining funding, doubling down on our commitment to 3-K and special education, and realigning head start seats to meet community need are going to create a more nimble and robust early childhood landscape for us in the long run. 

Y ahora en español. Como madre trabajadora, sé por experiencia propia lo difícil que puede ser encontrar el equilibrio entre la vida profesional y la crianza de los hijos en la ciudad de Nueva York. Por eso, nos complace celebrar la inversión histórica a largo plazo en la educación para la primera infancia que realizaremos en el presupuesto ejecutivo del próximo año fiscal 2026. 

Por primera vez, contaremos con financiamiento garantizado con una inversión de casi 170 millones anuales para respaldar programas muy valoradas por las familias como educación especial de pre-kinder y la ampliación de nuestro programa de 3K a toda la ciudad. 

Translation: And now in Spanish. As a working mother, I know firsthand how difficult it can be to balance work and parenting in New York City. That's why we're excited to celebrate the historic, long-term investment in early childhood education we'll be making in the upcoming fiscal year 2026 executive budget. 

For the first time, we'll have guaranteed funding, investing nearly $170 million annually to support programs families value, like pre-kindergarten special education and expanding our 3K program citywide. 

When we care for our babies, starting from the earliest ages, we set them up for bold futures. And I'm so proud to do this work with all of you. And now, I'd like to introduce another special guest to speak to all of us, Tara Gardner, the Executive Director of the Day Care Council, which represents over 120 agencies that operate more than 250 publicly and privately funded childcare centers and family childcare programs across New York City. 

Tara Gardener, Executive Director, Day Care Council: Good morning. Thank you, Mayor Adams, Deputy Mayors Almanzar and Miles-Gustave, Chancellor Aviles-Ramos, Deputy Chancellor Hawkins, Executive Director Cartwright, and all of the leaders and early childhood educators here today. I am so excited to be here. I am Tara Gardner, the Executive Director of the Day Care Council of New York, and like the chancellor said, we represent New York City's center-based early childhood education programs. 

And we also serve as New York City's Child Care Resource Center in partnership with the Chinese American Planning Council, the Committee for Hispanic Children and Families, and the Child Development Support Center. Safe, high quality, affordable, and reliable childcare is vital to New York City's economic health. 

As a Head Start graduate, that's me, I know first hand the profound impact early childhood education has on young children and their families. Against the backdrop of the challenges facing our sector, including significant state funding shortfalls and threatened federal Head Start funding, today's announced long-term investments in 3-K and preschool special education and the commitment to New York City's Head Start programming provide crucial sustainability. 

Most importantly, they guarantee that childcare seats and critical services remain available to families and children across all boroughs and neighborhoods, regardless of what happens at the federal level. These investments represent meaningful progress as we continue advocating for an early childcare system where the workforce is valued and all families, particularly those most in need, have access to care and the opportunities they deserve. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Doesn't Bill look so calm and youthful now? Oh, boy.

Former Mayor de Blasio: And by the way, to the media, you are all beautiful, I want to say.

Mayor Adams: Man, what is this, a skit for the Inner Circle? Yeah, take a couple questions.

Question: Hi, maybe this is a question for D.C. Hawkins or whoever wants to answer it. Can you give us a little bit of insight into what exactly is changing with Head Start? How many seats are really being shifted to these younger grades and how you see that going? 

Deputy Chancellor Simon Hawkins, Department of Education:  Good morning. And so, because of that commitment, I can lead by saying there will be limited shifts. What I would add to that is, putting aside what we are experiencing at the federal level, we had, as a result of an audit, we were required to re-compete for our five year grant. 

That grant supported about 6,000 seats from birth through five. And so, because we wanted to submit a viable application, because we know that the needs within communities are changing, families need the support of younger, younger age children. We did submit an application that would increase our early Head Start seats. Those are the seats that serve birth to two year olds. 

And so, again, we are waiting to hear back about our application. Either way, as you heard here today very clearly, there's a commitment to ensure sustainability across the Head Start sector, and so we plan to do that.

Question: Okay, I've got two that I'm going to try to cram in here. One is, on Head Start, I know you had to reapply because of the audit, but also in the last week, the president has raised the specter of completely defunding Head Start. So, what happens if that happens? Would you commit to making up the entire $60 million that the city currently has for Head Start if the funding were to go away altogether?

Mayor Adams: We're not going to go into hypotheticals. Today, we are announcing our commitment, and we're not going to move away from our commitment.

Question: And then just on having Mayor de Blasio here with you today, you were very kind about pre-K and 3-K. Today, in the past, you've been somewhat critical about the rollout, particularly around 3-K, and about the failure to have enough seats for students with special needs. I'm just curious, to the former mayor, what you made of some of that criticism. And to the current mayor, what kind of brought you here together today?

Mayor Adams: And that's the most important thing, is one can have differences on applications, implementations, but we don't differ on the foundation. The foundation is early childhood education. And I'm pretty sure in six years, whoever comes after me, they're going to look at some of my ways of doing things. 

But the principles are always intact. He was clearly the visionary. We firmly believe in what he was doing with early childhood education. We always would look at a mayor and or executive and say, I would have done something differently, but it doesn't take away from the foundation. He believed in early childhood education. We are joined at the hip, and now we're building on what he started. 

Question: So A, is there a waiting list? You're guaranteeing every child, but is there a waiting list to get into the program? And B, do you have enough teachers to cover all these students?

Mayor Adams: We stated last year, we lived up to it. Every child that desires a seat will have access to a seat, and we're not moving away from that. 

Question: And how about teachers? 

Mayor Adams: Well, you know we announced the other day, standing with the chancellor and our friends in the unions, particularly Henry Rubio. We announced the recruitment effort, putting the money into recruiting more teachers. We're going to be focused on delivering on our promises that we always made. Promise made, promise kept. I always hear Bill say that, and we've lived on to that, and we're going to continue that.

Question: On the funding, so this was left out of your preliminary budget in January. What changed in the three months since then? And then just on that, you've talked a lot about this misalignment between seats and demand in the system. And so what are the status of your efforts to kind of move around seats, and do you expect more of that?

Mayor Adams: The budget, as we say over and over again, it doesn't seem to really catch on, but we try to be as clear as possible. It's a moving document. And no one knew some of the uncertainties that we're facing now. You don't know those uncertainties when you first sit down. And so that moving document continues to evolve. And this is one of those good evolutions. 

Sometimes the evolution is not the best evolution. But this is part of the moving, breathing document of a budget. And we wanted to be very clear that we're going to baseline the funding for child care in this budget, and we're moving forward with that. And so you're going to hear a lot of announcements we're making. You're going to hear a lot of shifting, because the economic uncertainties are what they are. 

And we need to be prepared. Remember, we have to balance our budget by law.  And we don't always get the luxury of being able to see where these dollars are going to come from. We have to deal with the economic uncertainties. No one knew we were going to spend $7.5 billion on migrants and asylum seekers. 

We have to adjust. We have to shift to that.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Mayor Adams: Yeah, what we found, when you talk about, nothing gets more emotions in this city than what happens with children. And when we looked at some of the seats, the administration had the idea, as the mayor just pointed out, the challenges was put in place. He built a system from ground up. A retrospective observation of the system is easy to be critical of it. But when you're building that system, and you want to meet the deadline of 2014, was it, mayor? 

Of 2014, every child he did not get in the system was a child that could be on the pathway of not getting an education. Now, it was our obligation, sitting down with the chancellor and OMB, to say, "Okay, are we aligned correctly?" That was our obligation, and that's what we're doing. That's a painful moment, because there are those who are attached to their particular childcare location, but may not have the density that's needed. And so we have to be sensitive on how do we address that without traumatizing families and children, and that's what we've been doing. And these are tough choices

Question: This is a question for the former mayor. Can you speak to the current mayor's previous criticisms of the way that the 3-K program is managed, and can you share your support in the mayor's race?

Former Mayor de Blasio: Wow, that took a strange turn. Well, I do not believe we're discussing the mayor's race right now. So that was easy. Look, I think Mayor Adams makes a fair point that every administration is going to come in and make their own assessment. I really believe that the team that I had did some great work, and I'm always going to say that. And I've said that to you. We talked way back when about this. 

And I do think that one of the things that government always needs to do better is connecting with the people we serve. So we learned in the process of building Pre-K for All, and then 3-K, that so many parents historically didn't hear enough from the Department of Education, or any other agency, about what the truth was about the service being provided to them. 

And we did a very, very aggressive outreach effort in the beginning of Pre-K for All, and a very aggressive facilitated enrollment effort. And I think that model is a great model for all parts of government going forward. So I would certainly say, double down on that to ensure that these programs reach the most children and families and have the most impact. But again, I'm not sweating the past. 

What I care about is, here is this moment where this mayor had a choice, and he chose to baseline. And it's [an] uncertain time. I really want to commend him for this. I've been talking to mayors and governors all over the country. I'm going to use a political science term here, this is a freaky time in government, okay? 

This is really weird stuff that's happening in our nation's capital. And so that uncertainty is deeply affecting local governments. For the mayor and his team to say, you know what, despite that, we are doubling down on early child education and we're baselining this money, I say amen. I'm not dwelling on the past, I say amen, because this means a lot of kids now and in the future will benefit.

Question: Also a question for Mayor De Blasio, if I can. I know you said that– 

Former Mayor de Blasio: The nostalgia, you could cut it with a knife here.

Question: Well, since we're having flashbacks, I know you said you're not discussing the mayor's race right now, but respectfully, you did raise in your remarks just a few minutes ago some of the obstacles that you faced as a new mayor trying to get your pre-K plan through. 

And I don't want to assume, but I am assuming maybe you can clarify, are you talking about resistance that you got from Albany and from the governor? And is that why you brought that up here today? Because, you know, certain people's views on early childhood education have been important in this race that we are witnessing.

Former Mayor de Blasio: It's not just about any particular election. It's a bigger point. You know, you either stand for early childhood education or you don't. And I just think everyone's record should be remembered. So, you know, I was pretty clear that the people of New York City made a decision. 

By the way, I'd like to remind everyone in the general election of 2013, that [the] verdict was by 73 percent of the vote of the people of New York City, to endorse a program that was led by Pre-K for All. And I had to fight and fight and fight in Albany. And that's part of the record. The people will remember that, I believe, and I think they should remember it. And the most important reason I say that is if anybody out there wants to talk about this issue, I say prove it. Prove it. Prove your commitment. And I appreciate that Mayor Adams is doing that today.

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